We had lots of fun in outdoor learning.  We started off by singing and acting out the 'Twelve Days of Christmas'!  We discussed the story of Christmas and made Christmas decorations out of sticks to decorate the round house.  We finished off with jumping in muddy puddles!

We had a great time at St Fagans.  A perfect end to our theme, 'Standing up for the Welsh Language'.  We visited the Maestir School for a show and tell session.  We learnt about the Welsh Not and the type of punishments children were given.  We also attended a museum-led activity on the introduction to Eileen Beasley and Iaith Gymraeg.  It was really interesting visiting Rhyd-y-Car and St Teilo's Church too.

Building Friendships is a resource has been designed to support the development of social connections, communication and emotional wellbeing through collaborative building with LEGO® bricks.

Today, the children had fun working in groups to complete the ‘Set Building’ activity.  They had to choose a theme:   A birthday party — A day at the zoo — A superhero adventure.  They then had 30 minutes to work together to create their building and use their mini figures to play with the model.

A range of questions were asked: What role or character is your mini figure playing? Did your mini figure enjoy playing with the other mini figures? Everyone enjoys playing with different things, what could you do if everyone around you is playing with something you don’t think is fun?

The groups had time to show the rest of the class what they had done together. Children were encouraged to celebrate successes and give positive praise.

A variety of skills were developed: SOCIAL Working together as a team, communication, sharing. EMOTIONAL Shared enjoyment, compromise. COGNITIVE Imagination, role play. CREATIVE Creative use of LEGO® bricks to represent a theme. PHYSICAL Fine motor skills.

We started off our new mini theme, by reading this great book, 'We're All Wonders' by R J Palacio.  It is about a very courageous 10 year old boy with a facial abnormality and focusses on feelings and the effect our actions have on others.

We've used Auggie, the little boy from the story for our cold task - character description writing.  Over the next few weeks, we will be learning how to develop our skills for writing a character description.  

You could write lists of adjectives to describe the characters in the books you read at home. This will help you with your warm and hot written tasks.  

Yesterday was World Children’s Day – UNICEF’s annual day of action for children, by children.  It is a day to discuss issues that matter, where we call for adults to create a better future. 

Before we went on our outdoor learning session, we discussed the UNCRC Rights of the Child and we watched a video called Everyone, Everywhere 2030: Grace’s story – WaterAid. 

In the roundhouse, we studied a map of the world.  We located Wales and then discussed the red areas that showed places with little or no access to clean water. 

We learnt that some children are not as lucky as us.  The type of climate the country experiences and poverty are just some of the reasons why not everyone has access to safe, clean water and sadly this lack of access can impact on children’s lives in different ways.

We had lots of fun in our teams, transporting water from one area to another.  We really appreciate the water we have access to. 

We enjoyed taking part in the BBC Teach Live Lesson for Anti-Bullying Week.

The lesson will was hosted by Katie Thistleton and Talisha ‘Tee Cee’ Johnson from Albert Hall in Manchester. They were joined by Dr. Ronke Ikharia (Dr. Ronx) from Operation Ouch! who guided us on how to spot and address bullying behaviour.

In our outdoor learning session today, we developed our understanding of Remembrance Day. 

We discussed how people from different backgrounds, cultures, and religions come together to honour Remembrance Day. 

We talked about why it is celebrated every year on November 11th - because during WW1, the conflict ended “at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”. 

We discussed the bravery and courage of those who fought in the World Wars, including all of the brave animals. 

We carried out our own two-minute silence. 

Following this we played some fun soldier themed games and created our own poppy using red and orange leaves.  These activities helped to develop our listening skills, following instructions, teambuilding and creativity. 

Welcome Back!

Hope you all had a nice half term break