This Week in Woodlands

Woodlanders have enjoyed a creative, fun and super exciting week, learning loads about SPIDERS in so many different ways.

We enjoyed a visit from Wild Fangs who brought in a real tarantula called Rosie (because she had a little bit of pink on her).   As well as Rosie, Wild Fangs also brought with them a chinchilla, a cornsnake, a cockroach and a beetle!  The children were all intrigued by the creatures, and had lots of insightful questions to ask!

Throughout the week, the children have engaged in a wide variety of spider-based activities;

• We made rain shakers to represent the rain in the nursery rhyme Incy Wincey Spider.
• We sewed spider webs on paper plates.
• We used black and brown playdough and created bejeweled spiders.
• In cooking we made gigantic marshmallow spiders.
• On Tuesday morning, when we entered Nursery, our classes had massive spider webs all over them. We later discovered a lonely, lost spider, whom the children named Rainbow Rosie, had made the webs overnight. He said he had come in out of the rain and cold.

On Wednesday, in their Science session, the children explored how rain fall falls,. They enjoyed this so much that they asked to do it again on Thursday. What a super week of new learning we have enjoyed!

The children are also starting to learn the songs and words for our Christmas modern Nativity. I will soon be sending out letters asking you to please organize their costumes. Our tradition is to let the children choose their own parts, so please go with whatever the costume request is.

We continue to have a lot of fun and the children are learning about so many new things. Their excitement was at maximum level when the rain fell down really heavily and they realised that they could collect jugs full of water for their experiments without using the taps! Do you remember when I was writing in the newsletter back in September and October, that we were making the most of outdoors whilst the weather was autumnal? Well, the weather has changed this week but your wonderful children are still quite happy to be out in the rain, drizzle and cold. We are so proud of their attitudes and perseverance.

Here are some photos from our week for you to enjoy:

Have a lovely weekend!

Shirley Hayman

From the Junior Librarians

The Lights that Dance in the Night by Yoval Zommer

The Light that Dances in the Night is a mesmerising encounter with the Northern Lights and their neighbouring Arctic animals.

Zonmer’s trademark illustrations capture the magic and music of the lights as they float across the winter sky, passing all that live below.

Coupled with delicate rhyming text, this is a beautiful read.