The Willow
Welcome to The Willow
Meet the Team for
2023-24
Summer term
Week 2 in The Willow!
We have had a lovely week exploring all things Under the Sea! We have explored frozen fish, mark making, colour matching, layering, counting fish and mark making letters in our name. We have had a great week during sensory circuits as part of our morning routine in exploring different activities.
Week 2 in The Willow
A very warm welcome to Mrs Testa, our new teacher in The Willow. We are really looking forward to having you at Old Basford School!
Week 1
Welcome back Willows! We have had a lovely start to the Summer term, we have been exploring fish and 'under the sea' through sensory experiences.
Under the Sea!
Spring Is In The Air!
We finished our animal topic thinking about Spring and all the different baby animals. We enjoyed a Spring walk round the school grounds looking for birds, ducks and butterflies. Our fine motor practice helped us make lots of beautiful Spring crafts and we finished by making some delicious Easter nests.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar continues!
We have been busy counting and painting butterflies and fruit, and we loved our bug-hunt looking for different insects.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
This week we started our new animal story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Look out for all of our caterpillar and butterfly fun to come. We started by making moving caterpillars!
Spring 2: Animals
We have started our new animal topic with two weeks of activities based around the book
DEAR ZOO
You may want to listen to it at home:
Dear Zoo (Share a Story Corner) (youtube.com)
We have done so much already including many art projects, animal sounds bingo games, sorting animals by size, matching the animals to their crates and of course we have read the story many times. We have also really enjoyed the story sack and playing with the animals from the book.
Spring Term 2024
This term we are starting with a Nursery Rhymes topic. Each week we will learn a new rhyme and enjoy activities linked to it to practice our skills.
Week 4 - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Once I Caught A Fish Alive
We have continued working on our number skills this week using our fingers to count up to 10. We've enjoyed using glitter glue to make sparkly fish and working on our scissor skills to make tissue paper fish as well. We have used the numicon shapes to poke the right number of fingers through.
We're also so proud of the progress some children are making in taking turns in play, interacting with adults, showing patience and requesting more of a preferred activity.
Week 3 - Five Little Ducks
This week we have enjoyed lots of number activities linked to our song of the week, 5 Little Ducks. We have played with the the ducks in the water tray, practised counting to 5 in lots of different way and had great fun painting.
Week 2 - Hickory Dickory Dock
This week, we've been looking at numbers on a clock, and learning about circles, squares, rectangles and triangles.
Week 1 - Incy Wincy Spider
We enjoyed making handprint spiders, posting things down our drainpipe and adding legs to playdough spiders. We enjoyed Magic Spider pictures and painting sun and rain artwork too!
Keeping Our Bodies Healthy!
This week we have thought about ways to keep our bodies healthy. We have practised brushing our teeth and washing our hands. We thought about healthy foods and explored fruits and vegetables in different ways. We enjoyed investigating the shapes and smells, and some of us even tried some new flavours.
Our Senses
This week we have been exploring our senses. We tried to identify different smells, we looked for chocolate coins on our 'seeing hunt', we had a fabulous tasting session, touched many new textures with our hands and feet and played instruments to hear a variety of sounds.
PANTS!
We're learning about our bodies this week and all the different parts. We listen to the Pantosaurus song and My Body Belongs To Me because we want to learn to keep our bodies safe and private. We put pants on our baby doll and chose funny pants to cover up private parts. In PE, we found different ways to move on our bottoms to practise using the names of body parts.
11th Nov - The Willow Remembers
We made poppies on Remembrance Day using handprint and fingerprinting.
Make a Funny Face!
For the first week of our 'Marvellous Me' topic, we have looked at faces. We have explored the parts of our faces using mirrors, made faces using cornflour, fruit and vegetables and spaghetti. We loved the stickers too and used them to make some very silly faces! We enjoyed a song all about different faces.
Welcome to the Pumpkin Patch!
It's been a 'pumpkin-y' week with lots of sensory exploration. Carrying and rolling our HUGE pumpkin, feeling and examining the different small ones, and of course lots of scooping, squeezing and sliminess! We've sung the 5 Little Pumpkin song to help us think about different feelings too.
Water Play!
Water play has been our main focus this week. It is wonderful for sensory exploration, mark making, working with others and have great fun!
Autumn Days!
What lovely sunny weather we are having! In The Willow, we are making the most of the sunshine to enjoy exploring Autumn. Today, we have investigated lots of different autumnal objects from nature, mixed up autumn colours with foam and paint, been on a leaf hunt to find leaves of different shapes and colours and then used them to print some beautiful patterns using rollers to mix different shades.
You can enjoy our two Autumn songs using the links below.
Daily PE in The Willow
Every morning we go to the hall for our PE session it is a popular part of the day. This term we have tried a wide variety of activities from ball games, running and chasing, dancing, large apparatus, obstacle courses and gymnastics. We are very skilled climbers!
LEARNING SKILLS and GETTING CREATIVE
In The Willow, we are working to develop all kinds of new skills. We like practising using them to create our beautiful artwork. This week, we have snipped with scissors, and used a range of different objects to paint with. Do you like our polka-dotted donkeys?
The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse
We have been looking at the Eric Carle book, "The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse". You can watch the story below. We have learned the signs for colours and animals. We also used our cutting and sticking skills to make some beautiful collages that helped us recognise red, blue and yellow. We have been counting and building colourful towers in Maths, and singing and signing our song "I can sing a rainbow." Well done everyone in The Willow!
Our first week in Willow!
It has been lovely welcoming children to The Willow, our new enhanced provision. We have had lots of fun exploring the environment and getting to know each other.
