This week our topic was Sofia Valdez, Future Prez by Andrea Beaty. It discusses a little girl who decides that it is time to build a park for her community to help the people around her who aren't able to leave the house much or don't have access to green spaces due to a big landfill. She begins a campaign to build a park but is met with lots of struggles along the way as people initially don’t want to help her because she is just a child. Her perseverance and passion however inspires lots of people and the park eventually gets built! The key message is that even if you are a child you can still do anything you set your mind to and you too have the power to make a difference and to help people. We chose this topic because this week our bubbles took turns to engage in a Scavenger Hunt in aid of Ella’s (formerly known as Ella’s Home). The children loved taking part in the hunt and discussing their knowledge of the things we can do to help others.
During our Scavenger Hunt the Red Group looked for stones and words which they used to create a story whilst the Blue Group looked for story spoons and phonetic words. The Fledglings created some amazing and incredibly imaginative stories. The teachers could barely keep up with the exciting twists and turns that the stories were travelling on!
Taking inspiration from our topic book, our Focused activities and Art Projects were planned around the topic of helping others. The children used paint and collaging materials to create pictures about what they thought was important to them in the world. Some children created pictures about the importance of helping people feed their babies, whilst other children thought it would be important to build houses for people who don’t have one.
During our Literacy focused activity we discussed the importance of helping others and started thinking about what changes could be made to improve the lives of people living in London. We collected everyone's ideas before composing a letter to the Mayor of London which the children signed and posted.
The parents of 345 have been incredible generous and kind to our teachers and in the name of teachers appreciation day, amongst many other lovely surprises, we received some herbs which the children helped to plant in our garden. They were very excited about planting the new the herbs and discussed how we needed to look after them; reminding the teachers that plants need water and sun to help them grow.
In Science we combined our learning with our focus on personal, social and emotional development. We took the theme of helping others and acted out situations together of when we had helped each other or said kind words. The children showed awareness of actions and consequences and they reflected on their own and other people’s feelings.
During Free Play our Small World with animals and diggers continued to be very popular as well as the stacking shapes which provide the children with endless possibilities of models to build, from tall towers to spaceships!
We had a very lovely time this week and we wish everybody a sunny and relaxing half-term.