This term, our focus is on Health and Wellbeing, Expressive Arts and Cynefin—this will help us explore our connections to the community and deepen our sense of belonging. 

We started the Autumn term in Llyn Brenig as an adventure – we had kindly been donated a very old mirror dinghy which Mrs Lawrenson and Mrs Richard’s family collaborated on to refurbish as a reading boat.  It is no longer lake nor seaworthy but we love the reading adventures that lie ahead for us.  

Our inspiration came from a beautifully illustrated book – Mrs Noah’s Garden and we used both the story and its illustrations as part of our literacy and expressive arts activities.  We have enjoyed our small world area where we could develop stories, role play and small world adventures.  We made plans, designs and creations to retell the story of Noah’s Ark. We made lists – checking on the pairs of animals entering the ark and we learnt many of their names “yn Cymraeg” too with our friends in Llyn Alwen. 

We started to explore the route of our water from reservoirs like Llyn Brenig and Llyn Alwen for our visit in the spring term – Catrin from Dwr Cymru brought a fantastic interactive workshop with her where groups of children needed to connect businesses and households to a reservoir with a selection of pipes – a great exercise and fantastic teamwork to minimise leaky pipes and the correct water supply too.  

We continued to use inspiration from James Mayhew and created an individual calendar for our families with his collage techniques and our imagination. 

A highlight of harvest was a visit from Mr and Mrs Glover, Mrs Lawrenson’s parents, when they came to make fresh apple juice with us all.  Our freshly harvested apples were chopped, mushed and squeezed to give us the juiciest juice we had ever tasted and we loved it.

Our musical exploration this term has been from Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns with groups of children studying different movements within the suite – we wonder what your favourite would be? 

We explored our woodwork area to create our Christmas presents for our family – sanding, shaping and working together to produce a candle holder and a yew decoration. 

In maths we have been concentrating on number development and have used a wide variety of equipment  and resources to develop our knowledge and these photos are some examples of the enhanced provision that exists alongside teacher led activities.  

Our community police officer, PC Hulley came to share a workshop with us about the range of emergency helpers and services that exist in our community and we look forward to learning more from her next term too.