School and Nursery News November 2022

Peaslake Free School

As we are nearing half term, it’s good to look back and reflect on all the work that has been going on in School over the last few weeks. We’ve been incredibly lucky to have had such lovely weather for the children to enjoy and explore outdoors, making the most of their outdoor learning experiences.

Just two weeks into the term and we were already celebrating Harvest in St Mark’s church. So early in the year, it was asking a lot of the children to learn songs and write poems to sing/read out in Church, particularly our youngest and newest Reception children, but they were amazing, and performed with confidence, seeming to enjoy the whole experience. A big thank you to all the parents who generously donated food gifts to go to local food banks.   We then walked back to school to enjoy our traditional Harvest breakfast, prepared the day before by the children themselves.

The autumn colours and good weather have leant themselves to lots of outdoor learning. While some of our new Reception children creatively concoct new recipes and delicious mud pies for the lunch time menu, others are busy building erupting volcanoes or building obstacle courses to navigate on bicycles, whilst learning the art of negotiating, sharing and turn-taking with their new friends. Beginning their journey of learning fundamental life skills. All the new children have successfully started swimming at Cranleigh Leisure Centre once a week, with the rest school – a potential life-saving skill.

As part of our Religious curriculum we are currently learning about Islam. It's always very special when we have visitors coming into school to share their knowledge and beliefs, it gives the children an opportunity to be curious and learn in a relaxed environment without feeling inhibited. To this end we were very grateful to Uthayla for coming in and sharing her beliefs and knowledge, explaining about her prayer mats and beads and showing the children how to put on headscarves. The children had lots of questions and were really interested to find out more.

Our main topic this term is Movers and Shakers, it’s not as it would seem: there isn’t a dance move or musical instrument in sight! Movers and Shakers is about significant people who have shaped our lives and changed our thinking. To that end, the children have been learning about a wide range of people and what they did, from Neil Armstrong and Tim Peake to Christopher Columbus. You know when you have really struck a chord when you see the children building ships out of wooden blocks and pretending to be Christopher Columbus sailing off to unknown territories, or sitting on a tree trunk imagining it’s a rocket taking off into space and dodging meteorites.

Of course, all this wouldn’t be possible without the dedication and passion of all the teaching staff at school. They make learning fun and exciting and personalise it so that each child can engage and participate in the experiences.

Peaslake Nursery

We’ve had a fun-filled start to the Autumn term, and have welcomed a number of new starters to the Nursery. As part of our settling in, we’ve been talking about our families, sharing photos and memories of the special people in our lives. We’ve enjoyed decorating some yummy star biscuits and had fun dancing in the wind with our ribbon sticks! We’ve also had some calmer moments experimenting with the lavender playdough and enjoying playing with our water wall in the Nursery garden too.

A big focus this half of the term has been learning about Autumn time and spotting signs of the seasons changing. We’ve enjoyed heading out on nature walks, created our own leaf crowns at forest school and back at Nursery we did some leaf printing. Some of the leaves were also used as part of our loose parts play with glass beads, wooden rings and shells. In our Nursery garden we’ve been busy planting bulbs and experimenting with the acorns and conkers in the mud kitchen.