The children bounced back into school after the half term break full of energy and raring to go! They were very surprised to find that when they arrived in Form 1, something rather strange had happened to our dinosaurs… they seemed to have come alive! 

The dinosaurs were having a lovely time, toasting marshmallows on their pretend campfire and they were all wearing little wooly hats! We wondered how this had happened, was it Mr Phil or Mr John playing a funny trick? Was it magic from Halloween? 

Then the phone rang and Miss Leagus told us that the Nursery dinosaurs were also doing the same but outside in the garden! We went to investigate and met Robins and Transition class there because bizarrely, their dinosaurs had also come to life over the half term! The children in Nursery discovered a book in their classroom left behind by the dinosaurs. It was called, What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night-A Very Messy Adventure!

The children listened carefully to the story that warned us that the dinosaurs might start to get into even more trouble! The children were excited to see what they might get up to tomorrow.

On Tuesday, the children arrived to find the dinosaurs having an art lesson… but they were not very tidy! The dinosaurs didn’t seem to worry about all the mess they were making and they even started eating Mrs Cooper’s plants! The children decide it was time to try and stop them, so they set to work to make traps for them. Lots of imagination and creative thinking went into the traps and, soon enough, the dinosaurs found themselves inside cardboard boxes wrapped up with masking tape, floating in sticky mixtures outside, in cooking pots or in the fish tank full of green water (designed for them to play in to keep them out of trouble) We even had a magic potion created to make them behave themselves if they ate it!

Unfortunately, on Wednesday, the children came in to find that the dinosaurs had managed to escape from ALL of the traps! They had eaten their way out of the boxes, made steps to escape from the drawer and were having a bubble bath in the fish tank to wash away the sticky mixture. The children were very surprised and decided that they needed to try a different strategy and made some new traps for that evening.

Later that morning, Form 1 enjoyed presenting their assembly to the rest of Pre-Prep where they each shared a fact that they could remember from their trip to Hever Castle. The children explained the features of a castle, some interesting Tudor facts about the way of life and some information about Henry VIII and his wives. They even held a little quiz at the end to test everyone’s listening skills! Form 2 were very good at this.

In maths this week, the children have been learning about subtraction and applying their knowledge of number composition to help them solve subtraction questions quickly. We have been encouraging the children to reason and explain their thinking, using tens frames and cubes to support their understanding. They have started to understand how to read number sentences and have been working hard on their number formation.

On Thursday, the children discovered the dinosaurs playing in a huge pile of mud in the classroom! They were inside the compost bag, mixing muddy potions with bowls and spoons and making mud pies. We used this opportunity to imagine what the dinosaurs might be saying to each other as they played. The children had some fun ideas and then wrote their own speech bubbles to match their favourite dinosaur. 

The children have also loved learning how to draw a dinosaur using a step-by-step guide. They carefully followed the instructions and created either a dinosaur coming out of an egg or a scary T-Rex. They used black pens for the outline and then chose how to add colour either using pens, pencils or pastels. They did a great job and created some wonderful pictures! 

We learned about bonfire night and Guy Fawkes on the 5th November. We had our own fireworks show using the CTouch board, closing all the blinds and enjoying the beautiful colours and shapes. The children found out more about why we celebrate this day and tried hard to memorise the rhyme. We then explored printing using lollipop sticks, cotton buds and marbles dipped in paint to create our own fireworks pictures. The children added glitter to give their work a sparkly effect. 

On Friday, the children arrived to find the dinosaurs had… DISAPPEARED! We thought about what might have happened and decided to go and look for them around the school. The children were disappointed to not find them hiding in another classroom. The mystery continues…