London Day

Robins and Kingfishers enjoyed a brilliant virtual day in London! The children began their adventure at Eynsham train station, tickets in hand, before “travelling” to Paddington Station where their tour guides were ready to greet them.

Throughout the day, the children explored some of London’s most famous landmarks through creative, hands‑on activities. Highlights included:

•  Making crowns at the Tower of London

•  Designing flags at Buckingham Palace

•  Building boats for the River Thames

•  Enjoying Afternoon Tea with Paddington Bear

The experience sparked wonderful conversations about real visits to London, helped the children learn new facts about the city, and encouraged imaginative play linked to the world around them.

PE – Ball Skills This Term

This term in PE, the children have been developing their ball skills through lots of fun, active sessions. They have been learning how to control a ball using both their hands and their feet, building confidence and coordination each week.

The children have explored dribbling, practising how to move the ball with control and keep it close to their bodies. They have also been working on throwing and catching, focusing on using two hands, watching the ball carefully, and reacting at just the right moment. One of their favourite challenges has been dropping the ball and catching it again at the “magic moment”—just before it hits the ground.

These activities have supported the children in developing their gross‑motor skills, spatial awareness, and confidence in physical movement.

Paddington’s Marmalade Sandwiches – 4th March

On Tuesday 4th March, the children had a very exciting surprise. Paddington Bear sent us the ingredients to make his favourite snack—marmalade sandwiches! The children carefully followed the instructions to put their sandwiches together, showing wonderful focus and independence.

They spread the marmalade onto their bread all by themselves and then chose how to cut their sandwiches, deciding between triangles or squares. It was lovely to see them using their fine‑motor skills so confidently and making their own choices.

The children brought their sandwiches home at the end of the day, ready to share their Paddington‑inspired treat.

Maths Learning This Term

This term, the children have been developing their early number understanding through lots of practical, hands‑on exploration—an important part of the EYFS approach to building deep, meaningful mathematical knowledge.

We have been focusing on doubles, odds and evens, and the children have really enjoyed using manipulatives to bring these ideas to life. When investigating odd and even numbers, they built cube towers and used the language of “even tops” and “odd tops” to describe what they could see. This simple visual check—whether the cubes made a neat pair or had one sticking up—helped them reason about number patterns and compare quantities with growing confidence.

To explore doubling, the children created their own doubling butterflies. Instead of using paint, they carefully drew matching dots on each wing, making sure both sides showed the same amount. This supported their understanding that doubling means “the same again,” and encouraged lots of mathematical talk about how numbers are made and how they grow.

End of term 3!

Throughout Term 3 we explored the theme of ‘Superheroes’. We discovered that real‑life superheroes help us every day, including the emergency services, teachers, farmers, and even people within our own families. We ended the topic with the book Super Duper You, which helped us think about the ways we can be super ourselves. The children shared ideas such as showing ‘super kindness’, helping when someone feels sad, helping at home, and being super tidiers. Everyone designed and made their own superhero cape to celebrate their unique strengths. We then linked this learning to Mental Health Week by making a card and decorating cupcakes for someone we care about.

Maths in term 3

In maths this term, the children developed their understanding of numbers within 5 by constructing quantities using multilink cubes and comparing their towers to identify the correct number order. They used precise mathematical language such as ‘one more’ and ‘one fewer’ to describe changes in quantity. We then extended learning beyond 5 through our ‘5 Speckled Frogs’ work, using the stem sentence ‘5 and ___ makes ___’ to explore composition of number. To finish the term, the children investigated quantity comparison using the terms ‘more’ and ‘fewer’, discovering that attributes such as size, colour, or type of object do not affect the cardinal value.

Goldilock

We started our Goldilocks topic with an exciting classroom ‘crime scene’, encouraging the children to predict who might have caused the mess. In continuous provision they created bear faces with loose parts and playdough, helping them explore characters through hands‑on play. The children learnt the story, made their own mind maps, and used Colourful Semantics to support their early writing. Together we created a large story‑map artwork for our display, which now helps us retell the tale with confidence.

Christmas Activities 

Over the last few weeks we have explored the Christmas story and how we celebrate Christmas. The children have made Christmas wreaths, Calendars and cards. In this time our core text has been Stickman, we used this story to explore seasons and Christmas. The children all brought in their own stick and we turned them into stick men to form our very own family tree in the classroom. The children have also taken part in Christmas singing for their parents which was a lovely festive activity which allowed them to celebrate with their families. 

Season changes 

With the weather changing the Kingfishers went on a walk to explore the frost. The children used words such as glistening, sparkling, frozen, and cold to describe what they could see and feel. The children also had a go at mark making on the frosty floor of our Astro Turf. 

Light and Dark 

The children have been exploring what happens when light is blocked by using torches and different toys, their hands and shadow puppets. We have also drawn around our shadows outside using chalk. Inside we have been exploring light and dark in mark making with white and black paper and a range of different pens, pencils and chalks. 

Little Glow

As part of our new topic the children have been learning all about different festivals and celebrations. ‘Little Glow’ has been our first core text in this topic and it has introduced the children to lots of festivals through the candle character ‘little glow’. The children have really engaged with this book making their own ‘little glows’ and putting them in our window so that they can tell them about all the festivals they are learning about. 

Bird Feeders

After watching a short clip about how we can help animals in the autumn the Kingfisher children had a go at making bird feeder garlands to hang up in the garden. They had a great time making these and it was a fabulous fine motor activity too!

Black History Art 

As part of our black history day on Friday 17th October the children took part in a art lesson inspired by Alma Thomas (African-American expressionist artist) . The children used blocks to create a colourful rainbow. 

Cogges Farm 

We had a lovely time on our trip to Cogges Farm, this was based all around our story The Little Red Hen. 
We found eggs, planted wheat, ground wheat to flour, made bread and had a surprise puppet show at the end. 

The children were brilliant through the whole trip and did the school proud with their amazing behaviour. 

The children were all excited to go home with a bread roll and their planted wheat.

labelling body parts 

As part of our marvellous me topic we looked at the book Wise about my body. This helped us to look at the parts of our body. The children all took part in a circle time where we sang the song head shoulders knees and toes followed by drawing around a child and labelling the body parts. 

Magic Dough 

We enjoyed a lovely circle time that focused on helping the children settle into their new classroom as well as helping build their fine motor muscles. 

We read a poem about the magic play dough and how if it changed colour it meant we would have a good year. The children all took it in turns to make a wish and then after three we all squeezed our play dough to see if it would change colour. 

Welcome to kingfishers!

we have had a wonderful start to the year! The children have all settled brilliantly and learnt the new class room routines and expectations so quickly. This week we introduced our first core text The Colour Monster. Through this book we have explored the different emotions and the colours we link to these. We have done many circle times and talked about our emotions. The children have also taken part in yoga and a focused activity of drawing self portraits. Please see our weekly news letter to read more.