Holtsmere End Infant and Nursery School

Chestnut Class - Miss Razzaque and Mrs Ripley
Maple Class - Mrs Lingi

Chestnut class

Maple class

Seasonal Change Day Summer

WC 23/06/25

We had a fantastic day at Mead Open Farm. We had such a lot to do!. We fed the animals and bottle fed the lambs! We cuddled the bunny rabbits and groomed a pony. We had a tractor ride around the farm and then spent the afternoon using the fantastic play areas. We all had a great time!

W/C 16.06.25

This week we took part in our 'who do you think you are?' day. The children created their own family trees and we spent the day looking at who is in our families and explored where some of our families are from and what we celebrate and practice together. Our parents came in at the end of the day to see our fantastic family trees.

W/C 02.06.25

We had a great and busy week back after the half term break. We have started our learning around 'Water' and looked at the artist Monet and his 'Waterlilies' masterpiece. The children looked closely and recreated their own versions using watercolours. We did a great science experiment looking at water in a solid, liquid and gas form. We loved exploring how the solid ice felt in our hand. We have also been looking at numbers 11-20 and using the numicon to show 10 and 'some more'.

W/C 19.05.25

We had a brilliant week celebrating our learning around the wonderful story 'The Gruffalo'. We had our Gruffalo day on Friday and engaged in some great activities. We retold the story, made gruffalo crumble, turned out toes and went on a hunt in the woods. In the afternoon the Gruffalo visited us! We had a fantastic picnic of orange eyes, terrible tusks, poisonous warts and yummy owl ice-cream.

W/C 12.05.25

This week we have read the story of 'The Gruffalo'. We received a message from Mrs O'Connell asking us to look out for a creature that has been spotted in our forest school. It defiantly sounded like the gruffalo, so we will keep looking out for it! We have been looking at woodland animals and made some wonderful hand puppets. We also created some habitats for woodland animals in our forest school area.

W/C 05.05.25

We discovered a glass shoe hanging from the ceiling when we returned from the bank holiday. We discovered that Cinderella had left it and we learnt t all about her story. We have been looking out for the Prince too! We have really enjoyed learning some ballroom dancing. We had a great VE day at school. We enjoyed a street party and played some traditional games . We even learnt a wartime song to perform. We sang Run Rabbit brilliantly!

W/C 28.04.25

It has been a very busy week in reception. We have been voting for our favorite meal in our school elections. We are looking forward to having hot dogs next week. We have been reading the story of The Gingerbread Man and made some delicious gingerbread men. We were very excited and shocked to discover that the Gingerbread men had been spotted on our school security cameras. We have been very busy searching for them too!

W/C 21.04.25

We have had a great first week back at school. We have began our topic around fairy tales and discovered that a beanstalk had appeared in the classroom over the holidays. We have been searching for a giants but didn't manage to find one! We have planted some sunflower seeds and we will be watching to see how quickly these start to grow. In Maths, we used the giant footprints to find longer and shorter items.

W/C 31.03.25

It has been a very bust week in Reception!. We have been on an Easter egg hunt and enjoyed an egg each. We made chocolate crispy Easter nests too. It has been art week and we looked at the artist Lorna Simpson and recreated her artwork. We enjoyed displaying our work at the school art gallery. We finished the week having our 'Around the World day'. We traveled to Greece and Egypt and got to learn some fun dances, make Egyptian necklaces and taste lots of yummy food. We have had a great week.

W/C 24.03.25

This week we took part in the 'Great British Spring Clean' and used litter pickers to tidy up our playground. We worked very hard! We also had a great seasonal change day looking at all the changes spring has brought. We enjoyed the bright sunshine and loved observing our eight frogs in our pond! We noticed the changes to the trees and discovered flowers and blossom.

W/C 17.03.25

This week we have been looking at the continent Africa. We read a tale from Ghana called 'Too Much Talk', we really enjoyed acting the story out. We created our own Kente cloth patterns and learnt an African song and played some percussion to accompany. We have had a great week.

W/C 10.03.25

This week was science week. The theme has been around change and adapt. We did some exciting experiments, including, one to see what happened when we put gummy bear sweets in salt, sugar and normal water. It was interesting to see how it changed. We also collected the seeds of tomatoes and are trying to plant our own crop! We all created some animal junk models.

W/C 03.03.25

This week we have had a very busy week! We had a fantastic World Book Day. We were visited by the author Emily Lloyd-Gale and we loved reading her story Mighty Maurice. We all made antlers like Maurice and had fantastic moustaches, just like Maurice in the story! We made moose shaped cookies and enjoyed listening to the author reading her own story to us. We also celebrated Shrove Tuesday and made some delicious pancakes.

W/C 24.02.25

This week the Reception children were very surprised and shocked to discover that a spaceship had crash landed into our school playground! We found parts of the spaceship in the garden and very excited to discover an astronaut was wondering around our school trying to fix her spaceship. Astronaut Amy left us a video message and we generated questions to ask her when she visited us. We also looked at the artist Kandinsky and his art work 'Several circles'. It reminded us of the planets in the sky. We created our own versions of the art. We have had a great week learning about space.

We have learnt about people in our community who help us. We walked around our school to discover the adults who help us at school. Two parents, a psychologist and a nurse assistant came to speak about how they help make people feel better, explaining what their job entails.

W/C 10.02.25

This week we have been looking at a variety of people who help us. We have had fun role playing their jobs and decided which were our favorite roles.

W/C 3.02.25

This week we have been learning about people who help us in the community. We have been looking at the police and were very surprised to find our cot in the home corner was missing! Someone had stolen it and we needed to solve the crime. We turned into police detectives to search for the criminal responsible! We also had a lovely visit from Diane our Lollipop Lady.

Chinese New Year dragon dancing!

W/C 27.01.25

This week we have been learning about Chinese New Year and how it is celebrated. We looked at items used and tasted some delicious noodles and prawn crackers. We really enjoyed the challenge of using chopsticks too! We have also been exploring 3D shapes this week and went on a hunt around the school looking for 3D shapes. We discovered they are all around us!

W/C 20.01.25

This week we have engaged in a variety of learning activities. We have been looking at comparing amounts using the numicon tiles. We have had some fun music lessons learning about rhythm and pulse. We have also enjoyed creating transport model using the junk in the creative area. Finally, we had our first PE lesson in the hall.! We have had a busy week!

W/C 13.01.25 Seasonal Change Day - Winter!

W/C 07.01.25

This week we came back after our break to begin our learning around transport. We have looked at boats this week and have enjoyed learning and retelling the story of Mr Gumpy's Outing.

W/C 9.12.24 Deco Day and Xmas lunch

This week we have been making gingerbread men in preparation to decorate during our deco day. We had a great day on Friday when our parents were invited to join us to make some Xmas decorations. We also had a yummy Xmas lunch and ended the day watching a festive film with popcorn.

W/C 2.12.24

This week we have been learning about the artist Van Gogh. We looked at the painting 'Starry Night'. We used painting and printing skills to recreate the painting. We enjoyed displaying our paintings in our school art gallery. We had a great time visiting the gallery and viewing the whole schools work.

W/C 25.11.24

This week we have been learning about birthdays and how they are celebrated. We have been preparing for and celebrating Geography Georgie’s 5th birthday. We sang her happy birthday, played party games, wrote invitations and party lists and got to eat some yummy birthday cake! We have had a great week.

Our parents came to stay and play.

W/C 18.11.24

This week we have been learning about skeletons and have been learning the story of 'Funnybones'. We really enjoyed going on a skeleton hunt around the classroom.

W/C 11.11.24

This week we have been learning about Remembrance Day and it's significance. We. looked at images of Poppy Fields and discussed the significance of poppies, we then recreated our own version of 'Poppy Fields' by Monet. We learnt how to use watercolours to paint.

Seasonal Change Day - Autumn

W/C 4.11.24

This week we have been learning about Bonfire Night and the gunpowder plot. We had a great 'Sparkly Tuesday' on the 5th of November!

Visit from Bollywood Vibes to celebrate Diwali

W/C 21.10.24

This week be have been learning about Autumn and all the changes that are occurring. We have been conker rolling with paint and have been developing our fine motor skills by tapping golf tees into pumpkins.

W/C 14.10.24

We have been learning about harvest this week. We read the story of The Little Red Hen. After reading the story we decided to make some bread rolls just like the hen. We followed instructions to create some lovely bread rolls.

We had great fun at Forest School.

W/C 07.10.24

This week we have been reading the story Owl Babies and learning about how the days are getting shorter and it is becoming darker sooner. We explored how to create shadows in the dark. We have also been learning a joining technique to create some great 'junk' modelling of our homes. This we have been having great fun in our outdoor area role play a McDonalds drive thru.

W/C 30.09.24

This week we have been looking at our faces and painting self portraits. We also created a class pictogram to illustrate the most popular eye colour. We have been talking about our homes and building our own home models.