Welcome to the home page of Ash and Oak classes.

Mrs Undrell is the teacher in Ash class and Mrs Webber & Mrs Lewis are the teachers in Oak class. We also have some wonderful support staff working across the classes including: Mrs Maycock, Mrs Russell, Mrs Reynolds, Mrs Douglas and Miss Staniford.  Premier Sport and a Cover Supervisor will also be leading the classes covering teacher PPA (planning time).  Mrs Anderson continues to lead Forest School sessions.

June has been a very busy month in Ash and Oak.

This half-term our topic takes us off on a fantastic journey all around the world.  We have been exploring some of the similarities between life in this country and life in other countries.  We started off learning about  where we live and learnt that our school is in Arlesey and our country is England, which is part of the United Kingdom.  We also learnt that our capital city is London. We made maps of Arlesey in Discovery time. We then compared and contrasted Arlesey and London and discovered that London is much bigger and busier than Arlesey. We talked about some famous London landmarks.  Some children were able to share their experiences of visiting London. 

We joined the rest of the school to mark 'Arts Around the World' week.  We continued our focus on the United Kingdom by looking at the work of the artist LS Lowry. The children looked carefully at some of his paintings and talked about what they could see and how the paintings made them feel. We looked for clues that told us this was painted in the past.  The children had a go at creating their own busy street scenes in the style of Lowry using pastels on canvas. This created a beautiful display that will be up in school. 

In Discovery time, the children helped Mrs Maycock to create a big red London bus out of card and we have set this up in the role-play area. The children are really enjoying this, driving the bus, being passengers and selling tickets. They have visited some amazing locations on their journeys!

The grand finale for the week was a traditional English afternoon tea.  First, the children learnt about the history of the traditional English tea. We looked at some pictures of people in Victorian times having tea and spotted clues that told us this was in the past.  Later on, we made our very own cucumber sandwiches and decorated cupcakes. We talked about hand and food hygiene before using a knife to spread butter on to bread, chop cucumber and make a sandwich. Ash class were very refined – they even chopped the crusts off of their sandwiches! They then decorated a cupcake, choosing which toppings and carefully adding them to the cake.  It was then time to take tea (although we drank water instead of real tea). We arranged the tables and the children all sat down and were served by the staff. We listened to classical music and it was all very civilised!

After learning about the UK, we jetted off to Mexico. The children learnt about where Mexico is in the world, what the climate is like and thought about some of the traditions and customs. They enjoyed making and eating delicious quesadillas. This lovely activity gave them another opportunity to prepare some food and to prepare different ingredients. They learnt about why it is important to wash hands before food preparation and they also learnt to use the tools provided to chop and spread ingredients. The kitchen very kindly cooked the quesadillas for us and the children enjoyed eating them for their afternoon snack. Most children really enjoyed them and some were even inspired to try some new Mexican themed dishes at home that they perhaps would not have eaten before.