February 10th, 2024, marked the first day of the Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival.

 

The Lunar New Year is an international holiday celebrated in many countries throughout Asia and around the world. The holiday goes by different names depending on where you are celebrating, and it symbolises a hopeful transition from the cold winter to the season of renewal.

 

As we say goodbye to the Year of the Rabbit, we welcome the Year of the Dragon. The dragon is one of the luckiest and most powerful animals in the Chinese zodiac.

 

We made colourful dragon pictures; the children created a dragon dance together and took turns leading. We have looked at different traditions surrounding this special time of year and explored mark-making techniques as we created our own Chinese table decoration; our decorations were in red to bring us good luck. Lots of fun was had as we improved our fine motor skills and perseverance, using chopsticks to eat at the special banquet that we prepared together. Everyone enjoyed sampling different vegetables and a very exciting-looking dragon fruit, which we discovered had bright pink skin and a spotty inside and tasted yummy!

 Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate!

In French we have been learning all about the Cafe. To bring this to life the children needed to order their food in French. A huge thank you for supplying a variety of French delights. What a fantastic way to bring the subject to life!

 This week, we have been talking about love and people that are important to us; this threads through Personal Social and Emotional Development (PSED), which supports children to have a positive sense of themselves, respect for others, social skills, emotional well-being and a positive disposition to learning. These are all crucial for school readiness. PSED is about children developing confidence and independence. Positive social and emotional development in the early years provides a critical foundation for lifelong development and learning. Social development refers to a child's ability to create and sustain meaningful relationships with adults and other children. Emotional development in early childhood is just as crucial to a child's overall well-being as physical milestones like crawling and walking, as they shape how a child perceives the world, interacts with others, and responds to challenging situations. The children thoroughly enjoyed talking about their families and were wonderful at giving examples of how we care for each other and show kindness, after making cards and mixing love potions with fairy dust the week ended with baking some rather wonderful chocolate dipped biscuits to take home and share with their special people.

Our children learn through play, observation, and exploration; they gain so much through guided and free exploration of the world around them.
Supporting the children through interactive games and bringing learning to life through books and adventures is always fun. One of the best and most fun ways of helping children develop essential life skills, such as problem-solving, reading, building teamwork, and getting some good exercise for both the mind and body, is through a treasure hunt. We brought our story to life and went off on our own treasure hunt through the woods, the children followed clues and supported each other along the way. Finding the hidden treasure was a rather exciting discovery!

Trumpet lessons for KS2

For the next 10 weeks we are having trumpet lessons. We have Cornwall Music Hub delivering specialist lessons for all of our KS2 pupils. What a riot. In our first lesson we learnt how to: hold the instrument, create a clean sound and how to play to the beat. 

Who knows where this musical odyssey will  take us!

As part of our winter topic, the children of Storytellers have been investigating ice, and this week’s weather has provided some fabulous natural learning opportunities. The children explored our outdoor area, discovered various frozen areas, and were delighted to find ways to smash the ice and tip out exciting frozen shapes. We used exciting vocabulary to describe how the ice looked and how the ice was changing throughout the day.  The children investigated freezing their little containers overnight with various shapes and toys dropped in the water and excitedly checked the results the following day. Describing the changes they had seen and thinking about why the ice was melting has offered some excellent opportunities to extend the children's language and bring the magic of science to life.

Theatre Trip

What a fantastic start to the year! As a school we travelled to The Treater Royal in Plymouth to watch a performance of Goldilocks and the Three bears. It was a wonderful show - ventriloquists, dancers, jugglers and so much more. The children had a wonderful time and - thanks to the parents' group - were treated to ice cream at the interval. A huge thank you to Bex Ivins for volunteering to drive the mini-bus as well as all the staff involved in organising the trip. Also a big thank you to the staff, particularly the TAs, who volunteered their time to allow us to go. 

Drop off and pick up

Thank you for your continued effort to get the pupils into class between 8.30 and 8.45 for registration. We appreciate access isn't always easy and can lead to unexpected delays but it does make a great difference having them all in on time so we can stick to our timetabled sessions.

Mr Jones

We are delighted to have Mr Jones back teaching KS2 on Monday. He has literally hit the ground running and brought back x-country club. We had a fantastically muddy run on Monday with many unexpected obstacles along the track.

New topics

Make sure to have a look at the class pages to see our new topics for this term.

Merry Christmas from the Storytellers family. 

Storytellers and Twiglets had a very special visitor at their Christmas party today, Father Christmas popped in after parking the reindeer on the roof! The children excitedly asked him questions and spent time speaking to him about his reindeer and what his bells were for! The children were a delight to watch as it’s a magical time of year for them, and to be part of it is wonderful. We partied the afternoon away with games, dancing, and scrumptious food.

 

A huge thank you to our amazing Father Christmas and also to our extended Storytellers family, who all support us throughout the year. Have a magical Christmas with your fantastic little people 

Storytellers enjoyed a scrumptious Christmas lunch together today cooked by our fantastic cook, Sam! The children created very sparkly Christmas crowns and thoroughly enjoyed tucking into our delicious lunch; we had special lunch guests, Lily and Henry came along too, and Henry gave Sam extra cuddles as she looks after us all so well

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After weeks of learning lines, designing costumes and sets, and shaking off any pre-performance nerves, our Christmas play has brightened our last few weeks of term. Whether it was portraying Mary or Joseph, one of the three wise men or maybe even a funky camel, these fantastic memories will stay with the children forever. Our fabulous little sheep and Angels were spectacular as they confidently danced around the stage. 

We could not be prouder of our little team and how they all collaborated last night to deliver an outstanding performance, with everyone laughing and clapping. 

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Christmas has arrived at Storytellers: we visited The Tunnel of Lights on our festive trip. The children embraced everything on offer and were a delight to watch as they explored and shared their excitement. We all had a fantastic day venturing down twinkling tunnels, writing letters to Santa and bounding around in the snow. 

Here at Storytellers we strive to develop strong links with the village and the community, enjoying the opportunities it offers for the enrichment of learning and to join in with community events and celebrations. Today the children thoroughly embraced this by helping to decorate the enormous Christmas tree, alongside doing this they also learnt more about the church and its hidden doorways and smiling faces adorning the beams. Once outside they helped to setup the Nativity scene at the entrance. Massive thanks to Pat and Beth for taking time out of their day to enable this to happen. 

Our littlest fundraisers have had a very productive day creating posters and making some spotacular cakes and biscuits. They thoroughly enjoyed fundraising for Children in Need outside the nursery this afternoon. A massive thank you to everyone who came along to purchase some. So far, they have raised £37. 

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Storytellers have been learning about Diwali, also known as the festival of lights, and many rituals and traditions in the event include light. Diya lamps are lit around the doorways and windows of people's homes. This symbolises the triumph of light over dark and welcomes Lord Rama home from the story of Rama and Sita. The children enjoyed creating their Diya lamps and decorating our entrance with Rangoli, a popular Diwali tradition –beautiful patterns made using colourful powders and flowers. People draw rangoli on the floor by the entrance of their homes to welcome the gods and bring good luck!

We should certainly have lots of luck as the children made sure they covered everywhere with colourful patterns 

This month, we continue our season's theme by investigating a festival that signifies the move from autumn to winter, Halloween, which is always a great favourite of our young children.

We have enjoyed reading a classic this week, "Room on a Broom” by Julia Donaldson. The story of a witch, a group of animals who help her, good manners, friendship, and cooperation was fun to read aloud because of its rhythm and rhyme and opportunities for the children to join in.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the potion Station, where they measured out bicarbonate and various coloured vinegars along with a variety of Halloween-inspired pasta shapes; they then watched the results. They were immersed in the process; this created some excellent learning opportunities as we talked about the reactions and the words we could use to describe them.

 The children carried this passion for potions within their role-play area, currently themed as ‘Meg and Mogs’ house. There have been lots of magic spells and rhymes as the children have explored roles together.

 Having a selection of pumpkins around the room has offered an abundance of learning opportunities, from size ordering and counting to mark-making in a variety of exciting ways. We are excited to see what next week’s learning adventures bring …

As part of the celebration of Harvest time, the children visited Strawberry Fields at Lifton to explore the pumpkin patch. It's the biggest pumpkin patch we've ever seen! We were greeted by a fantastic variety of pumpkins of all colours and sizes stacked outside the farm shop in a beautiful display. There was also a giant pumpkin display made from bales. The children loved having their photos taken with the various props! 

Hands-on learning experiences allow children to not only learn about the outdoors but also experience a new world on their own. Letting the children explore, imagine, and learn. It provided many opportunities for children to learn and grow at the pumpkin patch. Giving children the freedom to roam and pick their pumpkins gives them a sense of independence and pride. The visit provided a teaching opportunity about pumpkins and other fruits and vegetables that grew on the farm. The children also asked questions about the animals, farm equipment, plants and more. In addition, it was a positive learning opportunity that the children initiated themselves. Aside from being full of learning experiences, it was also an enjoyable way to get them outside and enjoy the outdoors. The children loved pushing the wheelbarrow, and our adult helpers had equally as much fun pushing wheelbarrows with multiple pumpkins and children in them! The excitement on the children’s faces was great to see.

We are continuing our topic: Can One Idea Change the World? For the next two weeks our focus in on D.T. We are creating wind turbines which will power LEDs. This unit will see pupils creating strong tower structures which will house a motor. We will run the motor backwards to create electricity from wind. Pupils will need to think about the shape, size and orientation of the blades in order to turn the motor as quickly as possible.  This unit also requires pupils to use their knowledge of circuits. 

As always pupils have attacked the brief in their own unique ways. At the end of the unit we will evaluate each others turbines to see which are the most effective and why.

In English we have started a new writing unit. We are looking at instruction writing. Our example text is How to make the World's Healthiest Smoothie. Pupils will pull apart the features of this text before creating their own instruction texts.