Welcome to Squirrels!

We are the Year R class at Broughton Primary School.

A message from Mrs Hudgell:

I am a happy, enthusiastic and experienced early year’s teacher with a fantastic teaching assistant. We both feel very lucky to work with the children at Broughton Primary School and can’t imagine working with any other age group.

What we do in Squirrels:

In our class we work with the children on a very personal program that develops their individual needs and uniqueness. We follow the EYFS program ensuring that children learn and develop and are kept healthy and safe. It covers the first stage of a child’s care, learning and development, up to 5 years old.

The class is designed to be purposeful and offer effective continuous provision. This is to provide children with a constant environment that is safe for them to explore whilst challenging their learning. It should allow children the freedom to explore and become independent in making choices about their own learning.

We hope to make the transition from pre-school/nursery to KS1 as smooth as possible and begin to introduce more formal teaching as we progress throughout the year.

Parents Role at Home:

• To share milestones/achievements on tapestry
• To read 5 times a week with your child (little and often)
• To practise reading sight words at home
• To recognise numerals in the environment

Take a look at recent events that have enriched the children's learning.

Please see below:

Interfaith Week 2024 - "Spirituality"

During Interfaith Week 2024 we have been learning about spirituality. Spirituality exists amongst all faiths and within every person. We have been looking at what this means to us and the different ways that we can identify and experience spirituality in school and in our lives. Spirituality isn't just about religious belief—it's about connecting with something outside of yourself that brings meaning and connection to your life. The children will use the symbols of the mirror, window, door and candle to talk and share ideas:

• Mirror: Self - (being a unique person and understanding self-perception)
• Door: Others - (how empathy, concern, compassion and other values and principles affect relationships) 
• Window: World and Beauty - (perceiving and relating to the physical and creative world through responses to nature and art)
• Candle: Beyond – (relating to the   transcendental and understanding experiences and meaning outside the ‘everyday’) 

Article 14: The UNCRC says that children and young people are free to be of any or no religion.

Article 15: Recognising that all children and young people have the human right to freedom of association.

Article 30: Children and young people who belong to a minority group have the right to share their culture, language and religion with other people in that group.

We have focussed on “The Mirror Moments” during this week and used Romerro Britto as inspiration for  our self-portraits...

A policeman came to visit Feb 2024

Sergeant Ward visited our class this week. He drove his police car into the car park with the siren and blue lights flashing. The children were very excited to meet a real life super hero! The children sat in the driving seat next to Sgt. Ward. He showed them the controls. They beeped the horn! Sgt. Ward came into class. Squirrels asked their questions and found out lots of information including when a police officer may use hand cuffs. He put the hand cuffs on Mrs Hudgell! Sgt. Ward demonstrated using the baton and explained how pepper spray is used. He showed the children his uniform including his body camera and explained how it keeps him safe! The children learnt that a police officer can help them if they get lost or need help. A police officer is a safe person, like a teacher, that they can speak to. They discovered that the police are not just here to ‘catch the baddies!’ Sgt. Ward brought a new book for the children in the ‘PC BEN’ series. In the afternoon they had the opportunity to have their fingerprints taken. Sgt.Ward brought all these resources with him. We would like to thank Sgt. Ward for making time to visit and teach the Squirrels what a real life super hero does. 

Rights Article 19 (Protection from harm)

Super Hero Day Jan 2024 

We had a fantastic super hero day! The children had fun role playing as heroes, singing, performing and talking about their special powers. They had some super challenges, unlock the super heroes, write a speech bubble of what a hero might say and thought of ways they could free super heroes trapped in ice (Elsa wrote us a letter explaining she had frozen the heroes by accident!). In the afternoon we had another letter, this time from the evil joker, he had stolen Squirrel, we had to complete a tricky obstacle course in order to save him. This really captured the children’s imagination, they began writing letters and building traps to catch him.

Inter Faith Week Nov 2023 

Inter Faith Week is to strengthen and increase the children’s awareness of the different and distinct faith communities in the UK, in particular, celebrating diversity and commonality. We also wanted to build connections with people within our community. Our focus this year was the ritual of prayer and each class delved a little deeper into a particular faith. At the end of the week, each class shared their work with the rest of the school.

We invited Georgie Bateman from the Christian community and she spoke passionately to the children about her relationship with God and translated the Lord’s Prayer. Mr Hosny and Dr Salter spoke enthusiastically to the children about their Islamic faith. They bought some very special items and allowed the children to participate by having a hands-on experience and exploring the copies of the Quran. Mr Fogel shared his experience and expertise on what it is like to live within the Jewish faith. He also shared interesting items that were precious and symbolised his community. The children were thrilled to try on the kippar and to learn songs in Hebrew.

Having people from our community come in to visit the children has enabled real learning and has deepened the understanding of real-life people and their beliefs. Their knowledge of multiple faiths has broadened and has taught the children to respect other people’s beliefs, faiths and communities. All the work from Inter Faith Week will be displayed in the main school when it has been collated. A huge thank you to our wonderful visitors and the class teachers for their support and enthusiasm during this fantastic week.

National Poetry Day Oct 2023

The whole school wandered into the village of Broughton to post some poetry to the local residents. All week, we have been looking at poetry in class as part of our celebrations for National Poetry Day. Squirrels class picked their favourite poem from the week to post through the letterboxes in Broughton. It was so lovely to spread some joy and we have heard back from several residents that it really brightened their day - mission accomplished! The children have also shared their class poem in Celebration assembly . It has been great to see the children engaging with poetry across the school. 

20.09.23 Welcome in Wednesday

Today we had our first Welcome in Wednesday. This is an opportunity for parents to come in to the classroom with their child, in the morning and join them in some of the class activities. The children thoroughly enjoyed showing their parents all their work and what they have been learning.