We were very excited to perform our Nativity – A Bundle of Joy! We worked really hard on a variety of skills for this performance. Singing, dancing, using our performance […] […]
We were excited to join in with the community tree festival at the church. All of the children in our school made a decoration to add to the tree. It […] […]
We have been working hard and learning all about space. We designed and created our own spaceships, working towards our curriculum ambition of creating intricate junk models. We used our […] […]
Today we celebrated the start of Advent by having our annual tree dressing service. The staff read a story all about the tradition of trees and the representation of each […] […]
Today in ‘Drawing Club’ we drew some dragons after reading ‘Room on the broom’ by Julia Donaldson. After lunch, a very special visitor arrived in our classroom…Daisy the dragon!! We […] […]
This week we have been learning all about Autumn. We were excited to go on an Autumn walk around the village and invited our grown-ups to come in and join […] […]
Today we had the privilege of taking our School Council to visit the ‘Foodshed’. This is a local foodbank in Stevenage that supports people in our local community who are […] […]
We have been reading one of our favourite books ‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson. We have created a 3D story maps to help us to retell the story. We also […] […]
We have been exploring lots of different books in our class already. We love drawing club and have been going on our own story adventures. We enjoy reading books during […] […]
We have been settling in to our indoor and outdoor classrooms. We love to learn by exploring all of the resources that we have. Our teachers spend time teaching us […] […]
We had such a wonderful time today caring for our babies! We were able to feed and change them when they needed it and were responsible for keeping them safe […] […]
We have been learning all about the lifecycle of a butterfly. We had free choice about the resources we could use to represent our life cycle. We can all explain […] […]
We love using our potion area to make different magical potions. We use lots of different skills such as choosing, snipping, crushing, mixing and smelling. We use petals, citrus fruit […] […]
When we went into the Forest School area last week we noticed that something had been digging up the ground. We decided to investigate and try and find out what […] […]
In Shackadell class we absolutely love maths! In the Early Years we spend a lot of time mastering our maths skills especially in counting. We love to use maths manipulatives, […] […]
Following on from our learning about Superheroes we have been learning all about people who help us in real life. We have been reading books such as ‘Real Superheroes’ by […] […]
Between the 8th January and 19th February Shackadell will be taking part in the RSPB’s Big School’s Bird Watch. We have been looking at different types of birds and how […] […]
In PSHE we have been learning about how to take care of our teeth and the importance of a healthy diet and brushing them twice a day for 2 minutes. […] […]
Today we celebrated in school with a Christingle service. We all came together throughout the morning to make our Christingles. We know that the orange represents the world and the […] […]
We have had an amazing time this week exploring the ice created by this very cold weather! We spent time hunting around our garden for ice that had been formed […] […]
This week we were thrilled to perform our Nativity – The Sleepy Shepherd. We have worked really hard to learn our lines, songs and dance moves in order to perform […] […]
The choir have been very busy performing this month. On Thursday 7th December, they sang at the newhousing development. Unfortunately, it was very wet, but that did not stop them […] […]
This year the whole school presented a Christmas carol service to our families. We all went to St Mary’s Church and sang Christmas carols. Many of the children across all […] […]
We have been reading Christmas books all about posting – “The Jolly Postman” and “Paddington’s Christmas post”. This week we created our own Christmas cards for our parents. We were […] […]
It is an Aston St Mary’s School tradition to gather together to dress the Christmas tree. All of the staff tell a story explaining what each of the colours and […] […]
We have been learning all about space and how real astronauts travel to space. We have looked at the types of vehicles they use including rockets and space shuttles. We […] […]
On Friday 17th November we spent that day celebrating ‘Children in Need’. We had a fantastic day learning about how ‘Children in Need’ support children across the country. We were […] […]
We were excited to have a visit from our local Police Community Support Officers. They told us all about their jobs and we got to look at the police car. […] […]
We have been learning all about Diwali. We read a brilliant book called ‘Little Glow’ by Katie Sahota which explains about lots of different festivals. We loved making our own […] […]
Today we celebrated harvest at Aston St Mary’s School. We collected food to support our local food bank called ‘Foodshed’. We all went to church and thought about why we […] […]
We have been learning all about colours and colour mixing. We read a fantastic book called ‘Mixed’ by Arree Chung’. It tells a story of a city of Blues, Reds […] […]
We are excited that we get to take part in cooking club. Joyce, our wonderful cook, helps us to learn about healthy eating and cooking. We made some really delicious […] […]
We love playing in the water and are able to learn so much about scientific concepts such as floating and sinking and how bubbles are formed. During child-initiated learning (CIL) […] […]
Cutting is one of the skills that we spend a long time working in Shackadell class. Some of us are learning to control scissors by snipping paper and some of […] […]
Today we had our house sports day for 2023. It was a fantastic morning where we were able to have lots of fun whilst also displaying so many of our […] […]
We were thrilled to invite Rabbi Neil from a local Jewish school to come and talk to our pupils today. He lead worship this morning, teaching us all about Jewish […] […]
Wow! What a performance! On Sunday, our Year Four, Five and Six choir performed at the Hertfordshire Gala Concert at The Royal Albert Hall. This event last took place just […] […]
We have been learning about the lifecycle of butterflies and as part of that we have been really interested in symmetry. During our forest school session we went out into […] […]
We have had a very busy term and have spent this last half term learning about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Each class has been learning about this, which […] […]
For the whole of this half term we have been learning about the Easter story, starting with Palm Sunday, through some of the events of Holy Week, to Good Friday […] […]
We had a very special collective worship time today where we honoured Mrs Crowley who is retiring after 23 years working at Aston St Mary’s School. She has taught us […] […]
We had a wonderful morning sharing in our Easter breakfast together. We talked about the Easter story and why it is such an important date in the Christian calendar. We […] […]
We have been learning all about animals from different parts of the world. We have used the core text of ‘The Ugly Five’ by Julia Donaldson. It was really interesting […] […]
Today we had a special time celebrating the Mums and other special women in our lives. We all went to church and sang songs about our mums; ‘Happy Mother’s day, […] […]
We read the core text ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers as part of our learning about Antarctica. We really enjoyed learning about penguins this week and this story was […] […]
As part of our science and PSHE learning this week we have been looking at our teeth and how to care for them. It was really interesting to read our […] […]
As part of our learning about ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’ we created our own trolls using clay. This is a progression from using play’doh which we have used lots […] […]
As part of our fairy tale topic we read the story of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. We really enjoyed this story and thought a lot about the bridge that […] […]
We had a great time celebrating World Book Day! We each brought in our favourite books and we enjoyed dressing up. Today the whole school took one book – ‘Journey’ […] […]
Today we were very excited to take another trip out of school 0 this time to the theatre! We have been really enjoying books by Julia Donaldson and so we […] […]
We have spent the last few weeks reading lots of fairy tales. We have been using pictures, puppets, props, story maps and small world figures to retell some familiar fairy […] […]
Today it was really windy and we decided to make the most of it. Some of the children had a brilliant idea to make some kites and windmills to use […] […]
We have been learning all about Shrove Tuesday and why Christians eat pancakes on this day. We also started to think about some of the things we could give up […] […]
We have been learning about the police and the job that they do. We had a fantastic afternoon solving our own mystery – the case of the missing sweets! We […] […]
We were excited to use the ipads to create our own animations of our Super Veggie and Villains using a fantastic app called Chatterpix. We learned how to take a […] […]
We have been really enjoying learning all about superheroes! We focussed on our core texts of ‘Supertato’ by Sue Hendra and ‘Real Superheroes’ by Julia Seal. We loved creating our […] […]
During CIL each group planted some spring bulbs. We took it in turns to add some compost to the baskets and then added different bulbs in each basket. We have […] […]
During our superhero topic we have been learning all about people who help us – real life superheroes! We have had an excellent time during Child Initiated Learning (CIL) trying […] […]
We had a wonderful Christingle service at school. In the morning we worked together to create our own Christingles. Danes class supported their buddies in Shackadell and the rest of […] […]
We had a wonderful time sharing our Nativity service with so many parents and carers in our school community. ‘The Raggedy King’ was performed by our Reception and year 6 […] […]
We love learning about numbers and patterns. We have lots of maths opportunities in our classroom environment at all times. We are really good at subitising, counting, sorting, weighing, measuring […] […]
We were excited to welcome a special visit from some feathered friends this week! We really enjoyed learning all about the birds and were even brave enough to handle them. […] […]
Today we went to the church together to have a remembrance service. We were able to spend time reflecting on the sacrifices of the service men of our country and […] […]
We had an amazing time going out on our first school trip! It was really exciting to go in a minibus to St Christophers School and meet all of their […] […]
We have been enjoying lots of Julia Donladson’s books and have had a fantastic time learning about the Gruffalo. We can join in with the familiar refrains and have used […] […]
We have been enjoying exploring Autumn. We have been collecting objects which show that the season has moved into Autumn now. We have been using these items in our child-initiated […] […]
How wonderful it was to be able to come together in church this morning to celebrate our Harvest Festival. For our youngest children, this was their very first visit to […] […]
Every year children from Shackadell and Danes are paired up as buddies. We have had such a wonderful year together, playing, enjoying our lunches together and having weekly buddy reading […] […]
As part of our curriculum ambitions in the EYFS, Shackadell class had to plan a fundraising event. The children really wanted to raise funds to help look after some of […] […]
Platinum Jubilee celebrations were in full here at Aston. What a delight it was to see all the children having a wonderful time celebrating this historic event! I am sure […] […]
Today we were happy to invite our Mum’s, Grandma’s and all of the special women in our lives to a special service. We sang songs to our families and had […] […]
Today we had a special collective worship where we dressed our Christmas tree. Mrs Holmes told us a story while year 6 dressed the tree. This is always a special […] […]
On Tuesday 16th November Bishop Michael Beasley, the Bishop of Hertford came to visit our school. We had asked Bishop Michael if he would like to come and bless our […] […]