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Tomato time!
Last week, we extracted seeds from a tomato and carefully laid them out to dry over the weekend, getting them ready for planting. Learning the life cycle of the food we eat, with this were planting more edible plants each week. We also watched a video about how tomatoes grow, and the children were fascinated by a time-lapse showing the plants growing taller and taller. They loved seeing how tomatoes start off green and gradually turn red, and were excited to learn that tomatoes can come in many different colours too. We’re all looking forward to watch how tall our tomato plants will grow!
Mastering Number in F2
During maths this week, we have been looking at using our subitising skills in increasingly complex arrangements. We looked at arrangements of 6 and how we can use our knowledge of number bonds to 6, and our skills of subitising to 5, to help us to identify the number represented. We worked together to decide whether an arrangement was 6 or not 6, and then we used counters to replicate the pattern, before explaining how we knew the pattern showed 6, by identifying known patterns within.
Storm Dragon
This week, Crew McGlone have been focusing on the story of ‘Storm Dragon’ by Dianne Hofmeyr. We have really enjoyed taking part in a sensory story to help support us with the structure and sequencing of events in the story.
Our writing this week saw us create ‘I can see’ sentences using a stimulus of a depiction of the storm dragon. We talked about the different parts of the storm dragon we could see, some of us even challenged ourselves by adding in some detail to our sentences to give a clearer description. We even used our sentence building knowledge in provision when drawing our own pictures.
We have also absolutely LOVED using our imagination and leading our own learning when accessing provision – we have created shelters to protect us from the storm, large scale models of the storm dragon, small world scenes of the story, created our own role play sensory story, made a collaborative collage dragon, made models out of playdough, made our own spyglasses to search for storm dragons, and lots of things in between!
Hook Week
Crew McGlone have hooked into their new expedition by creating a mini beach in their outdoor area. We enjoyed playing together, digging in the sand, and paddling in the water talking about all things ‘seaside’. We are really looking forward to our final expedition in Reception!
Stick house
In writing today the children made their own stick house from The Three little Pigs.
1:1 correspondence
In Crew McGlone, we have been using our magic counting wands to help us to count numbers beyond 10.
Sharing our Stories: 24/04/2026
Beautiful work this week
Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust!
To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.
Top of the Blogs
Turning XP School Inside Out: A Global Art Project @ XP School
Third Annual Public Health Conference @ XP Gateshead
Earth Day Crew @ Norton Infants
Share your stories with us!
Write to us at [email protected] – we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!
The Human Life Cycle
Today, Crew McLoughlin dove into the fascinating world of biology by creating our own visual life cycles. The students mapped out the distinct stages of growth and transformation, from prenatal to late adulthood.
Exploring Symmetry Through Paper Folding
Yesterday, Miss Newman’s maths groups recently deepened their understanding of lines of symmetry through a hands-on activity using various 2D shapes. By folding paper cutouts along potential axes, the students could visually test if the two sides overlapped perfectly, allowing them to accurately identify and count the lines of symmetry for each shape. This provided a clear, physical demonstration of geometric properties, helping the students to better grasp the concept of symmetry in practice.
