Week beginning 17th February 2026
The Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove
Characteristics of Effective Learning
The introduction of a new story led to some lovely opportunities for creativity. After sharing ‘Don’t put your finger in the Jelly, Nellie’ the children talked a lot about the ‘choctopus’ which really captured their interest.
Together children mixed their own chocolate paste, using tools to stir the mixture and create a consistency they could use to make pictures. This will be developed further when they make their own ‘spaghetti yeti’s’
Books provide such rich inspiration for creative experiences and support learning across all areas.
Parents as Partners
On Tuesday some children supported Susan with a secret mission – to celebrate Random Acts of Kindness day by leaving small bunches of flowers for members of the local community to find. Flowers were left in doorways, car windscreens and even on a motorbike.
‘This will make people smile’
‘This is kind’
How lovely that we received a call from the local GP surgery to say thank you and to ask if they could buy a gift for the children so they learn that kindness is rewarded with kindness! Such a lovely message and one that is central to our values here at Bensham Grove.
Outdoors Learning
Is that a glimpse of Spring in the air? It has been lovely for the children to experience something other than rain this week and the children were able to consolidate their learning about Lunar New Year and the year of the horse outdoors. Children were invited to work collaboratively to create hobby horses and then were able to test them out in the outdoor environment. Working together they created some jumps and were challenged to take turns to complete the course on a hobby horse. As you can imagine this brought huge amounts of joy alongside developing turn taking skills and the gross motor skills needed for later writing. Rumour has it that Jill and Susan were also cheered on to put the hobby horses through their paces!
Happy half term to those children who aren’t attending next week. We hope you enjoy some lovely family time and look forward to sharing in your adventures when everyone returns on March 2nd.
There is lots to look forward to in the second half of the Spring term, including celebrating World Book Day on Thursday March 5th. More information to follow!
Have a lovely weekend!