Sandon Primary Academy and Community Farm
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Welcome to the Hedgehogs page! This page is updated regularly with all the latest goings on! Keep up to date with photos, activities, topics and important information!

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Welcome to a brand new year at Little Sandon! My name is Laura and I am the Key Worker for the Hedgehogs!

I work closely with your child and I am available to speak to if you have any questions or issues. You can also contact me via email - lrushton@sandonprimary.org.uk


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Wow What a fantastic, sunny first week back!
The Hedgehogs have had so much fun this week, we have really enjoyed the sunny days. The Hedgehogs have spent so much time outdoors exploring the natural resources, splashing in water, hunting for numbers, progressing their Physical and Gross motor skills, playing hide and seek with each other which is really enhancing the social aspect of development. We have also enjoyed our story and music sessions outdoors in the forest, visiting the animals on the farm and we have been running around the big school field and playing parachute games on there too! Not only have we had so much fun we have also took a step closer to being nursery children!! To support their transition in September to big nursery school, the Hedgehogs have been going down to the nursery playground to explore their equipment and to also become familiar with the environment. The Hedgehogs have been lining up in the dinner hall to be served by the dinner lady, we then choose our own pudding and carry our tray to the table. The Hedgehog's no longer have a day time sleep, again this is transition to become ready for big nursery. The Hedgehogs have really adapted to the changes and have done amazing I am super proud of them all!

Outdoor Play
Outdoor learning compliments indoor learning and is equally important. Here at Little Sandon we ensure that our outdoor environment is as enriched and enabling as our indoor area. The seven areas of learning inside will be mirrored outside, covering all these areas with fun activities and resources to aid your child's learning and development. The Hedgehogs are able to free flow in and out at Little Sandon and can access all resources independently. It is so important for children to access the outdoor environment for many reason such as, it supports the development of healthy and active lifestyles. It offers freedom and movement for the child, promotes a sense of confidence and well-being, supports social skills, problem solving and creativity to name some of the benefits. 


We now have  our Easter Holidays, I hope you all have lots and lots of fun!
Please remember to send me any home learning or WOW moments that your child may have and remember to stay safe
 We will be back open on the 16th April.

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The Hedgehogs have had an eggcelent week filled with lots of Easter fun.
The children enjoyed their Easter Eggstravaganza, then we have continued with lots of Easter crafts. We have decorated eggs, made bunny masks, made beautiful Easter cards, visited our new arrival of chicks and we also have been on an Easter Egg Hunt.
Then we had a big SURPRISE.. a visit from CHASE!
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What a fantastic last couple of weeks we have had at Little Sandon! The Hedgehogs have continued with their Topic, People who help us by learning all about the Police, Firemen, Doctors and Lollipop People. The children have absolutely loved dressing up as Police ladies and Fire men and learning how to STOP, DROP and ROLL. The Hedgehogs have been fire-fighters and have used water bottles to spray out chalked fires, they have had to rescue numbers from shredded orange and red paper and enjoyed making marks in foam using police cars and fire engines. We had fun being private investigators, searching for letters around the outside area and then using black paint to create finger prints.
The Hedgehogs are really concentrating on their tripod grip when using writing material and are practising hard with our letter formation, we are doing great!
The Hedgehogs have enjoyed playing doctors and nurses, learning all about staying healthy and looking after our bodies. We have even been visited by a real life Doctor, Doctor Ben who came to see us and talk about how great it is being a doctor and looking after people. Doctor Ben even helped us make some poorly dolls feel better again, thank you Dr. Ben. We then went on to learning about the fantastic job that Lollipop people do and learnt about Road Safety. We got very creative collaging lollipop sticks, mark making and following the lines to the words STOP and GO.

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What a fantastic day we had on Friday! We went on our Easter Eggstravaganza, we visited our Farm where we saw the Easter bunny, we made bird feeders and using our clues we found eggs and lots of bunny money which we were then able to follow the bunny paw prints to the shop and swap our money for yummy chocolate. One lucky child found a golden egg on the farm and won a prize! We also got creative creating spoon chicks and bunnies in the hall, the children did an amazing job with these well done!. The children then went over to our Easter Village which was filled with exciting activities such as planting a sunflower seed and making Easter cards. Of course there was more chocolate to be won on the village and some children chose to have their face painted.
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A massive well done to all the children for creating excellent Easter Bonnets! Friday was our first Bonnet Parade and the children did a fantastic job singing our Easter songs and joining in with the actions.
If you ticked to come along on Monday we look forward to seeing you then!.


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Our new topic is all about, People who help us.
We have started the topic off by learning about the Dentist, we have been looking at teeth, number recognition via numbered teeth to match to their gums and learning about the importance of brushing our teeth twice daily! We have also been looking at different good and bad foods that have affects on our teeth. The Hedgehogs have also learnt about the Opticians. We have had our own funky glasses which we wore to find initial sounds hidden amongst images and we have also had fun exploring eyes and how we have different colour eyes. 

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Hedgehogs I hope you are all having a fantastic half term.
Please don't forget to send in any home learning that your child/ren have done. I look forward to seeing how much fun you busy bees are having.


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Choo Choo
, nnnnnnnnnn, beep beep, honk honk.. the Hedgehogs are having so much fun exploring all the varieties of ways of transport. We are looking at Transport on Land, at Sea and in the Air.
The Hedgehogs have really enjoyed looking at Transport over the last few weeks. We have enjoyed using shapes to create train pictures labelling them, circles , triangles, squares and rectangles. We have been looking at transport that travels under the water using prepositions, such as submarines 'under' the water and those that travel on 'top' of the water such as ships, canoes and speed boats. The children had lots of fun racing each other with cars and boats using different patterned race tracks and they also collaged hot air balloons using different coloured materials and letters, recognising some letter sounds.



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Happy Chinese New Year, the year of the Dog!
The children have really enjoyed learning about Chinese Culture. We enjoyed tasting lots of Chinese foods such as fortune cookies, prawn crackers, spring rolls, noodles and much more.. We have also had fun collaging on to Chinese themed pictures, looking at Chinese writing including our names and practising to use chopsticks to pick up noodles. The children were fascinated when watching videos of The Chinese Dragon dances.

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The Hedgehogs had lots of fun weighing and mixing the ingredients to make yummy pancakes. We also collaged our own pancake pictures, gluing and sticking lots of yummy toppings that we would like to have on our pancakes. They chose raspberries, bananas, lemon curd, chocolate spread and many more yummy ingredients. The children then got to taste some of our yummy pancakes.



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Welcome back, we hope you have had the most wonderful time at Christmas.
Since returning back to Little Sandon we have had an Invasion! Aliens in underpants have been staying in our reading area. The children have really enjoyed our story times, focusing on the stories Aliens love underpants and What ever next! These stories have had the children asking questions and has sparked up their imaginations which we have observed in their independent play. Some of the children independently created their own planet and called it Planet Bong, amazing! Check out the pictures for yourself.
We have had so much fun, learning with the aliens. The hedgehogs have created their own aliens using balloons and they have made aliens out of potatoes! The children had lots of fun decorating spaceships and made number rockets. The hedgehogs are doing very well with their number recognition and ordering of numbers. Outside in our woodland area we enjoyed being astronauts, some of the aliens had been playing outside and they lost an alien egg! We found the egg after searching high and low, we patiently waited and watched has the egg hatched and a baby alien was born. Outside we had our own investigation area which we were able to do some science and use our maths skills to explore changes in colour and changes in materials. The hedgehogs have had fun forming letters in green sticky alien slime and fishing for numbers in the alien swamp. We also had lots of fun milking our aliens friends strengthening our fine motor skills. As well as looking at all things out of this world the hedgehogs have enjoyed lots of fine motor activities getting them ready to hold their pencils using a tri pod grip and then going on to form their own letters in their name. The hedgehogs are doing an amazing job! The link to our stories which the children have loved is below for you to read along too with your child, enjoy.

The hedgehogs have loved being back at nursery and back in to our routine. We have been to the Sandon Farm to care for Sandy, ensuring she has plenty of hay to keep her warm through these cold wintry days as well has making sure she has plenty of water and food. Whilst on the farm we say hello to all the animals and sing our favourite rhymes, 5 Little Ducks, Old Mac Donald had a farm.  On Friday whilst visiting Sandy we went on a egg hunt, we found lots of eggs. We found big, white eggs that had been laid by the ducks and we also found smaller brown eggs that had been laid by the chickens.
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All of the children here at Little Sandon are really enjoying our sessions in the big hall. Over the past few weeks we have been using these sessions to develop our gross motor skills in our physical Development, using the space to run, jump, skip and move like various animals and ways of transport. We have been improving our listening and attention skills as well as  learning to follow instructions by playing Simon says. The children have been learning number recognition in the hall and have also enjoyed playing ring games such as 'Farmers in the den, Ring a ring a roses' and playing parachute games with the ball.  

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The Hedgehogs have had a fabulous two weeks celebrating Christmas here at Little Sandon. We have been very creative, we have made our own salt dough ornaments, decorated a bauble, created a place mat which we ate our delicious Christmas dinner on. We have made reindeer selfies, footprint snowmen, we have used our fine motor skills to write a letter to Santa, made marks in green glittery gloop and we made a lovely card for our family. We have been so lucky to have had lots of snow, we had so much fun throwing snow balls, making snow angels, exploring ice, painting snow and we worked together as a team and made our very own snowman. We went on our Christmas Village visit where we enjoyed all the activities and even visited Santa Claus!

The Hedgehogs have done some super number recognition and have also been working on matching number to quantity.
 Amazing work Hedgehogs!


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All of the children have had so much fun learning lots of new Christmas songs and the actions.
We sang Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Christmas Pudding, Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Star, I'm a little snowman, Santa got stuck up the chimney and We wish you a merry Christmas. The children did an amazing job and had lots of fun!
If you were unable to attend don't worry... we have it all on camera for you to see and to sing along with your child. Take a look..


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This week we have started our Music and Movement session.
We go up to the big school and use the hall.
The children had so much fun using the space available. We talked about the importance of warming up first giving our little toes and arms a big stretch. The children ran around in big circles using our gross motor movements, we did very good listening to the STOP and GO instructions! We then took it in turns to choose an animal they would like to be, first we were elephants stomping on the ground, then we were lions roaring as we crept, then we needed a friend to help us as we were then spiders and needed more arms and legs, we even did some slithering along the floor like we were sssss snakes. We had so much fun!


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What a fantastic two weeks we have had, exploring The Gingerbread Man.The children had lots of fun going on a gingerbread man hunt around the farm, we found lots of initial sounds then finally found the gingerbread man himself, hiding in the warm shed!
We have explored ginger tea, decorated our own gingerbread men and also explored the woods searching for numbers.
The Hedgehogs needed to do some critical thinking, working together as a team they built a bridge for the gingerbread man to walk across the wide, wide river.

                                                   Science
The children were fascinated to find out WHY the gingerbread man couldn't swim across the river.


                                               Baking
The children were so excited to meet a Chef lady. We went to the cookery room where she helped us bake our very own gingerbread men. We explored the textures at the different stages, we mixed the ingredients together using a big wooden spoon, once the mixture was all mixed up we then were able to each roll our own bit of dough out.  Next was the best part, to create our little gingerbread man :) The chef lady explained the dangers of the oven and how we must always get an adult to help with this part, so the chef lady put them in the HOT oven. Once they were ready we were then able to eat them before they ran away they were so yummy!



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                                                 Phase One Phonics.
The children really enjoy our daily Phonics sessions. We are developing our Listening and Attention skills by tuning into sounds, listening and remembering sounds and talking about sounds. I plan activities daily to ensure the sessions are exciting and fun for all!
Here are some pictures of Thursday's phonics session.
Firstly, we went into the woods to listen and name what sounds we could hear. The children could hear birds, donkeys and the wind to name just a few.
The children then all collected sticks and ventured into the woods to make our own sounds. We had so much fun making lots of different sounds.

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                       WOW
Little Sandon have their own pet rabbit to care for!
This week we have been given the opportunity to feed and care for our very own pet. Promoting our Personal, Social and Emotional Development, to care for living things. The children will be going to the farm regularly to see Sandy and to ensure his food and water is topped up. We must not forget his hay too! It is getting very cold outside so therefore we need to make sure he is snuggled up warm in his hutch.


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The story of the week is... Room On The Broom!
What a fantastic story, the children really enjoyed sitting in the den having the story read to them. We then tried acting out the story using the props, the broom stick was definitely the  favourite! :-D 
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​The children have had a spectacular time doing lots of amazing activities for 'spooky' Halloween. They have also had fun finding out all about  'dazzling' fireworks.!
The children enjoyed exploring  pumpkins,  scooping out the in side, painting the outside and putting the pumpkins in the woods for the wild animals to eat.
The children loved the firework activities, we used  paint to
splatter onto paper to make pretty colours and we tried to make fire work noises!



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​The children have had so much fun exploring all of the different activities that have been set out for them.  We really have enjoyed looking at all the different  autumn colours and how beautiful they are.  

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                                               October
 We have been very busy being explorers!
We have had so much fun exploring our wooded area, we even found some number bears hiding beneath the twigs and leaves.
We had lots of fun  pretending to be bears! "GRRRR"
 We went on a bear hunt, to try to find a big one, we crunched through the leaves and walked through the squishy grass.
 There was lots of different textures to explore, we took off our socks and went on a 'bear' foot walk!


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We had so much fun visiting  the farm! The children looked at all the different animals, we saw pigs, chickens and rabbits. The children met with Mr Kiddle who allowed us to  feed the pigs and the chickens their food. We also stroked the animals and learnt different things  about them.
                                                                                   "Thank you Mr Kiddle"


For September, as children are settling in - we are exploring all of our senses using a wide range of resources in our 'All About Me' topic!
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This song is great for practicing phonics at home! 

Sandon Primary Academy, Normacot Grange Road, Meir, Stoke-on-Trent ST3 7AW. 
Tel: (01782) 319097.  Email: info@sandonprimary.org.uk
  • Home
  • Grange Nursery School
  • Little Sandon
    • Little Sandon Places
  • Sandon Community Farm
    • The Reptile Room
    • The Chicken Coop
    • Food From The Farm
    • The Farm Allotment
    • The Community Farm
  • Sandon News
  • Our Exciting Extras
  • Image Gallery
  • Parents' Area
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • KS1 & KS2 SATS
    • Sandon Reading Cards
    • Academy Calendar
    • E-Safety
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Useful Links
  • Useful Information
    • Academy Information
    • General Information
    • Leadership Team
    • Special Educational Needs & Disability
    • School Uniform
    • Sandon Care Club
    • School Meals
    • Trustee Information
    • Governor Information
    • Our Curriculum
    • Policies
    • Academy Prospectus
    • Pupil Premium
    • History of Sandon
    • PLO's
  • Documents for Ofsted
  • Class Pages
  • Community
  • Staff Area
  • Contact Us
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