Adventure Books and Tapestry

The children will have their own journal in school which we call their adventure book. During child initiated learning time, the children often ask us to take photos of their amazing inventions and creations which we will later print out and then the children will cut themselves. 

They then stick these photos in their adventure books and reflect on their learning with an adult. In the spring and summer term they will start to write in their journal too. This time together is really important and we use it as a time to reflect on learning but also time to develop communication and language as we write down exactly what the children tell us about their photos. For example, at the start of the year, there might be a photo of them playing in the water and when talking to an adult they might just say 'water'. The adult will take this time to conference with them and to encourage them to describe their learning further and to start to build a simple sentehnce structure. Hopefully by the end of the year the child will be using a full sentence to describe their learning such as 'I was making a magical potion with the water, it will turn you into a frog!'.

This time together with each child is really important to us and we can see that the children are excited and keen to add to their adventure books through out the year. The children are very proud of their adventure books and often show them off to other adults around the school and their friends as the books are easily accessible to the children, they can look back at their amazing work at any point throughout the day and recall past events. 

As we really value these important times with your child and want to spend as much time as possible interacting and communicating with your child, we only use Tapestry (our online journal) for maths observations only. You will get a weekly update with how your child is getting on in their maths focus group and what they are learning in maths that week so you can practice that skill at home. We use Tapestry for important updates and a weekly maths observation only because we don't want the adults stuck behind an Ipad all day writing observations, we want our adults doing what they do best, which is interacting with the children and pushing their learning forward.