Week 7

I can’t quite believe we’ve made it to the end of our first half term already! The time has flown by.

This week we learned the final few sets of sounds for this half term in our phonics lessons. We particularly enjoyed writing ‘f’ on whiteboards. One of the children thought we sounded like a room full of fizzing bath bombs as we said the phoneme together!

Some of us have been practising our new reading skills during discovery time. We picked words to read and then tried to match them to the correct pictures.

One of our wonderful words this week was ‘unique’. We read a book called Only One You and talked about how unique we all are. We like being different to each other! Then we used pens to decorate pebbles in our own unique way.

We finished off our RE learning by reading a story called The Precious Pearl. We learned that God is precious to lots of people all around the world. Then we talked about how precious the world is and thought about how we could look after it. Everyone drew their own picture showing who or what they like to look after in their own lives.

We were very lucky to take part in some drama workshops led by Open Box. Ken and Carol helped us to use our imaginations to tell stories. We loved pretending to be different characters and learned so much about how to bring a story to life.

We ended our week splashing about in the rain! We never let the weather stop us from enjoying the outdoors in Dolphins Class - we had so much fun running around in the rain, jumping in puddles and seeing how quickly we can zoom down a slide when it’s wet!
 

Week 6

We’ve had lots of fun in Dolphins Class again this week! 
 

We’re working so hard in our phonics lessons, learning phonemes and writing graphemes. We’re even starting to apply our new knowledge to discovery time tasks by having a go at writing signs and shopping lists.

We have enjoyed funky fingers this week. We have been using chalk to draw lines on the playground, cutting along lines, making play doh cakes with cherries on top and painting walls with rollers and brushes!
 

In maths we have been subitising numbers to 4 (that means spotting how many there are without counting them). We’ve been looking at dot patterns to see how many different ways the dots can be arranged and had fun making dot patterns with counters for our partners to copy.

In Outdoor Explorers we learned about an artist called Andy Goldsworthy. He makes art out of things he finds in nature. We explored to field to see what we could find and then had a go at making our own pictures.

We started our Autumn RE learning this week. We listened to the Christian story of creation and thought about why the word God is important to Christians. We went onto the playground to look for the big frieze and found the creation story - we enjoyed looking at the pictures of paint pots and figuring out what parts of the world each one contained. One even had worms in it! Then we talked about all of the different animals that were created on Earth and made our own fish using paper plates, pens and collage materials.

Finally, we followed a recipe to make salt dough. We used the dough to make leaves which we will paint in autumn colours once they’ve hardened.

Week 5

It’s been another busy week in Dolphins Class! In maths we have been learning more about the numbers 1, 2 and 3. We have been splitting groups of objects to show that 2 is made of 1 and another 1. 3 is made of 1 and another 1 and another 1.

We have also been exploring the idea of repeating patterns. We learned what repeating patterns are and made our own throughout the week using fruit, chalk and paint.

We have continued to learn new phonemes and graphemes in our phonics lessons. This week we learned g, o, c and k. We have had a go at writing these on whiteboard and matched objects to their correct initial sounds.

In Discovery Time, we’ve been handing out speeding fines, matching objects to numerals and writing letters to Dynamo. 
 

Every day at Catherington, all of the children in the school complete a ‘Daily Mile’. During the Daily Mile, we move around the playground for a set amount of time. We started this in Dolphins for the first time this week - we’re starting off with three minutes of running and will keep going for longer as the weeks go by. We really enjoyed it!

One of the highlights of our week was getting to snuggle with the Guinea pigs on Thursday. Parsley and Sage love having cuddles with the children!
 

Week 4

This week, we have been writing anywhere and everywhere! We have used paint sticks to make marks in a tuff tray, whiteboard pens on small and large whiteboards, fingers in sand, water on blackboards and even chalk on the ground. We have been trying to write our names as well as writing the new graphemes we’ve been learning. The children are starting to get the idea that making marks is lots of fun!
 

In maths this week, we read the story A Squash and a Squeeze, acting it out with dolls and animals. We noticed that as the house became more and more full of animals, the less space the old lady had. We have been practising counting, noticing that we need to count each object once. We used our counting skills to answer one of our Wonder Wall questions, which was ‘I wonder how many children there are in our school?’. We visited the different classes in the school and used a counting wand to count each person. 
 

We had our first music lesson this week. We explored some of our seeded instruments and played a game of ‘Stop/Go’. We were very good at looking at the signs and following the instruction.

During Funky Fingers this week we have been putting cheerios onto spaghetti and stretching rubber bands on special boards. All of these activities help our hands, wrists, arms and fingers get stronger so that we can write more comfortably. We have also used this time to practise using scissors to cut paper. We really like using the zig-zag scissors to make patterns.

Week 3

This week in phonics we learned our very first phonemes and graphemes. We know that a phoneme is a sound and a grapheme is what a letter looks like. We learned s, a, t and p.

In maths we read a book called ‘The Button Box’ and thought about how to count and sort buttons. We were also introduced to Mrs Mannie’s Numberblocks toys! We played with them during Discovery Time as well as playing games which help us to recognise the numbers one, two and three when they are represented in different ways.

Outdoor Explorers was lots of fun! We explored the area around our school to see what surrounds us. We found the Catherington wheel, a pond, pre-school, a field, a pub and a car park. We talked about where the church is, too.

In Funky Fingers, we have been working hard on our gross motor skills. Jumping from number to number or hoop to hoop, landing on two feet and balancing on thin lines strengthens our bodies and helps us get ready to write!

We have been learning all about each other by showing our summer scrapbooks to our friends. We love looking at photographs and finding out about all of the things we have in common.

In Discovery Time we practised recognising numbers, played schools in our role play area, used objects from the field to make a small world area, made mud pies in the mud kitchen and much more. 
 

Week 2

Although this was week 2 for the other children of Catherington, it was our first week all together as Dolphins Class. And what a week it has been!

We read the book ‘Have you filled a bucket today?’ and talked about different ways we can make each other feel good. We learned the three Christian values of Love, Respect and Courage and now know the three golden rules at Catherington Infant School.
 

We’re going to try to live these values every day.

In maths we have been singing lots of counting songs and reading different counting stories. We also helped a farmer with a problem - he wanted to sort his animals into different barns. We helped him by separating the two legged and four legged animals and putting them in the correct place. 

We have worked hard to make our own self portraits using paper plates, pipe cleaners, paper, stickers and wool. We experimented with using sellotape, PVA and glue sticks to attach the different materials together.

We have spent lots of time exploring the equipment inside and out, making new friends and enjoying being together as a class.