Week 5

This week we finally performed our Nativity play to a real audience! We had lots of fun showing our hard work to the children from Catherington Pre School on Monday, then our parents and grandparents on Tuesday and Wednesday. We hope you all enjoyed watching us as much as we enjoyed performing!

A lot of our learning this week has been centred around a Hindu celebration called Diwali. We’re learning about Diwali as part of our light and dark topic. We learned that Diwali is a celebration of light and found out that people celebrate this festival by cleaning and tidying their houses, giving gifts, eating food with their family and friends, making Rangoli patterns, lighting diva lamps, decorating their hands with henna and watching firework displays.

We made our own Rangoli patterns using coloured sand and numicon as well as designing mehndi hands.

On Wednesday we realised that one of our favourite teddies has disappeared! Our little monkey, Marvin is very special to us and we really want to find him! We decided to make special posters so that everyone in the school can help us look for him. 

More children ventured into our woodwork area for the first time this week. We’ve nearly now all learned how to use a hammer! After Christmas we will be learning how to use screwdrivers, drills and saws.

In Drawing Club we read The Christmas Pine by Julia Donaldson. We drew the little Christmas tree and thought of different ways to transport the tree from Norway to London.

In phonics, we spent the week practising all of the phonemes we have learned so far this year and had a go at reading different sentences. We now know that sentences start with a capital letter and end with a full stop. We’re having lots of fun spelling words on our whiteboards every day, too.

Week 4

This week we have been using positional language in maths. We read a story called On the Way Home and talked about where the characters were in relation to each other. In Outdoor Explorers we hid toys and had to describe where we had hidden them using these words, too. We used phrases like ‘next to the tree’, ‘on the chair’, ‘behind the prayer garden’, ‘inside the Guinea pig cage’ and ‘under the bush’.

We investigated the numbers 4 and 5 further in our maths lessons, too. We looked at how these numbers can be broken up into parts and even made our own stampolines by printing the numbers 4 and 5 in different ways. 

We used the book On the Way Home in our PE lesson on Monday, too. This half term in PE we are learning how to travel in different ways. We talked about different directions and practised travelling forwards, backwards and sideways safely. Then we looked again at the characters in the story and tried to copy their movements. We travelled like dragons, witches, ghosts, crocodiles and even sideways like crabs!

One of our favourite things to do this week was explore the forest school area on the field. This was our first time using this area and we loved exploring all of the different parts of it. The best bit was when we got to play hide and seek together - there were lots of great hiding places!

We learned a lot about nocturnal and diurnal creatures in discovery time. We found out that nocturnal creatures sleep in the day and diurnal creatures sleep at night. We sorted different animals into these two categories and then some of us enjoyed making nocturnal animals using junk modelling materials. We’ve been reading the special books that have appeared in our book corner to try to learn more about nocturnal animals, too.

From now on, we’ll be doing a Big Write once a week in addition to our writing challenges and Drawing Club lessons. These Big Writes are a great way for us to practise writing independently in a variety of ways. On Thursday we helped a child write their Christmas list. They wanted to ask Father Christmas for a doll and a man, so the Dolphins had to use their grapheme mats to figure out how to write these words. They all tried their best and did an amazing job.

We had our very first Nativity dress rehearsal on Thursday, too. It was so exciting getting dressed up and practising on the stage in the hall! We have no more rehearsals left now… next week it’s show time!

Week 3

This week we’ve been juggling all of our usual learning with nativity practices. We have so many things to remember - songs, places, lines, what comes next, who goes where… it’s very tricky but we’re showing lots of courage and trying our best! One more week to go and we’ll be able to show you what we’ve achieved. We’re very excited!

In phonics we learned four more graphemes and tricky words. We’ve learned all of the single-letter sounds now and are getting more confident with putting these sounds together to make words by the day.

Maths this week was all about shapes as well as numbers. We looked at the Mr Men and talked about what shapes they are. We noticed that Mr Happy is a circle and Mr Rush is a triangle. We talked about the properties of these shapes and were surprised to learn that circles have one side (lots of us thought they had zero!). We sorted the shapes according to the number of sides they have and had to talk to our friends to convince them that we were sorting them correctly. 
During discovery time we read numbers and gave spiders the correct number of legs.

More of us experimented with the woodwork area this week. We used hammers, nails, buttons and other materials to make boats, cars, aeroplanes, giraffes and faces!

On Friday it snowed! We were so excited to watch the huge snowflakes settle on the ground. We had an amazing time playing in the snow with our friends. The mud kitchen became an ice kitchen, the small world became a polar bear habitat and we even made a snowman called Dave. Afterwards, we made snowflakes by cutting paper and some of us made snowy pictures using black paper and chalk.

Week 2

In phonics this week we learned four new graphemes and tricky words. We are so happy to have a really good go at writing these new graphemes each week and are even starting to apply our segmenting skills to spell new words.

In maths we did lots of activities which helped us practise reading numerals. We read them from play mats, pebbles, magnets and our new wall display. We collected different amounts of objects and positioned them on die frames and hand templates to help us keep track of how many we had.

This week we also learned all about Remembrance. We started with a special worship on Monday. We joined together with the whole school at 11am to sit silently together and show our respects to all of the people who fought in the First World War. We watched a video called ‘Poppies’ which helped us think about why poppies are an important symbol.

Throughout the rest of the week we learned about memorials, parades and wreaths. We made poppy field pictures using sponges and rollers and even made our own wreath which we laid at the memorial in All Saints Churchyard.

One of the most exciting parts of our week was when we used our woodwork area for the first time. We all learned how to stay safe in this area and some of us then had a go at using hammers to drive nails into wood. We remembered to wear our hi-viz jackets and safety glasses and had lots of fun experimenting with the different materials in the woodwork trolley.

On Friday we raised money for Children in Need by coming to school in pyjamas, yellow clothes or non-school uniform. We found out what the word ‘charity’ means and learned that not all children are as fortunate as others. It felt really good to show love to those less fortunate than us.

Week 1

Welcome back, everyone!

The children did an amazing job of coming back to school after a week off - everyone showed lots of courage and settled back into our routines really quickly.

In phonics this week we have learned some new digraphs: ff, ll and ss. We also learned j. We practised reading and writing these graphemes as well as learning some new tricky words.

In maths we have been exploring the number five in more detail. We sang a song about 5 little peas and collected sets of 5 objects. We arranged sets of 5 counters onto hand templates and die frames and then explored what would happen if we doubled our 5… it made 10!
 

We have enjoyed learning about fireworks and why the 5th November is an important date. We found out about Guy Fawkes and talked about how to stay safe on bonfire night. We had lots of fun making firework pictures on paper and tuff trays with chalk and paint.

This week we have also been thinking about how animals feel about fireworks. We decided that lots of animals might get scared of the loud noises, especially animals in the wild that come out at night. We made shelters, houses and toys for these animals out of different materials and even tried to make some cosy hedgehog hiding places on the field!

In Drawing Club we have been having lots of fun with Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson. We have been drawing dragons, swamps, potions and super fast broomsticks! Some of us are even starting to have a go at writing words to go with our pictures. 
(Thank you to those of you who were able to attend my Writing Workshop on Thursday - hopefully this gave you an insight into how writing in Year R is taught and developed, including the use of Drawing Club. Please look in the ‘Parent Workshops’ section of our class page if you’d like to look at the PowerPoint presentation).

We received a visit from a very special guest this week! The Everywhere Bear popped out of our book of the month and appeared in our classroom! He came with a little suitcase, a blanket and a book asking us to look after him. Every Friday someone from Dolphins Class will be able to take the Everywhere Bear home to look after him for the weekend. I can’t wait to see what he gets up to 😊 Don’t forget to brush his teeth before bed!

On Friday we started to experiment with a new way of updating our Floor Book. It’s now part of our Friday afternoon routine (along with bikes and library!).

From now on, the children will help me choose which pictures to print as well as cutting them out, sticking them in and even drawing or writing some of their own thoughts about that week’s learning directly into the book. We had a great time chatting about the week and remembering all of the exciting things we’ve done.

We also visited the library for the first time this week. We loved choosing a book to take home and having a special story time with Mrs Whiteley.