Week 6

This week was our RE week, so we spent lots of time learning about the Hindu religion. We found out about a special festival called Janmashtami. During this time, Hindus remember the birth of Krishna and celebrate by eating delicious food together, listening to music and making a shrine in their houses. We made our own shrine and gave Krishna some food… we were very glad that there was some left over for us to enjoy!

In maths we learned all about pairs. We found out that ‘pair’ means two of something. We enjoyed reading Simon Sock together and investigated whether all numbers can be paired up… we realised that sometimes we end up with one left over. Our favourite part of the week was when we played matching pairs together. Remembering where the aliens were was hard work!

We made some wonderful paintings in Discovery Time this week. We were challenged to paint dragons using only red, yellow and blue paint. We used mixing trays to make green, orange and purple and were so proud of what we created!

On Friday we were visited by PERFORM drama group. We were helped to use our imagination and acting skills to help a very sad clown get her smile back.

Week 5

This week in maths we were introduced to Numberblock 6! We helped all of the numberblocks go on a trip to the moon by showing all of the different ways we could arrange them into two spaceships. We noticed that they could fly off as 5 and 1, 4 and 2 & 3 and 3.

We also enjoyed playing bingo during the week. This helped us to spot numbers in different representations and was a great way to practise using and understanding mathematical vocabulary.

In Outdoor Explorers this week we thought about birds and how they cope with the cold weather during the winter months. We learned that some birds fly to warmer countries during the winter and that others actually fly to the UK from even colder places. Then we made bird balls using lard and seeds and hung them on our field for the birds to enjoy.

On Thursday we learned about Christingles. We found out that each part of a Christingle means something - the orange represents the world, the red ribbon is God’s love, the fruit stands for the four seasons and the candle is a symbol of Jesus, happiness and hope for the future.

We really enjoyed making our own Christingles and taking them to the church for a special service.

Week 4

This week in Dolphins we have been very busy completing all sorts of challenges in discovery time. We have labelled different foods to match our Book Talk book - Baby Goes to Market, compared how heavy and light objects are using bucket scales and written our own stories with a beginning, middle and end.

In maths we have thought about ‘one more’ and discovered that if we make numbers with multilink cubes, they make a staircase pattern!

In Outdoor Explorers we collected special things on the field. Next week we’re going to pour water into our buckets, freeze them and hang up our frozen ornaments outside so that we can watch them melt.

We had so much fun using junk modelling materials to make Chinese dragons this week. We thought carefully about which materials to use and attached the different parts together using sellotape, glue and staples. 
 

Towards the end of the week we were surprised to see that a castle had appeared in our classroom! We really enjoyed dressing up as knights, queens and kings and role playing in our castle. Some of us even wrote recipes and menus so that we could make delicious meals on the kitchen fire. We did have to watch out for the pesky dragon, though! 
 

Finally, we had our first taste of Helicopter Stories. During a helicopter story session, we all work together to act out a story told by one of the children. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the children to use their speaking and listening skills as well as helping them to grow in confidence and fire up their imagination. From now on we will have one helicopter session every week.

Week 3

We are really enjoying writing in Dolphins Class at the moment. This week we have been writing tricky words using chalk, labelling materials on card, practising our handwriting on whiteboards and identifying sounds using phoneme frames. We are getting the hang of using grapheme mats to help us with our writing, too.

We continued to learn about Chinese New Year and made Chinese lanterns with paper, pens, scissors and staples. Some of us decided to use red paper, as this is a lucky colour in Chinese culture. 
 

We have been thinking scientifically all week this week… and the icy weather has really helped us with our learning! We have been finding ice everywhere and have been watching what happens to it when we warm it up. We learned that ice is frozen water and found that we can turn it back into water by melting it near a radiator. We then thought about how other materials change when we cool or heat them and watched wax turn to liquid then back into a solid again.

In maths we have been partitioning the number 5. We used 5 frames, aliens and bean bags to show 5 as 4 + 1, 3 + 2 and 5 + 0.

We love music lessons! This week we used chime bars, bells and shakers to play along to our Chinese Lanterns song. We worked in groups and had to watch the dragon - we were only allowed to play our instruments when the dragon told us to. When he told us to stop, we had to stay silent. 

We read more traditional tales in class this week. We heard Rumpelstiltskin, Jack and the Beanstalk and Chicken Licken. Then we helped the Gingerbread Man cross a river during discovery time by building him a bridge.

Week 2

What a lot of rain we’ve had this week! Luckily, it didn’t stop us from going down to the field for Outdoor Explorers on Tuesday. We put on our wellies and went on a material hunting expedition! We worked hard to find different materials and talked about whether what we found was manmade or natural. We found wood, plastic, metal and fabric. 

We continued to explore different materials during discovery time this week, too. We sorted different materials into groups and spoke about what was the same and different about how they looked and felt. We also investigated whether all metal is magnetic or not - we had so much fun finding out which metals stuck to our magnets and which didn’t! 
 

In maths we have been using the words ‘more than’, ‘fewer than’ and ‘equal to’. We learned that we use the word ‘less’ when we talk about things that can’t be counted (like time), and ‘fewer than’ when we talk about objects we can count. We took part in lots of activities through the week to help us practise using these words correctly when comparing amounts of objects.

This week we started guided writing sessions for the first time. We were all so courageous and gave our first writing activity a really good go! Thank goodness the children were able to help me write a shopping list for my party… now I know I’ll remember what to buy at the shops this weekend! Thank you, Dolphins!

During PE we continued to think about materials… this time we were exploring the idea that materials can change, like ice turning into water and then back again. We made icicle shapes with our bodies and practised making spiky, hard shapes. Then we imagined we were melting and made soft, floppy shapes. At the end of the lesson we put all of our movements together and performed them to music.

Finally, we read our Trickbox book ‘Drew Feels Calm’ and learned our first red trick - Colour Breathing. We use this trick when we’re feeling cross or upset about something. We give all of our feelings a different colour and imagine breathing out the negative colour and breathing in a positive one. We’ve added this new trick to our well-being board. This board helps us to remember which tricks we’ve learned so that we can use them when we need to.
 

Week 1

Although we’ve only had three days at school this week, we’ve managed to fit lots of learning in! It’s been lovely to see how keen and enthusiastic the children are after their Christmas break.

In phonics we have learned three new phonemes - ai, ee and igh. We practised spotting them on flash cards as well as reading them within words. 
 

In maths we learned about the number 0. We know that it is called zero and that it means that we have nothing. We played a game in which we had to pick a numeral out of a bag and clap that many times. We had to remember that when we saw 0, we shouldn’t clap at all… some of us found this very tricky!

Our music topic this half term is ‘Chinese Dragons’. This week we learned that the dragon is an important symbol in Chinese culture and that people watch dragon dances as part of their Chinese New Year celebrations. We moved a parachute in time to some traditional music and then made a class dragon.

A major focus for us this half term will be writing, writing, writing! The children have been excited to start really trying to put their phonics learning into practice. They have written labels for the classroom, practised tricky words and even make ‘Lost’ posters to stick around the school so that Miss Watts could find her missing alpaca.

In our Big Write we thought about what New Years resolutions we could make and had a good go at writing them down together. We wrote ‘Eat more veg(etables), help mummy and daddy’ and ‘show our friends love and kindness’.

This half term we will be learning about traditional tales. During Book Talk this week we learned about different traditional tales and then read The Gingerbread Man, The Elves and the Shoemaker and The Gigantic Turnip. Some of us then decided to make mini gingerbread men with play doh during discovery time on Friday.