Week 6

This week was our RE week. Our lessons focussed on the concept of remembering. Some of the children brought in photographs, souvenirs and special objects that help them remember special events, people and holidays. It was lovely to hear them sharing their special memories. Later on in the week we learned about a Hindu festival called Janmashtami. We listened to the story of the birth of Krishna and thought about why this event is remembered by Hindus all over the world. We made a shrine and listened to bhajans, then had a go at writing down why remembering Krishna is so important for some people.

In maths we have been learning about pairs. We did a great job at remembering that ‘pair’ means ‘two’. We worked together to make pairs of different objects and noticed that we could see them really clearly if we put them into neat lines. Some of the objects had one left over after we’d paired them, so we called these ‘odd ones out’.

In discovery time we learned about what a survey is. We then asked each other what our favourite objects are from a list and recorded the results really well! We used the phrase ‘most popular’ to explain which one was the winner each time.

We had lots of fun learning about primary and secondary colours. We were challenged to paint dragon pictures using only red, yellow and blue paint. We had to think carefully about how to mix the colours to make orange, green and purple. Some of us noticed that we could create different shades by adding more or less of the darker colour each time. 

This week we have also enjoyed making more fabulous creations using our loose parts, demonstrating our understanding of text by drawing pictures to match captions, playing in a very soggy mud pit and finding out how far we can make water travel through pipes. We loved sharing our learning with our grown-ups at the parent drop-in on Monday, too - thank you to everyone who was able to attend.
What a busy half term we’ve had - time for a rest!

Week 5

We have had another fun and exciting week in Dolphins Class this week. On Monday we met two real life police officers! They told us all about what it’s like to be a police officer and showed us all of the equipment they have to carry on their vests. They reminded us that they’re friendly and will always help us if we need them. We even got a chance to look at their car, turn the lights on and sit inside!

In maths we have been learning how to make the numbers 6, 7 and 8. We used little aliens in a flying saucer to help us figure out how many different ways there are to make each of these numbers. In discovery time we matched magic beans to numerals and we continued to enjoy using our speckled frogs to practise counting backwards from five to zero.

In outdoor explorers we talked about manmade and natural materials. We were fascinated to learn that some materials occur naturally, whilst others are made by people. We explored the field to see what natural and manmade materials we could find. There was a lot of wood, some metal and some plastic, too!

In discovery time this week we have been writing menus for muddy banquets in our outside message centre, imagining what dragons might live inside eggs, following instructions to draw cute little pigs, making more wonderful creations in the woodwork area and much more. 

Week 4

We have had lots of fun with maths this week. We have been practising matching numerals to amounts and used our mathematical reasoning skills to explain why numbers go up in a staircase pattern when they’re made with blocks and put in order. Then we played a game of ‘guess who’s hiding’ with our friends. We have been investigating which objects are heaviest and lightest in our room using bucket scales during discovery time, too.

Our evil pea adventures continued this week! We wanted to see if we could trap the pea, so we made lots of traps and left them in our classroom overnight. Some of us made dragons using junk modelling materials and left them there to scare the peas away.

One of the children in our class taught us all about St Dwynwen’s Day on Thursday. He called it Welsh Valentine’s Day and also showed us some special spoons from his home called love spoons. We all enjoyed learning about this special day and made some cards to take home to the people we love the most. The cards say 
Rwy'n dy garu di (I love you) and Dydd santes Dwynwen’s hapus (Happy Saint Dwynwen’s Day).

Week 3

This week we have been continuing to learn all about materials. We made cornflour goop and were amazed to see that it behaved like a solid and a liquid at the same time depending on how we touched it! 
On Wednesday we received a letter from the Evil Pea… he had frozen some of our toys! We had to work really hard to figure out how to rescue them. Some of us ran the ice blocks under warm water, some used hammers to bash the ice away and others thought we could try to use salt… luckily when we worked together we managed to set all of the toys free! We were very cross with the pea, so some of us decided to write messages telling him to go away and never come back…

In drawing club this week we have been drawing and writing all about the characters from the tale of The Little Red Hen. We’re getting much more confident with using grapheme mats to help us bring our pictures to life with words and phrases and it’s still one of our favourite lessons.

In our Big Write this week we tried to make a very sad dragon happy again! He told us that he was very upset that he didn’t know what he looks like because he’s never looked in a mirror. We wrote words to describe him like ‘spiky’, ‘green’, ‘wings’ and ‘orange fire’ to help him understand how wonderful he looks. He gave us a big grin and lots of hugs afterwards!

We discovered that some shoots have appeared in our planting area and think that they might be flowers starting to grow. Some of us were excited to try and plant some of our seeds from snack time to see if they would grow, too. We set to work in our planting area digging, planting and watering. 

We started to think about materials and their properties in our PE lessons, too. We looked at pictures of icicles and thought about what shapes we could see. We made sharp, spiky shapes with our bodies and then melted, froze and flowed like water in time to music.

In maths we have been using different resources to help us understand the composition of numbers. We used 5 speckled frogs, five frames, flip counters and numicon to explore how many different ways we can make the number 5.

Week 2

We loved our PE lesson this week! This half term we are going to be focussing on dance skills. We listened to some special music and had a go at moving a parachute in time to the beat. We moved it slowly, quickly, high and low and had lots of fun watching how our actions changed the way the material moved.

Then we made some scarves dance by putting them on top of the parachute - this was our favourite bit!

In maths this week we have been using the words more, fewer and equal to. We worked as a whole class, in pairs and small groups throughout the week to practise using these words to describe amounts. We are really good at this now!

We are continuing to learn new graphemes every day in our phonics lessons. This week we learned, oo, oo, ar and or. During these lessons we practise reading and writing our new graphemes as well as spelling different tricky words. We’re brilliant at trying our best and having a really good go every day, even if we find it hard.

In music this week we listened to our dragon dance song again. This time, we got to play instruments! We used chime bars, glockenspiels and sleigh bells, hitting and shaking them in time to the music.

We have started to learn about materials as part of our science learning this half term. We now know that a material is something that an object is made of and that different materials have different properties. In discovery time, some of us sorted different materials into groups and matched them with the correct label.

As always, we’ve been doing lots of funky finger activities every day! Some of our favourites this week have been attaching tiny gems and feathers to dragon masks, opening and closing different clasps and drawing around stencils. We enjoy writing on the floor, tables and walls - all of these different writing positions help our fingers, hands, wrists, arms and shoulders get stronger and stronger.

The best day this week was Tuesday because we got to play in the snow! 

Week 1

We have loved being back together after the Christmas holidays.

We only had one Drawing Club session this week. We spoke to each other about our favourite part of Christmas, drew a picture and some of us even managed to write about it, too.

In music we started to learn about Chinese New Year. We found out that it happens every year and that this year it will be celebrated in February. We watched a traditional dragon dance video, tried to keep a steady beat and then made a super-long class dragon! Some of us decided to make our own dragons using paper afterwards, too.

We have learned how to use a new tool in our woodwork area. We can now use screwdrivers as well as hammers! We had lots of fun choosing which tool to use to attach objects to our wood.

In discovery time we have been using some of our gifts from the PTA. The tuff tray paper and paint rollers have kept us very busy! We’ve also been making gingerbread men out of play dough, having fun with building blocks and writing New Year’s resolutions.