Week 5
This week we have been putting our mathematical knowledge to the test! We made predictions about how heavy different objects were and then compared their weights using bucket scales. We learned that the heavier objects went downwards and the lighter ones stayed in the air. Some of our objects were as heavy as we expected, whilst others were a surprise!
We also talked more about pairs. We remembered that pair means ‘two’ and worked together to pair up different objects. A pair of scissors was an interesting one to think about!
In PE we put all of our learning from this half term together to make a Mr Men dance! We were very good at listening to the music and moving like the different characters.
We also did some scientific learning this week. We collected different materials from the field and then added water. When we looked at them the next day, we found out that they had frozen solid! We talked about freezing and melting and then put our beautiful ice decorations outside to see how long it would take them to melt.
Some of us had a go at using two new tools in our woodwork area - screwdrivers and drills!
In Craft Club, we learned how to make secondary colours by mixing primary colours together. We loved making purple, orange and green and then painting beautiful pictures.
In PSHE our two puppets, Trevor and John, helped us to understand how important it is to ask for permission before we touch other people. We talked about different touches and decided that not everyone likes the same things. We helped Trevor and John ask each other for hugs as well as helping them say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to each other in big, strong voices.
Week 4
Our favourite part of this week was making Christingles! We learned all about the Christingle and when they were first made. We found out that each of the parts mean something special - the seasons, the world, Jesus and his sacrifice. We each made our very own Christingle and took them to church for a Christingle service.
In maths we played games that helped us figure out which numbers are bigger and smaller than each other. We made staircases and played a game of ‘hide the number’. We had to figure out which numbers were hiding by looking carefully at our staircase pattern. We realised that if the steps didn’t go up in ones then there must be a number missing!
In PSHE we helped Harold the Giraffe spot hazards inside and outside. We were very good at telling him not to touch kettles, pans, plug sockets, broken glass and nettles.
In PE we used our knowledge of materials to make a fun dance! Last week, we made a Mr Jelly dance. This week, we added Mr Strong. We noticed that these characters look and move differently to each other, so we needed to move our bodies differently, too. One of our favourite parts of the lesson was trying to make a ‘Mr Strong’ square shape with our friends.
We’re really enjoying writing in Dolphins Class! In our phonics lessons this week, we learned our final graphemes. Then we moved on to looking at words containing double letters. We worked hard all week to write words like ‘bigger’ and ‘rabbit’. Our spelling is really coming on! Some of us used chalk to draw and write in the environment, too. Can you spot the words ‘stencils’, ‘house’, ‘castle’ and ‘bird’?
This week’s craft club skill was collage. We used all sorts of different materials and colours to make funky rainbow pictures!
Our Drawing Club book this week was Would You Rather…? We enjoyed drawing and writing about scary creatures, spooky castles and revolting sandwiches. If you’re able to come along to our drop-in next week, we’d love to show you all of our Drawing Club creations so far!
Week 3
This week we talked about properties of materials. We felt lots of different things and decided if they were hard, soft, bendy, spongy, rough, smooth or fluffy. We remembered the word ‘opposites’ and matched each word up with its opposite. On Tuesday, we went to the field to see if we could find materials with the properties we’d talked about. We found lots!
We continued to learn all about Lunar New Year and really enjoyed making dragon faces using craft materials. In music, we made our bodies into dragons! We all joined together and moved in time to our dragon dance music, snaking all the way from the hall back into the classroom again.
In our Big Write on Thursday we helped a sad little dragon remember what he looks like! We had a really good look at him and talked about his orange scales, his spiky wings, his huge eyes and his sharp claws. Then we had a go at writing some of the words we’d discussed.
Some of us have been practising reading and writing our tricky words in different ways.
Some children used their writing skills in discovery time to help Goldilocks figure out what she’s allowed to touch if she decides to visit Dolphins Class. They told her that she mustn’t touch the scissors or Mrs Fennell’s chair, but that they can have some porridge from the house and can play with some of our toys… as long as she doesn’t break them!
In maths, we used numicon to represent number bonds of 5. We noticed that there always needed to be one odd block on its own to make the number 5 successfully. We really enjoyed counting the holes and looking at the different shapes and colours of the numicon pieces. We all practised looking at what we’d made and then saying a sentence stem out loud, for example ‘1 and 4 altogether makes 5’.
Craft Club was a lot of fun this week! We learned about watercolour paints and had a go at using them to make a watery, fishy picture!
Week 2
We continued our science learning this week by thinking about different materials. After talking about the materials we know, we went to the field to see which materials we could find. We found metal, plastic, rubber and even sponge!
We’ve been working on our writing skills a lot this week, too. We wrote a letter from Goldilocks to say sorry to the three bears, drew and wrote about disgusting bread and even made a list of things we might need to take to a party!
In PSHE we talked about things that are safe to go onto our bodies. We cut and stuck pictures of different items and worked as a team to figure out which ones would be safe and which ones wouldn’t. We decided that even though mud doesn’t always feel nice on our bodies, it won’t harm us!
In PE we thought about icicles. We made spiky, tall and strong shapes with our bodies and then moved in time to music to make an icy dance routine!
In maths we did lots of activities that helped us recognise more, fewer and equal to. We had to decide who had more toys - Pat or Sam? We were very good at subitising the numbers and suggesting who had more. We also learned that it doesn’t matter what size the objects are, it’s the amount of them that counts.
We arranged bears on plates to show an equal number of objects, fewer objects and more objects than Pat or Sam. Getting to zero was fun - we had empty plates!
In Craft Club on Wednesday we used clay. We learned how to make pinch pots by rolling our clay into a ball, poking our thumb into the middle, then pinching all the way around the outside. When our pots were the right shape, we decorated them with little beads. They look great!
In woodwork I taught the last group of children how to use a hammer and nails safely. We now all know how to use these tools! Next, we’ll be using a screwdriver and a drill. It’s going to be so much fun!
Week 1
We are so happy to be back together after the Christmas holidays. In Outdoor Explorers this week we had a think about what we can expect to see in the winter time. We talked about the clothes that people wear to keep warm, thought about which animals hibernate and which animals migrate, and looked at pictures of the changes plants go through during winter, too. Then we went on a scavenger hunt around the field. We looked for signs of winter and found lots of them!
In music we started to learn about Lunar New Year. We listened to some traditional Chinese music and watched some videos of amazing dragon dances! Then we had lots of fun moving a parachute in time to the music. We really enjoyed playing some parachute games afterwards, too.
It was Mrs Burden’s birthday this week, so lots of us decided to make her a birthday card! We used our grapheme mats to help us write the words we wanted to use and then we delivered our beautiful cards and pictures to Mrs Burden in her office.
It was rather icy in our playground this week! We talked about how to keep ourselves safe in our outside area and some of us decided that it might be a bit too slippery to play on the train! Luckily, some very hard-working Dolphins used brooms and trowels to sweep and bash the ice away so that everyone could play on the train safely.
In maths we learned about the number zero. We learned that zero is one less than one and practised writing it on whiteboards. We also sang songs that helped us remember our number bonds of 5, like 5 Little Speckled Frogs and 5 Little Men in a Flying Saucer.
In Discovery Time we enjoyed singing these songs with our friends and matching numerals to different objects. We practised saying stem sentences out loud, for example ‘3 on the log and 2 in the pond makes 5 altogether.’
We also played skittles and wrote down how many pins we knocked down each time.
This week’s Drawing club sessions were based on We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. We drew the bear, the bear’s cave and thought of a way the bear can get up to the bedroom window to ask the family to play with him.
This week we also read a new Trickbox book called Drew Feels Calm. In this story, Drew feels angry and needs help to calm down again. We learned how to use the Floating Cloud trick to give ourselves time and space to de-escalate when we feel overwhelmed or angry. Hopefully this trick will come in handy!
We’ve spent lots of time reading traditional tales, too. We learned that these tales often start with ‘Once upon a time’ and end with ‘happily ever after’. We have been talking about which parts of the stories are at the beginning, which parts are in the middle, and which are at the end. We decided that all of the stories we’ve read so far have a beginning, a middle and an end.
This week we read Rapunzel, The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Elves and the Shoemaker. We can’t wait to listen to more traditional tales next week!