Week 3

Towards the end of this week, after completing our Jack and the Beanstalk stories, we started our new learning journey inspired by the fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood. At the end of this learning journey, the children will write a set of instructions for Little Red Riding Hood to follow in order to get the Granny safely. To start this unit off, the children watched a cartoon version of the familiar fairy tale and then drew a map of the journey she took through the woods to Grandma’s house! They were given the choice of what things they thought she would have passed on her way to Grandma’s cottage such as flowers, a waterfall, a hidden castle, rocks, a stream or even a fairy house! They then labelled their images with noun phrases, thinking carefully about what adjective would be the best to describe each noun. Then on Friday, we revisited our learning on prepositions for place and labelled our map with the relevant prepositions such as; around, between, over and behind to name only a few. The children were then tasked to write a couple of sentences using their chosen preposition and noun phrase from their map.

In history this week, we ordered facts about the queens Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II such as: when they became Queen of England, their age when they became Queen, how long they reigned for and a significant event from the period of time in which each queen reigned. The children then sorted pictures in order along a class timeline starting with Elizabeth I who reigned first.

Week 2

Week 1 

History - Which queen reigned at the best time?

We were excited to start our new history topic this week all about the three of the queens of England: Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II. This week, the children were shown an image of the St Edward’s crown, as a slow reveal, which helped them to look closely at its intricate design. We talked about how heavy this crown is because of all the jewels and gold and how it would be uncomfortable to wear for a long while.
 

The children then learnt that a coronation is a service where a king or queen is officially made the sovereign. We talked about the fact that the St Edward’s crown is worn during the coronation ceremony in England and that the orb and sceptre and also held - just like in the film frozen! We then talked about what they knew already about queens and royalty and we started a vocabulary bank for our history wall.

In writing we have started a new learning journey about Jack and the beanstalk! This week, the children have been read the story, they have acted it out in small groups and they have ordered the main events. We then took some of the images from the book and create noun phrases by first identifying a noun in a picture and then thinking of a suitable adjective to describe it. The children were then asked to put some of their best noun phrases into sentences and write them in their books.

In art this half term, we will be learning to draw and paint a queen’s portrait! This week, we learnt how to create tone using different drawing techniques. The children used a pencil in a number of ways to experiment with tone. They used the side and tip of their pencils and learnt about hatching and cross hatching. 

In gymnastic the children will be learning about jumping! Today they practised jumping during floor-work activities and then combined this with balancing on the apparatus.