Week 6

This week was so much fun because we were visited by a special scooter teacher! He showed us how to put on our safety gear and taught us lots of fun tricks. We had to show lots of courage and perseverance because some of the tricks were hard to do! 

This week in RE we have been learning all about the concept ‘special’. Throughout the week we thought about special things, special people and special places. We learned that the church is a special place for Christians and the Synagogue is a special place for Jewish people. We found out about Torah Scrolls, too. They are so special that you mustn’t touch them with your hands and have to use a special pointer called a yad.

We stained paper and made our own scrolls with our most special things written on them.

In maths we used our reasoning skills to talk about how we know what order numbers go in. We built towers and arranged them on a number track, first with numbers and then without. Then we turned over mystery numbers and had to explain where we thought they should go. We’re getting very good at talking about how much bigger or smaller than each other different numbers are.

In PE we experimented more with hoops and quoits, rolling, throwing and balancing them. Then we played a game in which we had to throw a beanbag into a target. We got 1 point for getting the beanbag inside the hoop and 2 points for getting it inside the quoit.

We were introduced to some very cute little robots this week… beebots! We really enjoyed learning how to program them and soon realised that we had to be careful about the instructions we gave them if we wanted them to follow a certain path.

We ended our half term of music by making our own storm compositions. We had to choose who would be our conductor, which instruments should go with which type of weather and what order our pictures should go in. We practised our compositions before performing them to each other.

We’ve been watching our caterpillars eat and grow over the last few weeks, but haven’t been lucky enough to watch them hatch yet! They’re now in their chrysalides going through the last stage of their transformation.

Week 5

PE was lots of fun this week! We were introduced to a new piece of equipment - quoits. After practising our large hoop skills, we investigated how we can use these smaller, rubbery hoops. We learned how to roll them as well as throwing them so that they land in a target. Then we played a team game which involved trying to get our quoit to land and stop inside a large hoop. We loved it!

In maths we learned a new word - subtract. We found out that this means taking away. We listened to the story ‘The Shopping Basket’ and enjoyed adding and subtracting passengers on buses. We played more with our number bond sausages and monkeys in discovery time, too - we’re getting more and more confident recalling these number facts as each day goes by.

Throughout the rest of the week we:

* Responded to the tale of The Little Red Hen and The Sly Fox in Drawing Club

* Designed and made models in the junk modelling, large construction and woodwork areas (lots of robots and vehicles!)

* Learned how to read words ending -ing, -est and -ed in phonics

* Hunted for, inspected and looked after bees and woodlice

* Played with the rest of the school on the field on a sunny and happy Friday afternoon

The children did such a good job of showing our special visitors what life in Dolphins Class is like. Another fun-filled week done - time for a rest!

Week 4

This week has been a very busy one, despite being only four days long!
We continued to apply our number bonds learning to different contexts in our maths lessons. This week, it was sizzling sausages! We had to figure out how many were burnt and how many weren’t each time. We had lots of fun flipping our sausages to see how they landed and represented them as counters on die frames. In discovery time we painted flowers in two colours to show different number bonds, too.

We used our 2D shape skills to make different pictures of transport. We made trains, boats, trucks and cars. Some of us made pictures of butterflies, too - hopefully our caterpillars will turn into beautiful butterflies soon! We’re really enjoying watching them grow.

We’ve enjoyed learning more about Amelia Earhart and her aeroplane, Canary. We thought about where we might like to fly to and made little aeroplanes using lolly sticks and pegs. Each aeroplane had a banner which said where we’d like to go… Barbados, Australia, Germany, China, Egypt…. We’re clearly a well-travelled bunch!

As the weather has been heating up, we spoke a lot about sun safety this week. The children were brilliant at remembering the best ways to stay safe in hot weather. We talked about sun cream, hats, sunglasses, shade and drinking lots of water.

Week 3

In PE this week we had more practise using the large hoops. We remembered how to push them along the ground and enjoyed rolling them to a partner. Then we thought about how to jump safely from a standing position. We had a go at bending our legs and using our arms to propel our bodies forward.

In PSHE we learned how to cross the road safely. We talked about safe places to cross and sang a song to help us remember to stop, look and listen. Then we took it in turns to help each other cross the road safely on the big playground.

We also learned a new Trickbox trick. It’s called ‘Win-Win’ and it’s all about learning to compromise. We spoke together about having differences of opinions and agreed that it’s not always possible to completely agree with each other. Then we learned the phrase ‘meeting someone in the middle’ and thought about how we sometimes need to give a little in order to get a little back.

We’ve been very busy writers this week. In Drawing Club we watched Captain Pugwash and drew treasure maps and sea monsters. In our Big Write we read the story The Hundred Decker Bus and wrote about all of the amazing air balloons we could see.

In maths we have been working hard on our number bonds to 5 and 10. We used the rhyme ‘5 Little Monkeys’ to help us think about the different ways we can make the number 5, using three different models to help us see the parts and the whole. We’re getting really confident with die frames and ten frames now… and we even had a go at singing the rhyme using a part-whole model to help us, too!

We practised our maths skills in Discovery Time, too. During snack time we had to choose which items we wanted from a menu, read the prices and count out the right amount of counters to pay for our food. 
Other Discovery challenges included making aeroplanes, building dens and making meals for hungry explorers.

On Friday we raised money for our school charity, The Final Straw Foundation. We paid money to come to school wearing blue and some of us entered a special competition. We used plastic and other materials that would otherwise have gone into the bin to make sea creature models. Well done to everyone who took part and congratulations to our class winner, Poppy!

Week 2

This week we continued to learn more about some events that have happened in the past. We started to think about different modes of transport and looked at the similarities and differences between vehicles of the past and present. We read a book about Amelia Earhart and learned that she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, then explored maps, atlases and Google Earth on the iPads to see what different places we could find.

We also revisited some of our knowledge from the Autumn Term this week. We remembered what we found out about Remembrance and poppies, then planted some poppy seeds of our own. We’re going to look after them carefully so that when they grow we can do something special with them… watch this space!

We had lots of fun making words with sponge letters. We chose our favourite vehicles and then segmented the sounds to help us figure out which letters we needed.

In maths we recapped odds & evens and doubles. It was interesting to see that the numbers with doubles in were always even… we even noticed that we could spot the ‘odd block’ or ‘even top’ when we arranged numbers on a ten frame! The more we learn, the more patterns we’re spotting - numbers really are amazing!

We also made towers using numicon and counted out what numbers we’d made, as well as practising reading numbers to 20 and arranging them using play dough on ten frames

I had a bit of a disaster this week… I lost my key! Luckily, the Dolphins were there to help me out. They made special posters and stuck them around the school. Hopefully they will work and my key will be found!

In PE we travelled in different ways. We loved pretending to be different vehicles, especially cars and bicycles! Then we used a new piece of equipment - a hoop! At first, we had a go at seeing what we could do with our hoops. Then we learned how to push them so that they rolled across the playground. At the end of the lesson, we tried to roll our hoop to a partner. This was tricky, but so fun!

Week 1

What a busy week we’ve had!

We kicked off the week with a fun music lesson. This half term all of our music lessons will be based around the weather. We sang some songs about the weather and then listened to ‘April Showers’ from Bambi. We really enjoyed moving ribbons in time to the music and talking about which instruments represented the rain, wind and lightning.

In Drawing Club we read the story ‘Penguin’ by Polly Dunbar. Throughout the week we drew the lion, a hiding place for the penguin and invented a way to get the penguin out of the lion’s tummy! We loved being able to show our parents how Drawing Club works during our Wednesday session - thank you to everyone who was able to attend.

In maths we continued to learn about numbers to 20 and beyond. We’re getting really good at spotting the pattern of the number system and deepened our understanding of ‘teen’ numbers by matching them with numicon. We noticed that each teen number had one 10, whilst the numbers behind 20 contained two 10s. On Friday we applied our counting skills to a game called ‘Race to 20’.

This half term we will be learning about the famous aviator Amelia Earhart. This week we thought about the concepts of old and new. We looked at different objects and tried to figure out which ones were the oldest (we particularly liked the old phone and the Thunderbirds game!). We talked about the past and remembered that some things happened a long time ago, whilst other things happened recently. Then we made a timeline to help us understand how long ago some events happened. 

In the woodwork area some of us learned how to use a hand drill! We looked at different drill bits and noticed that the bigger drill bits made bigger holes. Then we practised putting wood into a vice and turning the handle to make holes. We are getting really confident with hammers, screwdrivers and saws now - our designs and creations just keep getting better and better!

We have really enjoyed playing and exploring with our friends again after the two week break. We made and tested boats, created potions in the mud kitchen, made sand castles and dens in the small world area, wrote secret messages and much more!