Week 7

It’s our final week in Dolphins Class! What an adventure we’ve had together this year.

We survived the heat wave at the start of the week by turning our home corner into a health spa! We put our feet in cool buckets of water and put damp flannels on our heads. We also used the shady outdoor areas to bath babies and play with sea creatures in cool water.
 

We wrote letters to the new Dolphins, telling them about all of the things we’ve enjoyed this year. We said that we like maths, we love Discovery Time and we even explained our Christian values. I’m looking forward to showing the new Year R children your super letters in September.

We were very excited this afternoon when we discovered that our ice cream wishes from last week had come true! We enjoyed watching a special film and eating our ice creams.

Well, that’s it, Dolphins! I’m so proud to have been your teacher this year - you have all flourished in your own ways and I can’t wait to watch you grow and learn even more in Turtles Class. I hope that you and your families have a wonderful summer holiday… see you in September!

Week 6

Although we’ve been feeling a bit hot and tired this week, we’ve continued to be enthusiastic and courageous in our learning. 

In maths we have started to get the hang of odd and even numbers. We know that odd numbers have an ‘odd block’ when we make them with cubes or numicon, and even numbers have an ‘even top’. Some of us have spotted the ‘odd, even, odd, even’ pattern when counting. In Discovery Time we put our new knowledge into practice by making odd and even monsters.

In our writing sessions this week we used magical writing paper… whatever we write on this special paper might come true if we wish hard enough. We used our paper to write our own ice cream orders… let’s see if any of our wishes come true before the summer holidays (I hope mine does!).

On Wednesday we had our last school disco of the year. We loved dancing together and having the chance to say goodbye to our Seahorses friends.

On Thursday, we finished off our RE topic for this half term by thinking about how we can look after all of God’s creatures. We made a special banner and each drew an animal on it that we think needs looking after. We included giraffes, tarantulas, ants, elephants and much more. We decided that it doesn’t matter how big, how small, how cute or how strange an animal looks - each one deserves to be treated with love and respect.

On Friday, we were treated to a show performed by Ken and Ian from Trickbox. They put on a hilarious version of The Elves and the Shoemaker - we loved it!
 

We also brought in our fantastic minibeast mobiles. We arranged them in our outside area so that the children from across the school could come and look at our hard work. Everyone was very impressed with what we had created - well done Dolphins, and thank you to all of the parents for helping the children get so much out of this home learning challenge.

Week 5

This week has been full of amazing experiences! We started the week off with a visit from Perform. We were taught how to be super heroes in an interactive drama workshop. We loved running around and using our super powers to save the world from pollution.

On Monday we harvested the potatoes we’ve been growing in our planting area. Miss Watts took them home to cook them so that we could have a taste… they were delicious!
 

Wednesday was a real highlight - we went on a school trip to Longdown Activity Farm. We had so much fun feeding calves, kids and large goats as well as holding baby chicks, collecting eggs for the farm shop, stroking Guinea pigs and riding up and down on a bumpy tractor. It really was a wonderful day.

On Thursday we had our first sports day. We enjoyed taking part in six different activities before having a go at the running races. We all showed fantastic sportsmanship, cheering for our friends and trying our best to complete all of the stations. All of the adults are very proud of the children for showing love, respect and courage throughout the afternoon. Well done, Dolphins!

Week 4

This week we have learned lots of exciting new things about the world around us. We started to harvest some of the food we’ve been growing at school. First Mrs Barker delivered some fresh, hand-picked strawberries from our vegetable patch on the field. We loved eating these at snack time - they were so sweet and juicy! Then we noticed that we had lots of huge broad beans ready to be picked in our planting area. We worked together to pick them off the stems, podded them and cooked them. We were very courageous and all had a try… some of us liked the taste more than others!

One of our classmates showed courage when she stood at the front of the class and showed us a scrapbook she’d made all about New Zealand. We were fascinated to look at her photographs and learn about what life is like in a different country. We thought the beaches looked beautiful and were excited to hold real lava rock, shells and coins from the other side of the world!

In Outdoor Explorers this week we were able to set our butterflies free. We ended up with three beautiful butterflies to release into our butterfly garden. It was amazing to look at them up close - we could see the antennae, wings and six legs so clearly. Some of us even spotted the proboscis on each of their faces! We loved watching them fly away ready to pollinate the flowers around our school.

Week 3

We started this week off with the excitement of moving our caterpillar chrysalises into their net ready for the next stage in their life cycle. It’s amazing watching them transform!

In maths we have been ordering numbers as well as thinking about sharing and grouping. We have been putting towers onto number tracks and making unfair picnics for the Numberblocks.

This week we made our own musical instruments. Some of us made shakers, whilst others made drums and cymbals. We used these instruments to make seaside songs in our music lesson on Wednesday. We loved being creative and sharing our musical creations with our friends.

In Outdoor Explorers this week we looked for minibeasts on the field. We found a lot more this time than we did in the winter! We spotted moths, beetles, worms, woodlice, earwigs, snails, slugs and even millipedes! We were sure to handle them carefully as we looked at them with magnifying glasses before putting them back where they came from.

Our PE lesson this week was great fun! We used the large apparatus for the first time, which meant getting out the wall bars! We enjoyed using the equipment to travel in different ways. We slid, walked, crawled, climbed and jumped. 
 

Week 2

It’s really started to feel like summer this week! We’ve been enjoying the warmer weather - it’s been lovely to see the sun shining in the sky every morning.

In our maths lessons this week, we’ve been continuing our work on doubles. We have played a game called Double Ducks - we had to roll a die and then double our number with cubes. We have also used numicon to double and enjoyed counting up the holes in each piece to find doubles.

In our mental maths sessions we’ve started to use rekenreks- these help us to see how different numbers compare to each other. They’re lots of fun to use!
 

We have been busy applying our phonics knowledge this week, too. We have been writing conversations between minibeasts, writing labels for pictures and spotting digraphs and trigraphs within words. 
 

On Wednesday we did a sponsored bounce! It was so exciting to be able to jump for 2 minutes on the bouncy castle. Thank you to everyone who sponsored us… we can’t wait to use the money we’ve earned to buy lots of new books to read.

Our caterpillars are getting very big now. Some of them have begun to crawl to the top of their pot to form a chrysalis on the lid. In Outdoor Explorers we learned more about caterpillars. We found out that they’re insects (they only have 6 true legs!) and that they use camouflage, bright colours, prickly hairs and clever patterns to protect themselves from predators. We then hunted for evidence of caterpillars on our field… we didn’t find any caterpillars, but we did find a lot of munched leaves!

Week 1

We had a fun start to our new half term when we discovered that our role play area had turned into a vet’s surgery! We’ve been enjoying playing imaginatively with our friends, looking after the animals, giving them X-rays, feeding them, prescribing medicine and wrapping them in bandages. Some of us have been working in the vet’s reception, taking calls and booking in appointments, too.

In Outdoor Explorers we got a special surprise… some baby caterpillars have come to visit us! They left a note asking for us to look after them. We’re already starting to see changes - they’re eating lots of food and getting bigger and bigger every day!
 

We enjoyed reading Superworm by Julia Donaldson this week, and had lots of fun making our own Superworms out of play dough. After we’d made them, we compared how long and short each of the worms were and sorted them by length.

In maths this week we have been learning all about doubles. We read the story of Alison Hubble on Monday and then practised doubling numbers in different ways during the rest of the week. We used butterfly pictures, mirrors, tens frames and cubes, and we’re really starting to get the hang of it now.

In RE this week we have been learning about the concept ‘special’. We have spent lots of time thinking about special things and special places. We learned that different things are important to different people. We found out that Christians have a special place of worship called a Church and that Jews have a special place of worship called a Synagogue. We also learned that inside each Synagogue is a very special document called a Torah Scroll. These are so special that you’re not allowed to touch the paper! We made our own scrolls by staining paper with tea, writing or drawing our most special thoughts and then sticking art straws onto them. We finished our topic by thinking about whether it would matter if a Church or Synagogue was taken away or damaged. We were so grown up during this discussion, and really embodied our value of respect by listening to each other carefully.

In our writing sessions we told each other some of the fun things we got up to with our families during the half term break. We drew pictures and wrote words and sentences underneath. We are so good at persevering with difficult words and always put lots of effort into trying to figure out which phonemes we can hear so that we know which graphemes we need to write.