Weeks 6 & 7

Over the last two weeks we have had lots of fun together. We have played phonics games, learned all about changes in our RE topic, built minibeast and dinosaur dens in the rain, made wonderful wooden models, celebrated our fantastic home learning projects, had an ice cream party, danced our socks off at a disco and watched a hilarious Open Box show. What a great way to spend the end of our summer term.

Dolphins, you are an amazing class and I have had such a fantastic year with you. Enjoy your summer holiday and I look forward to seeing you when you return as Turtles in September!

Week 5

In maths this week we tried to see how much we could remember about odd and even numbers. We noticed that when we count, the numbers follow a pattern: odd, even, odd, even. Then we investigated what happens when we try to pair numbers up. We found out that we can only put even numbers into pairs. It’s been lots of fun playing with numbers to see what we can find out.

We have been learning all about farms this week. One of our favourite things to do has been role playing in our Dolphins farm shop! We’ve also made farmyard pictures, created tractors with different materials and played with farm animals in our small world area.

The best part of the week was on Tuesday when we visited Longdown Activity Farm - we collected eggs, fed baby animals (kids and calves), held chicks and even went on a bumpy tractor ride! It was brilliant!

We continued our love of Matisse this week by creating some play dough pictures in the style of the cut-outs we made last week.

And today we decided to do some pretend worship! We changed the cloth colour on our prayer table, pretended to light the candles and then said prayers and pulled golden tickets out of our box. 
 

Some of us helped to look after the Guinea pigs, too. We gave them cucumber to eat and then hid lettuce leaves for them to find.

Week 4

This week we have really enjoyed learning all about a French artist called Henri Matisse. We found out that he was born in 1869 and died in 1954. To begin with, he made colourful and exciting paintings in the style of Fauvism. Later on he became ill and couldn’t paint as easily, so he decided to use paper cut-outs to make beautiful collages.

We had a go at making our own paper cut-out pictures and then put them all together to make a super piece of wall art!

In PE this week we continued to find out how many different things we can do with hoops and quoits. We balanced quoits on our heads and arms and then practised throwing them. We found out that if you throw them sideways, they roll. If you throw them flat, they hit the ground and stay there. We used this knowledge to play a game of ‘target practice’. We had to try to get a quoit into the middle of a hoop, then a bean bag in the middle of a quoit! It was hard, but fun!

We are all confident writers now. We love having a go at writing words and sentences together. One of our trickiest parts of the week is when we have to listen to a sentence and then try to write it down. We are getting really good at looking at the phonics board or a grapheme mat to write independently. This week our sentence was ‘I am painting the moon.’

In outdoor explorers we thought about all of the different colours we can see now that it’s summer. We then went to the field and hunted for beautiful things so that we could make nature bracelets to wear. 
 

The woodwork area continues to be a huge hit with our Dolphins. Nearly all of the children have now learned how to safely use a hammer and nails to make models. The children never fail to amaze me with their imaginative creations.

The children rose to one of my discovery challenges this week - they had to write tricky words and stick them to my ‘super string’…. If they reached my magic number they would unlock golden tickets for everyone! They managed to make my super string 35 tricky words long. Luckily, my magic number was 31 - mission accomplished!

Week 3

We’ve had lots more fun in maths this week. We have been thinking about which numbers we can describe as ‘5 and a bit’ and realised that we can do this with the numbers 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. We used ten frames (which we’re very good at using now!) and rekenreks to show these numbers as ‘5 and _____ more’.

We continued our learning about minibeasts and found out that they live in micro habitats. We explored different micro habitats on our field and some of us were inspired to make our own creatures out of play dough… can you spot a slug, a worm and some snails?

Our classroom was completely taken over by bee-bots this week! We had so much fun programming them to move around on special mats. We made roads and mazes for them and some of us even drew our own road maps for them to travel along.

Our week ended with an amazing sports day. It was so exciting I didn’t get a chance to take any photographs! There are some on our school newsletter which you can find by going to News and Events, Newsletters on the website.

Well done everyone for taking part in all of the activities and doing your very best - I’m extremely proud of you all!

Week 2

We had a very hot but fun week this week!

In maths we re-visited the concept of doubles. We read the story of Alison Hubble (the girl who went to bed single but woke up double!) and remembered that double means ‘the same number again’. Then we practised showing doubles in different ways: on rekenreks, on our fingers and with numicon.

We enjoyed putting our writing skills to use this week by writing to very special people… our Daddies! We made Father’s Day cards and wrote messages inside them.

In Discovery Time, we made repeating caterpillar patterns, looked after more babies in the clinic, made dens for dinosaurs and searched for minibeast facts in non-fiction books.

More children learned how to use a hammer and nails in our woodwork area this week - this is becoming our favourite place to go!

In outdoor explorers we learned more about different kinds of minibeasts. We’re learning so much! We found out that snails have one foot, spiders have 8 legs (so they’re arachnids, not insects) and that ladybirds have two sets of wings. We even found a snail - it was fun to look at its antennae and shell before putting it back in a safe place outside.

Week 1

What an exciting week we have had! On Monday we were introduced to our brand new Woodwork Area. We learned all of the rules about how to keep safe, like always walking and only entering the area if we are wearing a green jacket and safety glasses. Then we were invited into the area three at a time each day to learn how to use a hammer and nails. We’ve already made some amazing things… what will we come up with next, I wonder?

We started a new PE topic this week. We’re going to be learning all about how to use hoops and quoits. We had lots of fun seeing what different things we can do with hoops including, hula hooping, spinning them on our arms and pushing them along the ground. Then we played a game called Shark Attack!

In Outdoor Explorers we learned all about caterpillars. We found out that they are insects (so they only have 6 legs!) and that they can come in all shapes, colours and sizes. Then we went onto the field to see if we could find any evidence that caterpillars might live on our field. We found lots of munched leaves!

We enjoyed making caterpillar cafes in discovery time and even met some new friends… baby caterpillars who have come to stay! We’re looking forward to watching them growing and changing over the next few weeks.

In maths we learned how to use a new tool called a rekenrek. These help us to count, add and compare numbers. 

On Wednesday we visited the church and took part in three different activities in the churchyard. It was great fun exploring the grounds around the church, hunting for minibeasts, comparing leaves and making artwork with natural materials.