Week 7

This week we thought about the concept of ‘change’ in our RE lessons. First, we shared our ideas about what change means and talked about different changes that people might go through in their lives. Then we talked about changes we would like to make in our own lives. After that, we looked at paintings of Jesus and discussed how he changed over time. During the rest of the week we read bible stories in which Jesus changed people’s lives by helping them or healing them.

For our final lesson, we pretended to be someone from one of the stories we read and made a card to say thank you to Jesus for what he had done to help. Some of us pretended to be Jairus, others were the paralysed man and some wrote a card from the blind man.

In maths we revised our previous learning on ‘more’ and ‘less’. We used rekenreks to show ‘lots more’ than a given number, then ‘1 more’. Then we made towers of different sizes and and put them in order from biggest to smallest, making sure that we used the staircase pattern to help us spot which numbers were just one block bigger than each other.

Friday was a very hot day, so we helped each other stay cool by setting up the Dolphins Spa! We used water from the water butt to fill up tuff trays, sat in the shade and enjoyed dipping our feet into the cool water. Unfortunately, there was no room left for any grown-ups!

The best part of the week was on Monday when we were visited by Ken and Ian from Open Box. We love it when they come to see us, especially when we get the chance to watch one of their hilarious shows.

They put on two different performances for us: Little Red Riding Hood (who wasn’t anything like we had read in the stories) and Zack and the Beanstalk (we met some very strange characters in this one!).

It was so much fun - we laughed a lot!

Week 6

This week we tried to do some problem solving in our maths lessons! We experimented with different ways to make 5, using counters and a die frame to record our ideas. We practised turning over just one counter at a time to try to make sure that we had found all of the possibilities. Some of the children did this with a giant tens frame, too - they were trying to find out how many green and blue cakes Mummy Pig could have baked for her children.

We also practised our listening and communication skills in maths. We had to sit back-to-back with a partner and describe where we were placing counters so that they could place their counters in the same position. 

In phonics we put our reading and computing skills to the test. We worked together to try to beat the dragons by figuring out which words were real and which were fake… we were very keen to beat our scores each time!

Now that our new water butt has a brand new handle we are spending lots of time experimenting with water. One of our favourite things to do this week was to try to get the water to travel as far as possible. We used different sized pipes and containers to see if we could make the water go all the way along the length of the train… we nearly managed it!

The most exciting part of the week was definitely going into the prayer garden for the first time. This is a special area in which we can chat with our friends, sit calmly and relax or think and reflect. We showed lots of respect by using the garden really sensibly. We took the Guinea pigs down to the field and fed them lots of fresh grass and daisies, too.

Week 5

This week we started to learn all about farms and farm animals. We read lots of non-fiction books and found out that some baby animals have different names to their adults. We learned about calves, kids, chicks, foals, kittens and pups.

On Tuesday we went on our first ever coach trip as a class! It was so fun travelling on a coach together. We visited a farm and learned how to be farmers for the day. We had to make sure that we fed all of the animals and collected eggs before we could sit down for our own lunch. We even went on a bumpy tractor ride and played in the park, too.

We continued our farm learning back at school, too. We made tractors using junk modelling materials and play dough. Some of us used play dough to make our very own farm - we made soil and vegetable patches, animals and farmers! We really enjoyed working together to make our farm and then playing with it afterwards.

In maths we tried to apply our learning about odd and even numbers. We helped a farmer put some cheeky farm animals back into their pens in pairs, investigated which numbers contained doubles and sorted different resources into odd and even piles.

In PE we continued to learn about different ways of travelling. This time we travelled in different ways on, through and around the apparatus. 

In guided reading we put our comprehension skills to the test! We worked in groups to read sentences and then talked to our friends about how we could match them to the correct picture. It was really tricky to read, talk, compromise and match all at the same time, but we did a great job!

Weeks 3 & 4

It has been a very busy couple of weeks for us in Dolphins Class! In week 3 we learned more about butterflies and other minibeasts. We found out that spiders have eight legs and insects have 6. We used junk modelling equipment to make our own minibeasts. Some of us included antennae and the correct number of legs!

In Drawing Club, we watched Superted and really enjoyed drawing and writing about Planet Spotty and cosmic dust!

The highlight of our week was definitely sports day. We all took part in lots of different activities and had a great time cheering for our friends. 

In Week 4 we learned about a famous artist called Henri Matisse. We found out that he was a painter until he became ill. He then used collage to create artwork instead of paint. We looked at some of his pictures and were amazed at how colourful they were. We then used coloured shapes, scissors and glue to create our own Matisse-style artwork.

We learned the word ‘symmetrical’ and then had a go at making symmetrical butterflies. We painted one side of a butterfly shape and then folded it over to make an identical print on the other side.

Our Drawing Club activities have been based around The Tiger Who Came to Tea. We’ve drawn the tiger, the cafe, some very imaginative food orders and a magical tiger bus! 

Week 2

We started this week with a fun PE lesson! We used the wall bars and hall apparatus for the first time. We really enjoyed learning how to use the apparatus safely and experimented with different ways to travel on, up, around and through it.

On Wednesday we went to the church for the afternoon. We were greeted by some volunteers in the church community who wanted to help us learn how to enjoy our local churchyard and all of the amazing things it has to offer. We made bird feeders and natural crowns, hunted for mini beasts and did some leaf, bark and gravestone rubbings.

We also worked hard this week to make special cards for our Daddies for Father’s Day. I hope you enjoyed receiving your cards and that you had a wonderful day!

In Discovery Time this week we have been spending lots of time playing with water. Our new water butt now has actual rain water in it - hooray! We’ve been filling buckets, making mud, creating ponds, floating boats and experimenting with ways to trap water inside different shapes.

We finished off the week by hanging our homemade bird feeders up around our outside area. Hopefully the birds will enjoy eating all of the delicious seeds!

Week 1

It has been so lovely to be back together again after our half term break.

On Monday we spent the afternoon thinking about spirituality. We talked about what spirituality means to us and then tried hard to remember our four special symbols. The mirror represents our relationship with ourselves, the door represents the relationships we have with others, the window is our relationship with the world and the candle reminds us of the relationships we have with things beyond what we can see.

After lots of thoughtful discussions in class, we went out to the field to see what things we could find that made us say ‘Wow!’

Our caterpillars have been very busy in their chrysalises over the last two weeks. We were so excited to be able to see them emerge as beautiful butterflies! On Wednesday we took them to the butterfly garden and set them free.

We learned a new word this week: Microhabitat. We found out that different minibeasts like to live in different microhabitats, like wood piles, flower beds, mud and ponds. We filled a tuff tray with different natural materials to make microhabitats before hunting for different creatures. We found snails, worms, woodlice, centipedes, spiders and slugs! We had to think carefully about which part of the tuff tray to put them in to make sure that they went to the type of environment they enjoy living in.

We all decided to encourage more caterpillars to visit us by making caterpillar cafes in our creation station. We decorated boxes and foraged for leaves, grass and flowers to fill them with. We even wrote little signs to let the caterpillars know that they are welcome to come and eat!

In maths we learned how to use a new tool. It’s called a rekenrek and it helps to develop our fluency and number sense. We practised moving the beads with one push and tried hard to match our rekenreks to pictures on the screen.