During Spring 1, the children enjoyed learning all about dinosaurs.  They enjoyed listening to lots of stories and looking at non-fiction books about dinosaurs, learning about what they ate and their special names.

We loved playing with our mini-me figures

"My dinosaurs is a long neck."       Fossil pasta     "My dinosaur is a plant eater."   

We learnt about extinction and had to free the endangered animals by cutting the string to free them.  

We read 'Dinosaurs Love Underpants' and later, we played 'Pairs', matching pairs of pants.

Celebrations! Happy New Year!

This week we have been learning about Lunar New Year.  We talked about how this festival is celebrated around the world.  Last week, we enjoyed taking part in some fun activities, as some of our parents from Hong Kong came to school to talk to us about how Chinese New Year is celebrated.  This week in our classrooms, we enjoyed many activities focussing on Lunar New year.

The children had to tidy the furniture in the small world house – can you sort the furniture so that it is the correct room?  We also enjoyed making tea in the water tuff spot.  They loved exploring the textures of the tea bags and the changes which took place in the colour of the water.  They have also developed their pouring and transferring skills as they made their tea.

We also talked about how we get ready for a celebration and how it is traditional to clean your house to get ready for Chinese New Year.  They took this task very seriously, as they cleaned the role play house before they decorated it.  They noticed that many of the decorations were red and yellow and they made patterns using only red and yellow bobbins, cubes and pegboards. 

In phonics, we are continuing to develop our listening skills and following instructions.  We learnt how to play the game ‘Find Dex’.  One child hid Dex, as another child had to wear a blindfold so they didn’t know where Dex was. After they took the blindfold off, they had to look for Dex and their friends beat the wooden blocks quitter or louder depending if they were close to Dex or far away.  It’s very similar to the game Hot or Cold. They did really well understanding the instructions and everyone was very keen to have their eyes covered so that they could search for Dex. 

In Maths, we have continued to look at numbers from 1-5 more closely. We have been subitising and saying how many we can see and also loved swatting the correct group to show groups of 1,2,3,4 or 5 camels.  We have also been working on recognising how many objects are in our 5 frame.   We also did the correct number of jump, taps on our knees, claps, as well as show that many fingers to match the number.

Block play is always very popular and this week the children were really creative as they made some fabulous play equipment for their themselves or the dolls.  They made slides for the babies and seesaws for themselves.  There was lots of trial and error and working together to make sure that their inventions worked.  It was wonderful to see them so focussed as they planned together and listening to each other’s ideas.

Who does that job?  Our personal histories - celebrating our brithdays

This week we have been focussing on our personal histories and we have been learning all about birthdays.  We have made playdough cakes and added beads and candles to them. The children had a go at counting the candles they had added to their cake.

We planned a birthday party for Dex, our Classroom dinosaur. We shared ideas about what we needed for the party and had a go at drawing pictures to show what we wanted for the party.  The children were encouraged to talk about their drawings and describe their marks. 

Our focus story is ‘Spot Bakes a Cake’ and on Friday, we made cupcakes and sandwiches for Dex’s birthday. We also played Musical Chairs which the children really loved.

In Maths, we have been looking at the number one and talked about what it looked like and how there was usually an object on their own when we counted one thing.  We have also been learning the rhyme,' One Finger, One Thumb Keep Moving'. We also did marble painting and the children loved moving the tray around and watch the lines the marble covered in paint created on their paper.

We also loved decorating our Class Christmas tree to get ready for celebrating Christmas over the next two weeks and we've been busy joining Poppy and Daisy Classes and working really hard at learning our songs for our Christmas performance. 

This week, we have continued to talk about people who help us such as people who collect our bins, clean the streets, construction workers, dentists, nurses and doctors.

Thanks to all of you who were able to stay for our Reading morning; the children loved reading and playing with you.

Poppies, Remembrance and Children in Need

Thank you to everyone who supported our ‘Children in Need’ activitie today.  It was great to see the children coming to school dressed up.

Thank you also for those who brought money in for toast for the appeal today- we had buttered toast and jam and butter on toast and for those who didn’t like toast, we made jam sandwiches.  

We also attended our first whole school assembly where Mrs Mitchell weighed the giant pumpkins which had grown in the Outdoor Learning garden.  I was incredibly proud of how the children sat and listened really well.

We have been talking a little more about Remembrance Day this week and some of the children said that they remembered their grandparents who aren’t here anymore. Some of the children said that they had seen some people with poppies on them and some had seen it on the television.  We made our own Poppy wreath by painting our hands red and adding black dots to the centre. We joined them all together to make our beautiful wreath. We made red, green and black playdough and practised making playdough balls and squashing them down with the palm of our hands to make the poppies and we were really good at rolling the playdough to make long stems for them.

The children have been much more confident at exploring the classroom. They added more resources to the water and pushed the boats down the pipes by pouring water behind them. They experimented to see if more water made the boat move faster and less water made it move slower. 

After three weeks of telling the story, ‘Whatever Next!’, the children know the story very well and were able to tell me the story explaining the main events of the story.  I was very proud of how many of them remembered words such as colander and helmet and said, ‘Whoosh! Out into the night’.