Who comes out at night?
We will be reading lots of books about animals that come out at night and the habitats of those animals through both fiction and non-fiction texts. We will be learning through free choice and activities, such as, owl collaging and clay hedgehogs, exploring Autumn by going on a walk around school and making patterns out of objects such as conkers, pine cones, leaves and sticks. We will also be having visits from some owls, which we will get to see fly around the hall. We will then have a visit from the planetarium who will help us learn more about night and space. We will also receive an Indian Dance workshop and learn about the celebrations of Diwali as well as learning about Christmas and preparing our Christmas performance. Our role play this half term will be an Animal Rescue Centre where we will think about how to look after the animals we are learning about.
We enjoyed a visit from the owls. They were fabulous to watch. They had flat faces and were silent when they flew. Some of us even had an owl land on our hand. We all had lots of fun!
We used items we find during autumn to create a repeating pattern.
Each half term we have a rhyme challenge, this half term our challenge was to learn these 8 rhymes: One, two buckle my shoe, Hot cross buns, Hey diddle diddle, London Bridge, Goosy Goosy gander, Little red riding hood in the wood, 5 gingerbread men on a tray and oats and beans and barley grow. We have enjoyed practising and performing these rhymes so ask us to show you!
We read the story The Little Red Hen and then read some instructions to make bread like the hen in the book. We had lots of fun and it tasted great!
We had a visit from the puppet man, he showed us lots of different puppets and how to use them. He had over 60 puppets for us to look at and use. We then helped him tell lots of the stories we have been leaning about at school. It was lots of fun!
While we were outside, we sang 10 green bottles and ordered the numerals on the bottle ready for the next children to have a go.
Why didn't the gingerbread man want to swim across the river?
We did an experiment to find out what happened when we put the gingerbread man in different things. We put him in water, beans, flour and left him in the air. We set the timer for one minute and then took the gingerbread man out of them. The gingerbread man in the water was all broken and soggy when we took him out, I wouldn't want to eat him now.
After reading the story "The Gingerbread Man" we decorated the gingerbread men with raisin eyes and buttons.
We planted beans like Jack from Jack and the beanstalk. I wonder how tall the plants will grow.
We enjoyed hunting for CVC words on beans in the garden.
We had lots of fun outside writing letters and some CVC words using water and paintbrushes.
We celebrated National Poetry Day. We read a poem called Autumn and added in some actions to help us to remember all of the words. We discussed the changes that occur in Autumn. To show this, we decided to create a picture of a tree with yellow, orange and brown leaves. We used leaves which we found that had already fallen from trees to print with. We went on a counting hunt with a theme of Autumn in our garden.
We were very lucky to have a visit from a librarian from Sutton-in-Ashfield library. She came to read us some stories and sing some rhymes with us.
We went in the garden to draw bears with the big chalks. We had a go at putting our names next to our pictures.
We held an art exhibition for our parents and carers. We displayed all of our work that we have been doing during our St. George and the Dragon topic. We explained to our visitors how we had made our creations and what we have learnt.
We have been celebrating St. George's Day. We have dressed up as a knight, a princess, a dragon or in red clothes. We have been writing about what we are wearing and making flags.
We have a new area outside - a Potion Laboratory. We have written an ingredients list, carefully poured in the liquids and mixed it up before saying a magic spell.
We enjoyed a walk around our school garden and outside area looking out for signs of spring. We used all our senses to notice different signs.
We all noticed our shadows on the floor in the beautiful sunshine and we had a discussion about who's shadow was the longest.
Spring Two 2018
This half term we are focussing on being healthy. We are going to be reading lots of exciting stories around this.
We started off with the adventures of Supertato with our superhero vegetable themed World Book Day, where we read the instructions to make our own superhero outfit. We found ways to defeat the evil pea by setting carrots free from ice, unlocked Supertato by adding together amounts, estimated and counted out the brussel sprouts from the jar and created our own superhero vegetables.
We will also use non-fiction texts to find out information on ways to keep healthy and read instructions for a fitness routine.
We are looking forward to our Healthy Workshop and Fun Fit session, as well as our Fruit tasting workshop with Asda staff.
We will be continuing to develop our mathematical skills as we visit our fruit and vegetable shop each morning to purchase our snack and we have to work out which combinations of coins we can use to have the correct amount of money.
We had a fantastic start to the half term by celebrating Chinese New Year by creating lanterns, having a Chinese food restaurant where we sampled some real foods and learnt a dance with the Chinese New Year workshop using fans.
We were lucky to see the chicks that have hatched in school. We talked about what they need to eat and drink. We watched how they moved and flapped their wings. He carefully held them too.
We took part in a Healthy Eating Workshop and a Fun Fit session.
We raised money for Sport Relief by completing different challenges in teams to make up the distance of 1 mile. We ran, hopped, skipped, dribbled a ball, balanced a quoit on our heads whilst moving and completed an obstacle course.
We spotted some signs of Spring in our outdoor area. The bulbs we planted in the Autumn have started to grow. We decided to make some posters to tell people to look out for the plants and not to pull them up. We used a thermometer to measure the temperature. We noticed that even though it is warmer outside this week, it is still hotter inside.
We decided to investigate how to melt the snow and talked about how we found it like ice when we melted that. We enjoyed making some sculptures out of the snow. We talked about how cold it felt. We had an idea to measure the temperature with our thermometer. We watched the temperature drop.
We have been reading the story Oliver's Vegetables this week. We investigated the vegetables in the story and wrote our own shopping list. We planted cress seeds so we can watch our own vegetables grow.
We celebrated World Book Day.
We love using our new reading boats.
We celebrated Chinese New Year with a dance workshop, where we learnt a peacock dance and we used fans to represent the peacock's feathers. We were a Chinese Dragon and wore a costume to represent this and moved around in a long line together.
We also visited a Chinese restaurant. We used real coins to purchase our meal. We had to add the coin values together to work out the total. We enjoyed the food and trying new things. We talked about how they use chopsticks instead of a knife and fork in China.
We enjoy reading in school. We take part in lots of different reading activities with adults and we also enjoying books on our own and with our friends.
We are developing lots of gross motor skills during our P.E. sessions and our time in our outdoor area.
We have been learning about wild animals this half term and about their habitats. We read the story ‘Walking through the Jungle’ and leant the song. We then explored the different habitats and matched animals to where they live. The ZooLab visited our school and we got to find out about some animals from different countries and we asked lots of questions. We have enjoyed focussing on the story Handa’s Surprise and retelling the story with the real fruits. We made our own delicious fruit salad by reading a set of instructions. Due to all the cold weather, we have investigated how to melt ice and what happens when it melts. We came up with lots of great ideas for this. We had a fantastic afternoon when our parents visited school and we showed them our counting collections and how we have learnt to count different amounts and record this. We had a Samba Dance Workshop and explored dance moves and costumes with a carnival feel. We are finishing off our half term with a Pancake Day celebration and a visit from a librarian.
Every morning, we visit our Fruit Shop and buy our snack. We have some money and we have to look on the price list and work out how we will pay for the items with the coins we have. We are getting very good at recognising the different values of coins, counting in 1s, counting in 2s, doubling numbers and adding together different combinations of coins. At the end, we add together all the coins, using our counting skills and we work out how much the shop made. At the end of the week, we look at which day made the most money and which the least.
A librarian from Sutton-in-Ashfield library came to visit our school and she told us the story of Bumble Bear and then we got to taste some honey afterwards.
We celebrated Pancake Day. We read instructions to make a pancake and then we visited our Pancake Shop and used real coins to purchase a topping of our choice and eat it. They were delicious. We created a pictogram to find out which topping was the most popular and we counted in 2s and 1s to find out how much money the Pancake Shop made.
We made our own frying pans out of junk modelling materials. We decided that masking tape was stronger than glue to hold on the handle.
We have been developing our counting skills through using our collections. We have used 10s frames to count out the items and we have learnt how to group items into 10s and then count in 10s for a larger collection. We invited our families in to school to see our collections and we demonstrated to them how we can count different collections.
We were very interested about the snow and ice outside, so got some ice and experimented with different ways of melting it. We froze penguins and polar bears inside the ice and discussed and then tested out the quickest way to set them free.
We enjoy taking parts in lots of creative activities during our free choice time.
We had a visit from the ZooLab. We got to find out about lots of animals from around the world. We asked questions about where they live, what they eat, where they sleep and if they are nocturnal or not. We got to hold some animals too and we talked about any similarities and differences.
Samba Dancing January 2018
While reading the story of Handa's Surprise and finding out about different countries around the world, we enjoyed learning how to samba dance, moving our bodies to the music. We tried the samba head dress and had a parade.
We have been learning about Autumn and we went on an Autumn walk around school and used iPads to take photographs of what we found. We used leaves, conkers, acorns, flowers, twigs to make patterns. We are learning about lots of animals that live in England on farms and in the woods. We are focusing on nocturnal animals. We are enjoying listening to stories about these animals, as well as finding out information about them from non-fiction texts. We had a visit from some owls, who flew around the school hall and we got to hold some nocturnal animals. We had a great time when the Planetarium visited and we learnt more about night time and space. We developed our musical skills when we took part in a drumming workshop.
We had a visit from two vets. We got to dress up as a vet and bandage up a dog with a cut and feed another one through a tube using a syringe. We looked at some animal bones and teeth as well as x-rays. We enjoyed finding out about what a vet does and it helped us with role playing this in our Animal Rescue Centre role play area.
We had a visit from the Planetarium. We went inside the dark dome. We learnt about night and the stars and how day changed into night.
We had a visit from Bob and his owls. We watched them fly around the hall and we asked questions to find out more information on owls and help us with our topic on nocturnal animals. Afterwards, we observed the owls standing on their perch whilst we drew them.
We had an African Drumming Workshop. We sang songs and tapped to the beat on the drums.