Week 6 - 11th October 2024
Thank you all so much for your time this week during the parent teacher meetings. These are such important events, we love sharing all the fantastic learning that your child has been engaing in, so again, thank you, your support is very much appreciated.
Right, let us dive straight in to this week.......starting with a bit of gentle Maths.
Have you noticed our newest display board that is now up and running, every morning after the register and after we have ordered lunch, we put our feeling flowers in the pot and pick up our 'disc', put it on the board and then the helper tells us how many children are absent and who they are, if everybody is here we shout 'FULL HOUSE'....just goes to show Maths is everywhere!
Continuing with Maths, this week we focused on activities centered around the purpose of counting and with a little help from 'Mike the Meerkat' the children were soon securely counting sets of objects to find out how many there were. At the beginning of the week we met Mike who unfortunately didn't know how to count objects properly so Robins were very helpful and we taught Mike that the last the number in a set tells us how many there are all together.
We practised our 1 to 1 correspondence, by counting the objects at the same time as moving them or by touching/tagging them, using our wand to help us!
When we weren't busy counting objects, we loved singing counting songs.... "one, two, three, four, five once I caught a fish alive..." was one of our favourites! Why not have a go at counting some objects at home? Remember to move or touch/tag the objects as you count them! How many objects were there altogether?
"There are _____ altogether"
Within our RE lessons we have begun talking all about Harvest and what it means, we explored pictures related to Harvest ,from the fruit and vegetables that farmers grow to the tractors and combine harvesters that work on the land to harvest our crops. We then discussed how Harvest celebrates the time of year when crops are gathered from the fields and people can reflect and say thank you for the food that we have.
We then took our Harvest learning into our poetry and Robins loved reciting "Falling apples", it is lovely to see how quickly they are able to learn each new poem and also talk about what they like about the poems!
"I like the part with the wind whooo whooo, that was my favourite"
On Tuesday we didn't want the day to end, as we explored moving in different ways, from jogging to skipping, jumping to walking and continued to develop our spatial awareness and of course our listening skills! Once we had warmed up we also discussed the effects that exercise has on our bodies...."I feel really hot!", "My heart goes boom boom boom, really fast!"
The children loved using the beans bags and playing different team games where they needed to work together to either get the beanbags into the cones or into the bucket. They were able to follow the instructions depending on what team they were in and are showing increasing understanding of how to move safely around the hall, whilst of course having fun!
On Wednesday afternoon, it was our usual Pantomimus (music) lesson with Danielle. This week the instruments were out and we were all 'beeping' along to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Band Tijuana Taxi - google it and see if your child recognises it. When they came back into the classroom after the lesson they were telling me (and all at the same time) all about it and the 'beep' at the end - which apparently was the funniest bit!
Thursday afternoon was a particularly busy one this week - Bonjour - yes , it was time for our weekly French lesson with Mrs Chrimes, each week we start the lesson by saying some basic greetings such as asking / answering our names and asking how we feel.
This week we were also learning about minibeasts such as spiders and snails!
After French, as part of Black History Month, we continued our learning and appreciation for Rosa Parks - the children were quite understandably confused as to why anybody would have to move seats on a bus and were fully supportive of Rosa's refusal to move and in fact were fully supportive of her breaking the 'rules'. If your child talks about this at home and you wish to explore the topic further, we have several books in school that are age appropriate - just ask, we are more than willing for you to borrow these resources.
And of course Thursday was also World Mental Health Day where some of us wore yellow.
Finally, on Friday, we finished our week off with......The Write Dance Volcano!
Write Dance is a pre writing programme that teaches the physical skills needed for writing. Each week we have listened to a piece of music called The Volcano, we have swung our arms, twisted our wrists and flicked our fingers up and down. Then on Friday, with a crayon in BOTH HANDS, we used all the movements with 'pen to paper. to create our Volcano pictures. I wanted to keep the pictures in school however, William said - I want to take mine home to show Mummy and Daddy, then twelve other little voices said, and I do, and I do and I do......how could I say 'no'....I am sure by the time you read this you wil have had a full explanation to their drawing!
And finally finally....Phonics sounds for next week:-
h b f ff l ll ss
Keep up with the speedy sounds - they are going great, next step is to begin blending, sounding out the cvc words and then sliding the sounds together to make a word (they find this quite tricky to start with and it does take a lot of effort).
Have a wonderful weekend - see you all next week and donlt forget we have our Harvest Church Service on Wednesday so please feel free to join us at the Church in the morning.