News from the classrooms!
News from Early Years
Last week, Reception were learning about symmetry. They had fun creating symmetrical pizza toppings! Their challenge was to make each half of the pizza the same (and resist eating it until home time!)
We have been busy in the Early Years garden preparing for spring by having a tidy up of the vegetable troughs and planting some daffodil bulbs to bloom early next year.
In collective worship time, the children have heard about the mustard seed growing into a wonderful tree and have related this back to looking after themselves and our classroom so we can grow too!
Our activity shed has finally arrived! The children are enjoying selecting the bats and balls, skipping ropes and other sports equipment to play with to develop fitness and gross motor skills in our garden.
Our story this week is ‘The Billy Goat’s Gruff.’ The children have re-told the story using some wonderful voices as the mean troll and the shy goats. It has been great to hear them using the repeated refrains from the story ‘trip, trap, trip, trap.’ As an alternative to crossing the bridge, we decided to make the goats some boats. There were many different designs and materials used, including cork, twigs, paper and plastic. It was a great way to learn about floating and sinking and types of materials.
Early years began making cars in Forest School using the workbench & tools safely!
In Class 2 we been learning how to create story plans to help with story writing. We are using coins to find amounts and give change. In history we are learning all about The Great Fire of London.
We are also thinking about Rules and Routines and why we need them.
This term, Class 3 have been looking at poems in English. Specifically the works of Michael Rosen and his poem ‘Don’t’. We looked at the features of poems including rhyming, repetition, alliteration and metaphors and similes. We also practiced performing some of Michael Rosen’s poems using actions and different voices.
Class 3 practiced writing their own version of ‘Don’t’ but aimed at Reception and what we thought they shouldn’t do. We came up with some great lists and then wrote our own poems using things like “slap” and “clap”. We then practiced our poems and performed them to Reception, which they all loved!
Class 3 have been looking at lots in Maths like place value using part-part whole models and number lines. We have looked at column addition and how we lay out or columns and add two, three and four digit numbers. We used chalk outside to show our working out one lesson and have used lots of different resources to try to answer missing number questions.
The children have been loving our Topic subjects where we are doing Rocks and Fossils in Science and the Stone Age in History. We have compared rocks and learnt about the different types of rocks including igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic and we have looked at how fossils have formed. In History the Stone Age topic has gone down a storm we have learnt about how long ago the Stone Age was and how people lived in the Early Stone Age as hunter gatherers by going to forest school and looking for resources they might have used.
Our class story is ‘Wild Way Home’ by Sophia Kirtley and the class have really loved reading the book together and are very invested in the story of Charlie and why they are in the Stone Age. We have made predictions about what we think might happen and why and it’s lovely to see them engaging so well with their reading.
Class 4 have been very busy this half term learning all about Africa in our topic ‘African Adventure’, in particular South Africa! We have been exploring the history of the Kingdom of Benin in our history lessons. In art, we have been finding out more about the Ndebele people and their art work. We have sketched lines, patterns and shapes and then used a range of art media to colour our work. In our most recent art lesson we found out about the famous artist Esther Mahlangu and made art work inspired by her! We are hoping we can share more of our art work with you at the end of this half term.
In English we have been reading the story ‘Journey to Jo’burg’ by Beverley Naidoo. We have really been enjoying this provoking story and discussing some important issues that are raised in the story. We particularly enjoyed a lesson where we had to argue reasons for or against the main characters getting into a lorry with a stranger to reach their mother in Johannesburg. Once we’d discussed some arguments for and against we had a go at conscious alley!
We had a wonderful time at Longridge last week too! Lots of us overcame our fears and gave things a go even if we were feeling worried about it.