What a lovely first week back with the children in 2023, despite the miserable weather!
We have all moved into our new RWI groups and the children are doing a fantastic job. Keep up the great work everyone!
In our maths work this week we have been focusing on the number zero and what the numeral 0 represents. All of the children could easily understand that zero means there is 'nothing there' or 'all gone', but they found it difficult to represent zero in different ways. For example, they knew that one tree equalled 1 but they could not explain that zero was represented as the tree had 0 apples. Some of us also found it difficult to represent this in our own pictures so we will keep working on this over the coming weeks.
Our maths at the end of the week explored the idea of ‘sharing fairly’ and ‘more and less’. We demonstrated some super counting, working out, problem solving and reasoning skills by sharing food between two teddies. Have a look at some of the pictures below.
Our topic this week centred around the immediate changes we can see and feel around us. The children have really noticed this week how the temperature has changed. We discussed how the season has now changed to winter and read the story Winters Sleep to develop our understanding about how animals around us adapt to this colder season. We were introduced to our key vocabulary around this topic: winter, season, hibernate, temperature, survive and we started thinking about how animals either hibernate in these these colder months to survive the colder weather and lack of food stores or they migrate to warmer places. Focusing in on the hedgehog we considered what they might need to use to build a hibernation station. We carefully planned what we thought one would look like and then went onto the school field and used twigs, leaves, earth, logs and whatever natural materials we could find that we thought a hedgehog would use to make a well hidden den.
Although we know that many birds migrate to hotter countries, some British Garden birds remain here struggling in the frosty weather to get food and keep warm. We decided as compassionate citizens we would make some bird fat balls and some stringed cheerios to help those birds who are starting to struggle and hang them in Plum Class garden and around school grounds.
Alongside this we have been enjoying time in our weather station role play area as well as creating our own large scale hibernation dens!
In PE we are learning to develop the ability to control a ball in a range of ways. We started by looking at the different types of balls used for different sports and then we enjoyed moving balls in different ways. We rolled, kicked, threw, passed and bounced. We had fun sitting in a circle and rolling a ball to our friends. As the weeks progress, we will focus on each skill.
We got back into the swing of reading to an adult this week. It’s always so lovely to hear our fantastic Plums read- the progress is clear week by week. Children will read weekly and bring their reading book home at the end of the week. Please continue to hear your child read frequently.
Our theme in ‘Charanga’ this week has been ‘everyone’. We boogied and bopped to ‘We are family’ by Sister Sledge, finding the pulse and talking about the song afterwards. We then joined in with some action songs- wind the bobbin and if you’re happy and you know it. We really enjoyed playing along to the music with our instruments this week!
At Swansfield we have been celebrating World Religions Day across the classes. Plum class have been thinking about the Christian religion and what it means to be Christian. With this in mind, our RE this week focussed on ‘God- giver of life’. We talked about the things we find interesting or wonderful about the world around us. We created a large scale picture- using animals to cut and stick from around the world and discussed where they can be found in the world. We explored the desert, the sea and sky as we went along. We talked about the beautiful things in nature and our favourite things that we find interesting and wonderful.
Jigsaw Jenie helped us with our Jigsaw session again as she did last term. Our focus this half term is ‘Dreams and goals’. This week we thought about the importance of perseverance and ‘keeping on trying’ when tackling challenges. We had some brilliant ideas about how to solve problems on our own- well done Plum class.
We look forward to seeing you for a full week of fun and learning next week!
Miss F