Blog 14 - 12th January 2024
A very big Happy new Year to you all!
Welcome back everyone and hello to our new children and families! It is so great to have you here in Apple Class with us. We have come back with big, happy smiles on our faces, ready to learn and play.
On Friday we said a big hello to Mrs Tate, who is our new teacher now every Friday! She is a familiar face to us already, as she usually teaches in Pear Class and Willow class - so we have seen her many times before.
So this week we have begun our new focus topic of “cold.” We gave the children lots of enhanced provision to explore with a wintery theme. There has been new words to learn too, such as, icicles, ice, snowflake, pattern, frost and frozen.
We've been out on the field this week trying to identify some seasonal changes! The children had to find trees that have and haven’t lost their leaves and try to remember what these are called "evergreen trees." They have to find and make collections of evergreen leaves.
Our thinking questions have been; what is Winter and what happens in Winter?
How can we tell it's Winter?
Outside when walking I can see….
Why are the trees bare?
Why do some still have leaves?
How are they the same, different, how do they feel?
At the beginning of the week we looked at practising our scissor skills as we created our own snowflakes. The children worked hard when folding the paper into smaller pieces and showed resilience when attempting to cut them. They were able to develop their fine motor and hand eye coordination skills throughout. They then finished off the snowflakes by sprinkling a little bit of glitter on them.
We also focused on name recognition and writing the letters in our name this week. We mainly focused on name recognition and knowing what sound it starts with and then attempted to write the initial letter sound. Some children were able to trace over the top of their name card and write some letters independently.
Thank you to all of those who have volunteered to take part in our Mystery Reader project! We have had a wonderful response with so many parents offering to come and read and share their favourite stories with the children. The children have loved it! We will be continuing with the project this half term. If you would like to take part please drop me an email and we can get a date and appropriate time arranged. Equally, if a family member lives far away or is unable to physically come into school then we could maybe arrange something with this!
Have a great weekend everyone!
Mrs Farrar and the Apple Class Team
bethany.farrar@swansfield.northumberland.sch.uk