Blog 15 - 19th January

This week we've made a start on our topic 'brilliant birds.' We have begun recognising and identifying common garden birds we see in and around our school grounds: RobinsBlackbirds (we have learnt that the male and female birds look different,) Pigeons (there are a lot of these on our field) Bluetits and Seagulls
 
We have talked about the key features that all of these birds have and this key vocabulary has been used a lot throughout the week: 
 
beak
feathers
wings
claws
nest 
 
The children had a fabulous time on a bird watching trip to our big school field. 
It would be great if you cold do some bird watching this weekend and use the key vocabulary detailed above. 
 
Back in Apple Class, the children carefully made observational drawings of birds. They looked at the pictures and chose which one to draw. We encouraged the children to hold their pencil with an effective tripod grip (thumb and 1st two fingers) and then to make the shapes they needed for the different parts of the bird. So, for example - round shapes for the head and body, a long thin shape for the legs and a pointed shape for the beak.  Many managed this really well and their drawings are becoming really detailed and mature. We asked the children to look closely at the pictures of the birds to decide which colours to use. 
 

On Thursday we had SNOW!! How exciting for our Apple Class children. We put our snowsuits, wellies on and wrapped up super warm and had the best time exploring the freshly fallen snow! 

 
Can we make a plea for you to ensure that your child's clothing and shoes are named. We had some tricky times this week when we were trying to match up similar shoes and other items which had no names in. 
 
Have a very restful and happy weekend. 

Mrs Farrar