Blog 15th November

It was great to talk to many of you this week at our consultation meetings and to share the great progress that the children are making.  If you weren’t able to come in, please get in touch and we’ll try to arrange a convenient time to talk.

Meanwhile, in the classroom, there has been a lot going as always!

We began the week with the classic story ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’.  Of course, this is such a familiar story to the children and they enjoyed re-telling it verbally and through pictures and word labels in their books.  We then enjoyed a bit of sustained shared thinking to explore aspects of the story that we can’t see on the page.  Sustained shared thinking is when we talk together about something that doesn’t have a definite answer.  We have to share and develop our own ideas.  The question I posed to the children was “Where did the tiger come from?”  The children were quickly able to come up with many imaginative ideas but also began to draw on their knowledge of tigers.  Look out in our classroom entrance area for some of our thoughts and work on this book.

At the end of The Tiger that Came to Tea, we noted that Sophie and her mummy and daddy go out in the dark to a café.  This picture began some work on features of night time.  We talked about our knowledge of night time and found out why it gets dark.  We know that the earth spins and that it is light when our part of the world is facing the sun and that it is dark when it is not.  We’ve enjoyed looking at the globe and pictures of the sun and moon.  Maybe you could make your own world, sun or moon pictures over the weekend or explore further reasons for light and dark.  Additionally, you could make a little chart of when it gets dark in the evening.  Is it dark at 3.00pm?  What about 4.00pm and 5.00pm? 

As part of our Anti-Bullying week work, we read Mr Big and discovered that we must do all that we can to help others feel special and valued.  To show this in action everyone in our class made a friendship bracelet to give to a friend.  We told that friend exactly what makes them special.  The children loved doing this and we were so proud of their kindness and thoughtfulness. 

In their free play, the children have made some really great ‘dark sky’ pictures and models. They have taken messages in the message centre and explored dinosaur mountain!

In our mathematical work, we have discovered that addition can be done in any order.  So, it doesn’t matter if you say 3 + 4 = 7 or 4 + 3 = 7 – you still end up with the same whole number!  In addition, we’ve been working hard at forming number 7 this week.  Maybe you could have a go at practising number formation up to 7 at home or even write the two number stories that go with a part, part whole model.

Fingers crossed for a dry weekend so that we can all enjoy a bit of fresh air.

Please make sure that your child has wellies in school so that we can all enjoy the field at playtimes whatever the weather. Hats, gloves and a warm coat are also a must from now until the spring.  It’s cold on that field!