Blog 23 - 21st April
Hello Apple Class and a very warm welcome to our new children and parents! Hopefully you have all received Apple Class News, via email - which is our newsletter for this half term. If you've managed to have a read through you would therefore have seen that my teaching days have now changed, as Mrs Grimes has stepped up to being our Acting Head Teacher. I will therefore be teaching in Apple Class, Monday - Thursday, every week. We welcome Mrs Horne-Smith from Pear Class who will be teaching every Friday.
This week we have delved straight into our first topic of this half term which is 'Spring into Summer!' The children have been exploring, investigating, comparing and learning new words too! We have had such a busy week! Our motto in Apple Class is to have 'busy fingers and busy brains!'
Firstly, the children were asked the questions 'how do we know it's Spring? What are the signs of Spring?' We spent a lot of the week discussing these questions, as we found that there are a lot of signs to tell us that it's Spring!
Following our discussions we started to explore and compare Spring flowers and their features. We looked at daffodils and tulips. We discussed the three things a flower needs to grow. The children said that a flower needs 'soil,' 'sunshine' (warmth) and 'water' to grow successfully.
The children then went on to compare the daffodils to the tulips. The first things that the children noticed were the colours and then the different shapes of the flowers.
Our activities around our Spring flowers were to build a flower and to paint a bright, yellow, daffodil.
Our painting skills involved choosing and using the correct colours, mostly yellow, orange and green. Then building a flower involved the children to use their scissor skills to cut out the parts of the flower and to the verbally name the different parts of the daffodil. Our key vocabulary was flower head, petals, seeds, stem, roots, and leaves. We kept reinforcing these key words throughout the week.
The daffodil paintings look great and are now on display in Apple Class (they'll be ready to take home in a couple of weeks - so you won't miss out on these great masterpieces!)
Our outdoor learning this week has taken us on a nature Spring walk - looking for those signs of Spring that we have been discussing in the classroom! The children spotted buds and blossom on the trees, daffodils growing in the grass and the children noticed many more birds in the sky and in our school grounds. When the children got back inside, they had to draw something that they had remembered seeing on their Spring walk. Can you look for signs of Spring over the weekend? This is an ideal opportunity to reinforce and practise the key vocabulary from above.
Towards the end of last term most parents really appreciated a little task that you were able to do with your child together at home. So here is a little suggested task for next week. This does follow on from our learning that we've been doing all week and it can easily be uploaded onto your child's learning journal:
Can you look for signs of spring where you live? Can you collect up to 10 Spring objects from your garden? (Aim for your child to do this independently and make sure that they are counting out loud and touching each item as they say a number.)
If counting out 10 items is too easy, you can make this more challenging and extend their learning further by asking them to collect 2 flowers, 3 pebbles, 4 leaves and 5 strands of grass (or whatever you like). This can then lead onto some practical addition. We have 2 flowers and 3 pebbles how many do we have altogether? If up to 10 items is to challenging - work on making a set of 5 items.
Mrs Grimes was back on Wednesday ready for our Musical Apples sessions in the hall. As always, there was lots of singing - we have been learning a new songs '' and 'Spring is here.' I've attatched the song words below for you to continue practising at home over the weekend.
The children then sang "Mary had a little Lamb." They watched some lambs in a field on the big screen and talked about the movements they were making. We noticed jumping, skipping and lots of running. While listening op Spring by Vivaldi, we explored these movements in the big hall. Many children find hopping and skipping hard and there was plenty of opportunity to work on these skills 1:1 with an adult. If your child finds it hard to hop, hold both of their hands to support them in this movement. If your child is learning to skip, slow this process down so they can get the hang of hopping and then stepping. As we skip, we say "hop, step, hop, step". With regular practice, all of our children will master these essential skills!
Have a very happy bank holiday weekend everyone.
Bye for now,
Mrs Farrar