Blog 7th January

What a super week we have had and how wonderful it is to have our Apples together again!
 
A great big welcome to our new Apples who have all made such a great start. 
 
In our first week back together again we've been thinking about birds. We have learnt to recognise some of the most common birds we can see in and around our school grounds: 
 
robins
black birds (we have learnt that the male and female birds look different)
pigeons (there are a lot of these on our field!)
blue tits
 
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
soar
fly
 
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. 
 
We enjoyed putting on some wings of our own out on the school field and the children had a great time flying and soaring. We asked the children a key question and they enjoyed giving their answers and then flying off. We asked: 
 
If you had wings, where would you go?
 
Some went to America, some to a magical party but most chose to fly to Granny's/Grandma's/Nanna's house!  Maybe you could explore this question together at home and have fun flying off on adventures. 
 
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/pastel 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. 
 
Alongside this, the children have enjoyed learning a new song all about a robin. We've attached it so that you can sing together at home. 
 
Can we make a plea for you to ensure that your child's shoes are named. We had some tricky times this week when we were trying to match up similar shoes which had no names in. 
 
We hope that everyone has a great weekend an we look forward to seeing you on Monday!
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