Blog Week ending 26/11/21
A big thank you for getting reading books back in to us this week – sorry for the confusion!
To clarify: books will need to be returned into school on Tuesdays where they will remain until Friday when a new book will be sent home with your child. If your child does not have a book bag any bag will be ok to use for now, but this will also have to remain in school ready to be sent home with your child’s reading book on Friday. Please ensure you have read with your child at least once and we will check for sound recognition and blending before moving children onto the next book in the sequence. It may also be necessary for some children to be sent home with wordless books to develop their comprehension skills. We will ensure that if this is the case, we will include advice as to how to get the most out of using these books to aid your child’s understanding and develop discussion. Please do continue to use Bug Club and read with your child nightly to help us to develop that love of reading!
On to our learning this week!
This week our sounds in RWInc have been ‘th’, ‘z’ and ‘ch’. We have enjoyed lots of Fred talk using our Fred fingers to sound out the individual sounds in words and their special friends. We have been pushing the children to not only orally blend but begin to spell out the words using magnetic letters. A great idea for a stocking filler present as they are so versatile and really help the children to build the words that they can see before they begin writing them. Our new red word this week is my so we have now covered all of the tricky words from red word wall one. Please remember to keep practicing these at home!
In our maths this week we have been concentrating on number 5. Our rhyme for this number for the children to practice at home is:
Down and around with a flag on high, that’s the way we make a 5!
The children have been working hard to learn the number bonds to 5 using dominoes and counters. We know that if one side of the domino has one dot on then using our counters to count onwards we can count up to five by adding 4 dots on the other side. The children found this task really tricky as it is hard for children to count on as they see the other side of the domino as being a new set/group. We will continue to develop this skill over the next few weeks. We have also been enjoying our nursery rhyme shelves using the props from the songs on our five frames to see how many parts there are in five and working on making five up in different ways using different coloured counters.
In our mastering number work we have been focusing on subitising different pattern arrangements and using our speedy eyes to tell a friend if the pattern we can see is 4, fewer than 4 or more than 4.
In our topic work we have recapped last week’s learning on hibernation and have been investigating nocturnal animals. The children enjoyed discussing the animals they see during the day and learning about the animals who are awake at night time and why they are awake then. We read the lovely story Owl babies, a story where the mummy owl leaves her owlets to go and collect food. We engaged in some higher level thinking skills as we answered the question ‘is it ever right for a mummy to leave her babies’?' Many children suggested that the mummy owl had to go and look for food in the dark because owls are nocturnal and it is safer for them to hunt during the night because they are harder to be found by predators, whilst some of us thought that the mummy owl should not have left her babies in the dark as they were scared and mummies should never let their babies be scared! We did some online searching for facts about owls and learnt some interesting facts about how owls and other nocturnal animals adapt so that they are able to survive and function in the dark.
Armed with their new knowledge, the children did some sorting and classifying of nocturnal and diurnal animals, created observational line drawings of different types of owls and shared their new found facts about owls, with the firm favourite being that owls can turn their heads 270 degrees! We had great fun creating nocturnal dens outside in Pear Class garden and exploring our non-fiction books to develop our understanding.
Drawing club this week centered around the story What’s in the Witch’s Kitchen? We had so much fun creating our grotesque witches and exploring our character in more detail. As the children visit drawing club they are using their knowledge of narrative to tell stories as they draw. There are some very interesting plot lines indeed!
Later in the week we have looked a little bit at the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. We enjoyed hearing the story about the oil that made the candles stay alight for 8 days and how Jews often give gifts and play games using dreidels. We had a go at making some of our own dreidels. We have carried this learning into our PSHE session, where we have been thinking about houses and homes. Our discussion centred around "Are all houses the same?" and we thought about our own homes. You could talk about what makes your home unique to your family, as well as your favourite parts of your house and why these are special. We enjoyed making different homes using resources around the classroom.