Blog week ending 30th April
Happy Friday everyone!
Here's to a lovely long weekend and let's keep fingers crossed for a little bit of sunshine.
It has been another great week in Pear class!
We had a planting bonanza on Monday afternoon as we planted carrots, sweetcorn, herbs, peas, lettuce, beetroot and potatoes. We are hopeful that over the next few weeks our vegetables will begin to sprout and we will have an abundance of yummy healthy foods to try. We've explored the vegetables that grow above the ground and the root vegetables that grow under the ground. Maybe you could revisit this at home over the weekend. It would be even better if you could begin growing your own vegetables. Remember herbs grow quickly and easily on a windowsill. It's a great opportunity to talk about the parts of a plant (we've explored roots, shoots, the stem, leaves, flowers) and to talk about changes and growth. Our growing bean plants also gave us an opportunity for some measuring this week - we measured with cubes and then tried to measure with rulers. The children are bringing their bean plants home. It would be great if you could keep a record of the measurements each week. I wonder how tall they will grow?
The story Oliver's Vegetables was a firm favourite with us all and we had fun tasting the rainbow on Monday afternoon as we, like Oliver, ate a selection of brightly coloured veg! It was great to see the children so keen to try new things and the children were very proud of themselves for giving the veggies a go! I wonder if you could buy and try a new vegetable this weekend. I wonder what it could be..?
We used vegetables for the basis of our maths work at the beginning of the week as we opened up the Pear Class vegetable take away shop (well, we are a healthy school!) The children were great at telling their subtraction stories.
Here's an example:
"First there were 9 vegetables.
Then Mrs H-S took away 5.
There were 4 vegetables left in the shop."
It was so important for the children to be able to speak the stories that they made. This shows that they really understand the process. Maybe you could open a shop at the weekend and do some taking away. Don't forget to encourage your child to speak their story. We did also begin to record our calculations:
9 - 5 = 4
We continued to measure later in the week as we made play doh worms. Our important words were:
long, longer
short, shorter
shortest, longest
the same length
The children were great at following our instructions to make a worm that was longer or shorter than a given example. But, some found it tricky to use our key vocabulary to explain the worms that they had made. For example, we were looking for the children to notice that "this worm is longer than that worm." or "This worm is shorter than that worm, but longer than this one."
Maybe you could have a go at using this vocabulary over the weekend. You could draw flowers, snap pieces of spaghetti or make towers with blocks. I'd love to see what you do but don't forget to encourage your child to speak those all important comparative sentences.
On Friday it was run a mile day. We discussed the benefits of continuous exercise and tried to run our own mile in the school hall as the wet weather meant we had to stay inside. We all worked super hard to keep going, even if some of us preferred to walk and found it hard to keep going for so long. A huge marshmallow clap and gold star place for all of Pear class as we are made of tough determination!
We finished our set 2 sounds this week in RWI with the new sound oy - toy for a boy. Mrs Horne-Smith is not too keen on the gender stereotyping in the ditty for this sound though, so we were sure to note that a train can be a toy for anyone! Sally and Sandy are keen for a bit of a celebration on Tuesday to mark the end of Set 2 sounds so look out for certificates to follow!
Have a happy Bank Holiday weekend and I'll see you all on Tuesday morning.
Mrs H-S
Topic!
Magic Maths!