Spring 2- 11.3.22
Welcome back plum class! Sorry about no blog last week, with being off most of the week I missed a lot of the action. But I am back this week and what a busy week we've had. It has been so lovely to see some sunnier weather this week and we are starting to get the children back out in our garden.
Last week we began our new topic for this half term, Africa. We started by recapping the seven continents of the world and then used Google earth to zoom in close on the continent Africa. We noticed the size difference between Africa and the UK is enormous!!
We then talked about all things Africa and used non fiction books to inspire our future learning. We had some good discussion about what we wanted to learn and find out about. The children decided they wanted to know more about the weather, the people, the animals and the food.
Year 1 friends then moved onto map work and labelled four countries on their maps. Egypt in the North, Kenya in the East, South Africa and Ghana in the West.
Reception friends had a look at the map of Africa and spent time comparing this to the map of the UK. The main thing the children noticed was the difference in amounts of countries. We then located Alnwick on the map and had fun looking at maps of Alnwick. The children were able to spot familiar landmarks (Alnwick Castle and gardens, the town square and school) and talk about places they have been. They then had fun drawing their own map.
As Africa is so big, we decided we would spend our time looking at the country Kenya. We decided to find out some key facts- we found out that the capital city of Kenya is Nairobi and that Kenya gets is name from Mount Kenya. Its main landmark is the Tana river.
We then had fun looking at the flag of Kenya and the flag of Great Britain. They are both very colourful but very different. We talked about what the colours represent and had fun painting our own.
Next week we will continue our learning all about Kenya!
In our science work we are continuing to learn all about materials. We spent some time this week recapping vocabulary used to describe materials (hard, soft, bendy, rigid, transparent, smooth, bumpy etc) and then had a go at sorting them using a ven diagram.
In our RWI work, reception have began learning their set 2 sounds. We have learnt ay, ee and igh. Can you think of words containing these sounds? Can you write some down or write them in a sentence? For example, "can I play?" Or "can you see?" Or " I fly high".
Year 1 have continued to consolidate set 2 sounds and practice writing sentences with capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.
In our maths work, reception have recapped their number bonds to 10 and have been representing them using a giant tens frame. See our pictures below.
Year 1 have been practicing adding in any order (e.g. 6+7=13 and 13=7+6) and developing their knowledge of addition sums. We have been working out that 6+7=13 is the same as 10+3=13 and then showing this on tens frames. Keep practicing adding in any order at home too.
It was great to see Reception have fun with Thomas on Tuesday taking part in games and year one taking part in their gymnastics session on Thursday. I know how much plum class love PE so it was a joy to watch them so excited!
Don't forget to check out this weeks maths home learning on our class page!
Have a restful weekend! See you all on Monday!