Week 2- 10.3.23
What a cold and chilly week it has been in Pear Class! We have had lots of fun in the snow and as usual we have been very busy in the classroom!
In our maths learning at the beginning of the week we have learning about pairs of numbers and how some number have an 'odd' amount with one left over. We all started with a toy and had to find our matching pair. There are 24 children in Pear Class but Mrs Horne-Smith did not have a matching pair for her toy so we realised that 25 is an odd amount. We looked carefully at the shapes of numicon and we could see a clear pattern. The odd number numicon ; 1,3,5 ,7 and 9 all had an extra one on top all by itself without a buddy - we have decided that we will try to remember the odd numbered numicon as being the shapes that look like somebody is sitting on a toilet as this makes us all chuckle!
We looked carefully at a 100 square and marked off the odd numbers, we can see lots of patterns as we are counting on that the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 etc are constantly repeated and numbers go odd,even,odd,even. When out for a walk at the weekend why not play a game with your child where you take turns to point to people's doors as you pass, asking is that an odd or even number? You could also ask your child to collect a selection of toys - if there is enough to share equally between the two of you they have an even amount but if there is 1 left over there is an odd amount - we would love to see some of this consolidation of the concept at home on the learning journals!
In our topic learning this week we continued Drawing club with Mama Panya's Pancakes and we thought about the setting of the story (a village) and the main characters (mama Panya and Adika). We then created large scale story maps to retell the story with our friends. Many of us were really great at storytelling focusing on using first, then, next etc and discussing the different settings within the plot.
We then moved on to reading Handa's Surprise another story exploring African culture, this time with the focus on the different colourful fruits! We enjoyed exploring some of these fruits for ourselves, learning some names we did not already know. We felt the different fruits and enjoyed guessing what we thought they might be as well as practising some wonderful adjectives to describe what we could see, feel and smell. After this we then had a tasting session. Many of us had not tried an avocadfo before or a papaya and there were some mixed reactions to the different textures! We were also surprised at how different the fruits looked on the inside - avocado was bright green like 'witches slime' and papaya looked like 'frogspawn' according to some of our children!
We all had a go at being talented tool users and holding a knife correctly to helped to chop up the remainder of the fruits to blend into a yummy smoothie. Our pencil grip came in really handy hear as we had to hild the knife in a similar tripod grasp. The smoothie was delicious and it went down a storm! If possible we would love to explore some more strange and wonderful fruits, if you are out shopping and your child shows an interest in something, a coconut for example, please feel free to send your child to school with this so we can all explore and share this together.
Writing has taken off this week in Pear class and we have had some amazing wow writers! The children were introduced to Pear Class Magic door! This a secret door that has been there for hundreds of years, nobody knows what behind the door and nobody in Pear Class over the years have been able to open it. Our challenge was to write a story about what wee thought was behind the door or some questions we wanted to ask the door. Every child in Pear Class scrambled to write this week and their writing was completely independent - we were so impressed with their story telling and imaginations! We will continue on our journey to try and open the magic door with our wonderful writing - encourage your child to do some writing at home that they can come in and show to the door of magic!
In our Jigsaw session this week we have been continuing to think about being our best healthy selves! We took part in ‘We like to move it, move it!’ with lots of exercise to become super duper fit! We really enjoyed the bean game! We had a think back to last week and remembered some of the sports and exercises we thought of and had a go at acting them out ourselves! We were brilliant at showing these to our friends who had to try to guess which sport it was.
Our maths towards the end of the week focussed on us combining two groups to work out how many all together. We had lots of fun creating a small world scene using fish and gems! We are getting really confident at saying our number stories out loud when we are working practically in our maths sessions.
Our Charanga session this week was based on ‘Beyond The Sea’ sung by Robbie Williams. We listened to to the words and talked about whether the song was fast or slow and whether we enjoyed listening to this song or not. We all really loved it! We then played our rhythm games followed by learning to sing and play along to the beat with ‘Old MacDonald’, ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ and ‘The Wheels on the bus’. We always have a great time moving and grooving to the songs! Continuing the theme of moving and grooving, we danced our little socks off in the hall with a fantastic dance session on Thursday afternoon!
As our RE sessions this half term are focussed on ‘Easter’, we listened very carefully to the story of Palm Sunday and we acted it out with our palms as we recreated this biblical story. We had another look at the palm cross and we compared it to a palm leaf. We thought about how the leaf had changed shape and we found out that the palm cross reminds Christians that, although the crowds welcomed Jesus, some people were jealous of him. Tessa our RE doll helped us with our learning again this week.
Have a lovely and restful weekend,
The Pear Class Team