Week 1- 3.3.23
What a lovely week back we have had!
This week our maths has focused on the composition of 6,7 and 8 and making these numbers up from smaller groups. We looked at how a ladybird's spots on either side of her wing can be added together to create a total amount, but we also worked with gems to create three smaller groups, for example, 3 and a 2 and another 3 equals 8 etc.
For our topic learning we have visited another continent, but this time a very hot continent - quite the opposite to Antarctica; Africa! We used the story Mama Panya's Pancakes to explore a country within this continent called Kenya and in this story, the setting was a little village. We enjoyed learning a little bit about the boy in the story and his culture. We found lots of similarities with our own life's here in Alnwick, but also, lots of differences. We explored Kenya using Google Earth and looking through some of our classroom world Atlas' and through this learning we found that the capital city of Kenya is called Nairobi and this is probably much more similar to Alnwick than the little village in the story. Africa is a huge place with lots of things to learn about and we will continue to explore over the next few weeks!
In our facilitated play, we were creating our own representations of the huts the people in the little boy's village lived in. We could see that these huts were only one story, did not have a window and had a roof made out of straw. We used our imaginations and large scale loose parts in Pear Class garden to recreate this setting, some of used branched off to create the fire that the neighbours shared in the village, or the market stalls the little boy visited with his mother. Our creations were fantastic!
In Forest School this week, some of our children have been very busy making dens, looking for minibeasts in the outdoor environment and producing bird food for the birds around them. In Pear Class we love outdoor learning and Mrs Pickard enables us with the skills to become successful adventurers!
Our ‘Charanga’ music session on Thursday started with a happy song ‘Lovely Day’ by Bill Withers. We had fun finding the pulse in different ways, clapping, stamping and dancing to the beat too! We really enjoyed finding the pulse in the songs ‘Old Macdonald’ and ‘The wheels on the bus’. We were brilliant at playing along to ‘The Wheels on the bus’.