Week 5- 28.11.22

 It's been very festive in Pear Class this week! With Nativity rehearsals in full swing, advent arriving on Thursday and a visit from Jingles, our Elf on the shelf. What a week its been! Just a reminder that your child's Nativity costumes must be brought in a named bag by Friday 9th December.

 In our topic work this week we have continued our day and night learning. Last lesson we spent time talking about the differences between night and day and what sort of activities/routines happen in the day, night and both. For example, we play in the park in the day and go to sleep at night. This week we have spent more time thinking about darkness. First we thought carefully about what time of day we want to block out the light. When we realised that night is a time we want it to be dark, we thought about what we have in our rooms to ensure darkness- curtains. We decided to test materials to see which would make the best curtains! We shined torches through felt, paper, plastic, cotton and lots of other things. We discovered that cotton material made the best curtains. Our vocabulary this week is: Transparent, Translucent and Opaque. Although these are very big words, the children are beginning to understand their meaning and were able to sort the materials with some guidance.
 
As part of our dark and light learning, we enjoyed a Diwali celebration as a class. We lit our Diva lamps that we made last week and we listened to Diwali music. The children were very excited to see their creations come to life! 
 
We also had fun writing our letters to Santa this week. The children used their phonic knowledge to hear initial sounds in words and if they could, sound out cvc words. They did a great job with their letter formation, this is making great progress. We can't wait to got to the Post Office on Wednesday to post our letters!
 
In our mathematical work this week we have been exploring the composition of 5. First the children had 5 double sided counters (1 side red and 1 side blue) which they shook and threw on the table. Next the children had to spot which counters landed on red and which landed on blue. For example, 3 landed red and 2 landed blue. After many varied results, it was noted that each time, we still had 5 all together. Our results showed 1 and 4 made 5, 2 and 3, 3 and 2, 4 and 1 and 5 and 0. 
 
In PE this week we enjoyed singing and dancing to "here we go round the mulberry bush". We sang many different versus and enjoyed lots of different actions. For example, this is the way we stamp our feet or this is the way we wave our arms. The children had so much fun moving in different ways! We recapped our various dance styles from previous lessons and had a go at dancing to here we go round the mulberry bush in hula style, ballet style and rock and roll style.
 
Next week will be another busy week with continued Nativity rehearsals, a visit to the post office and lots of learning about the role of postal workers.
 
Have a lovely weekend, 
 
The Pear Class Team