Welcome back to another blog plum class...
Another busy week learning lots!
In RWI we continue to practice holding sentences in our head and then writing them down with focus on accurate letter formation, finger spaces and full stops. Please keep working on this at home.
Every day we practice reading red words and alien/nonsense words (words that don't make sense but we can still sound out. e.g. dap or gop). Can you write some of your own silly nonsense words at home too?
In our number work Reception have focussed on the number 8. We have looked at how we write the numeral using this rhyme:
"Make an 'S' and do not wait, join it up to make an 8."
As well as focussing on our formation of "8", we have thought about whether other numbers are more or fewer than 8. We've also reinforced our work on 6 and 7 from last week by looking at numbers which are more and fewer than 6 or 7. We've had lots of fun using the Numicon to help us practically show this.
Year one have been super busy learning more about place value within 20. They have been continuing to learn that numbers 11-19 are made up of one group of ten and ones. We looked closely at various representations and had a go at writing the numbers underneath. For example, for an image that shows 10 apples and 6 apples we would write 1 underneath the group of 10 and 6 underneath the 6 apples. Children found this a bit confusing and kept wanting to write 10 underneath the group of ten instead of the number 1. We will keep reinforcing that we write 1 to represent 1 ten.
In our topic work Reception friends have a had a busy week learning about Antarctica and the birds that live in such a chilly climate...penguins. We know that penguins are a type of bird but we wanted to learn more about the differences between them and the birds that we see in Alnwick. To find out more we enjoyed watching some videos and reading stories to to find out some facts.
Can you remember some of the facts we found out?
Did you know that penguins can't fly?
Did you know penguins have a waxy coating on their feathers so that they are waterproof and can stay warm?
Did you know they like to eat fish and this is why they spend 75% of there time living in the water?
We thought it was interesting that birds in this country often build nests high up in trees, in bushes or in some shelter to protect their young. Penguins, lay eggs on small nests out in the open.
After all of our research we had a go at writing fact files. They are no proudly on display.
We also took part in an investigation to find out more about the waxy coating of the penguin feathers. The children coloured in some penguins using waxy crayons and sprayed them with water. The children observed droplets of water gathering on top of the wax as it repelled the water. Just as it would on penguin feathers. The children were amazed!
In year 1, we had fun bringing our designs to life and we spent time making our treasure boxes. The children were so proud of their work. We hope you love them as much as they do.
As we were learning about Antarctica in reception, this tied in nicely with our year ones learning about the world. We began this week to learn about the wider world and we began to talk about the worlds 7 continents and 5 oceans. It was tricky to remember all of their names but we will keep talking about this over the next couple of weeks and will continue to reflect on this learning through the year. Can you remember the name of a continent or an ocean?
As we began to talk about the oceans, we felt it was a good time to begin the bailifgate art competition. Our job was to create our own sea creature painting. We had so much fun looking at various pictures of sea creatures and choosing which we would like re-create. Our artwork will be sent away to be judged attention beginning of March. Stay tuned!!
On Fridays we continue to practice our handwriting. We begin by doing some warm up exercises to develop our gross and fine motor skills and then have a go at writing some small cvc words or sounds with focus on neat, accurate letter formation. Keep practicing this at home too.
Fantastic work everyone! Hope you're having a restful weekend.