Hello Hedgehogs and your Hedgehog Parents,
Welcome (or welcome back) to the Hedgehog Class Blog. It worked so well for us during lockdown that I thought we should continue it.
I will be posting a weekly blog about what we have been up to in class with some ways for you (parents) to support your child's learning at home.
Settling in.
Both year groups have been settling into their new routines. The Year 1 children have been spending most of the morning with Mrs Davies, doing focussed maths, writing and phonics work. The Reception children have been getting used to school and learning how to use the indoor and outdoor environments. Thank you for all of your support with wellies, waterproofs and clothing in general - it takes a few weeks to get everyone's clothing where it needs to be and making sure the children can find their own clothes!
Our Mantle of the Expert Stories
(At school we refer to 'our story').
The SPBB.
The Year 1 children are in the middle of a Mantle of the Expert story about bog babies (if you haven't seen the book 'The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis, I'd recommend it!). They learnt about bog babies and then were visited by someone from the Parks Trust who thought there might be bog babies in Howe Park Woods. The children became the Society for the Protection of Bog Babies (SPBB) and visited the pond in question to find out more. Sure enough, there seem to be bog babies in Howe Park Woods. The children have just set up some cameras around the ponds to monitor the behaviour of the bog babies - we'll keep you posted. Through this story so far the children have explored..
- clay work
- watercolour painting
- habitats
- animal categories (we think bog babies might be amphibians)
- DT - making junk model cameras
- computing (a brief introduction to stop motion animation)
- some other things along the way!
Dinosaur Island
The Reception children have been dipping their toes into the waters of Mantle of the
Expert (at school we call it 'our story') with Dinosaur Island. They created an island together and added geographical features. Then they became a team of scientists working in secret to find out more about the creatures on the island. It turns out... there are dinosaurs there! We created some camouflage clothing and went dinosaur-spotting. We found lots of dinosaurs including an injured triceratops, which led to us making a dinosaur hospital. The children have spent lots of time helping injured dinosaurs. Then, on Thursday, the children learnt of a diplodocus that had been sadly killed while protected its nest of eggs. The children created a nest from natural materials out on the field and thought about what the eggs might look like. This led to a happy few minutes moulding clay and pushing stones, twigs and other materials into it to create a nest of dinosaur eggs. We will see what the next chapter of the story brings!
Year 1 core subjects this week:
Phonics: we have been revisiting the phase 3 sounds and have so far covered:
sh ch th ng ai ee igh oa oo or ar ow oi. You can help your child to spot these sounds when they are reading, and this week's game is a favourite to practice reading them:
Maths:
We have been learning to use Cuisenaire to add up. We have been making number bonds to 6 and teen numbers using the ten and some ones rods. We have also been practising writing our numbers. You can help with encouraging your child to practise writing their numbers to 20 the correct way round. You could use a 10p piece and some ones to create teen numbers so children see why a teen is written with a 1 at the start to represent one ten.
Reception phonics and handwriting:
We have started short phonics lessons. A very important part of phonics is the listening involved - children need to be able to hear and distinguish between sounds. We have:
* done a lot of rhyming
* begun some alliteration (such as the ant ate an apple, the penguin ordered pizza...)
* gone on listening walks to hear sounds around us
We have also looked at some letter sounds:
s a t p
We had a go at making the shapes of the letters in a tray of rice which the children enjoyed.
s - nice and curly
a - round, up and down
t- all the way down, a flick and a cross
p - down, up and over
At home, you can do lots of rhyming and alliteration and play 'eye spy' using the letter sounds rather than the names. For help with letter sounds, see this YouTube video.
You could also..
I hope you have a marvellous weekend - see you next week!
from Miss Nash
Thank you Miss Nash! So lovely and helpful to have the blog back. Kate
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DeleteIt's good to be blogging again to keep everyone up to date with the world of Hedgehogs!
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