Spring Term Week 4: More About Elephants

 Hello Hedgehog Parents,

This week has whizzed by in a blur of elephants, sunshine and Forest School.

In our ongoing endeavour to become effective elephant keepers, the children have been learning a bit more about elephants. They have learnt that elephants come from Asia and Africa and have been singing this song to help them with continents. 

Before you watch it, be warned... it will stick in your head. 

They also learnt more about the features of elephants. Try asking your children why elephants have trunks, tusks, huge legs, a tail, enormous ears and wrinkly skin. They made some very helpful leaflets for visitors to our elephant enclosure. 

On Thursday we were joined by Year 2 for Forest School which was lovely. It meant that the children interacted with some new friends and that new ideas were brought to the session. Some children made bird feeders to hang up in the trees - we had talked previously about the changes of the seasons and how there is not a lot of food around for the birds at the moment. 

To continue our elephant theme, we started learning to tell the story of Elmer this week. We'll be doing some literacy and writing activities around the story over the next couple of weeks. 

In other learning:

Phonics this week

Year 1 have now learnt all of the sneaky e graphemes: new this week were e_e , o_e and u_e. Not many words that the children are likely to use have e_e in, so next week's spelling challenge will focus on o_e and u_e. Here is the list! 

Reception have now learnt all of the single letter sounds. For an extra challenge this week, use this mat to practice forming all of the letters correctly. 

Maths this week

Year 1 have been learning to add within 20 by:

* counting on
* finding a group of 10  (so 8 + 6 becomes 10 + 4 which simplifies it)
* adding the 1s, when adding a 2-digit number to a 1-digit number (so 13 + 4 becomes 10 + 7 which simplifies it)

For extra practice, complete this cut and stick activity. For each one, you need to simplify the addition by finding 10. 

Reception children have been learning the meaning of the word equal. They learnt that 'equal means the same amount'. 

The best way to practice this is practically. For example, making sure that everyone in the family has an equal number of sweets (keeping the numbers 10 or below), or building towers of equal heights. 

Below are a few photos of the week. Have a very good weekend!

From Mrs Simpson :0)

Spring Term Week 3: Elephant keepers and a muddy walk.

 Hello, and happy Friday to you all,

This week, the children became elephant keepers. They watched some videos about what it takes to be an elephant keeper and what elephants need, then spent time creating their elephant hut. It now contains, among other things:

• some large scales
• an enormous tooth brush with a bottle of elephant toothpaste
• a syringe
• a spade
• a comb
• a foot pick
• elephant shampoo
• nail cream

A lot of team work was required to create these items. They came just in time, because one morning the elephant keepers discovered that one of the elephants was limping badly and looked very sore. The children are in the middle of writing some instructions for how to care for an elephant's foot. When they are done, the team will get to work to help the elephant.

Thursday was very bright but very, very cold so we decided to go for a walk for our Forest School session. It didn't go quite to plan when a few children got stuck in the mud and then a gate wouldn't open! However, the children did some excellent climbing and problem solving and we had a lovely time in the fresh air. 

There has been a keen interest in the ice in our outdoor area. On Monday it became ice bergs surrounding a pirate ship, while several children discovered that below the ice there is... water!  A couple of children put ice in their pockets because they wanted to take it home, which led to some interesting scientific discussions!

Maths this week:

Reception children have been practising their subitising and using the terms 'more' and 'fewer' to describe amounts. One of the ways thy did this was by playing 'Ten Lovely Things'. I may have given you the instructions for this before, but in case I haven't, here they are. 

Year 1 children have been working on numbers to 20 and learning (using 10s and 1s) that every teen number has a 10.  They have also been reciting number bonds to 7 and have started to look at number bonds to 9 using a 3x3 grid:

For an outdoor challenge this week, set up a 3x3 grid outdoors using chalks or sticks and find sets of 2 items (eg cobbles and leaves) Give your child a bond to 9 and see how quickly they can represent it. For a challenge, ask them to find the most efficient way of representing the bond to 9 - the way that is visually the most effective (for example, in class this week we decided that we liked '8 and 1' to have the '1' in the middle).

Phonics this week:

Reception children have added 'x' and 'y' to their bank of sounds - only 'z' to go from the single letter sounds! This week they have enjoyed playing 'mixed up graphemes'.  If you'd like to play this at home, the instructions are here. 

Year 1 children have begun to learn about split digraphs - where a sound is split, with 'e' at the end turning the short vowel into a long vowel sound ( I call this a 'sneaky e'.  We began with a_e and i_e  as in cake and pine. The spelling challenge list can be found here. As usual, the green words will appear during next week's spelling challenge!

I hope you all have a good weekend - see you on Monday!

From Mrs Simpson

Some photos from this week:

Spring Term Week 2: Elephants!

 Hello Hedgehog Parents,

Well, that week flew by in a blur of elephants, forest school and frost! 

We said a very sad goodbye to Hannah, who has been in Hedgehogs since September 2020. She will be very much missed.

Our class now houses a herd of six elephants in a beautiful enclosure. The children have been working on creating their elephants for quite a while and are very proud of them. On Wednesday it was decided that they would need a suitable enclosure, so we had a look at some examples from zoos and wildlife parks before creating our own. During the morning the children learnt that elephants (and other animals) need food, water and shelter to survive. 

The children then made signs for the enclosure, explaining to visitors what could be found inside, for example, a 'hot mud pool' for rolling in!

Maths this week.

Reception have been focussing on the number five. They have been making patterns with five pebbles to decide which representation they like best. We looked at the 'dice' pattern for five and why it is so useful (because we can see 4+1). 

The children are beginning to learn their bonds to 5 and how to represent these in different ways. 

This week you could play a game we like to play (which I may have mentioned before). This week it is called Five or Not Five? and can be found here.  The number cards mentioned can be found here - you won't need all of them!

Year 1 have been looking at numbers to 20 and learning that teen numbers are made up of 10 and some more. They have been counting objects by making a group of 10 first, counting on from 10, and making their own representations of numbers to 20. To practice this, you could use these cards to play pairs or snap. 'Snap' is more of a challenge, as the children have to quickly recognise the representation to 20 (one person has the number cards, the other one has the ten-frame cards).

Year 1 have also started looking at number bond to 7. 

Phonics

Reception have added  j, v and w  to their repertoire of sounds. For some blending practice, play Roll and Read using this document (you can choose one sound, or work your way through them! This document includes 'x' as well which we haven't yet looked at in class).

Year 1 have looked at 'ea' as in head, bread and instead, and they have learnt that 'w' can sometimes be spelt with a 'wh'. Our Friday spelling challenges will resume next Friday - here are the words!

Mrs Albana Bregu joined us this week as our PGCE student teacher. You will be seeing a lot of her over the next couple of months, so please do say hello and pass on any messages to her as you would do to myself or Mrs Gyau-Awuah. 

Below are a few photos of our week. 

Have a good weekend!

From Mrs Simpson

Welcome to Spring Term!

Hello Hedgehogs and Parents, and welcome to spring term!

It was lovely seeing the Hedgehogs' smiling faces on Wednesday, and even lovelier to have everyone back again after the many absences we had before Christmas. The children are happy to be back and have been getting reacquainted with each other. 

Important and interesting information about the term:

Staffing:
Mrs Gyau-Awuah will continue to work Tuesday-Friday
Mrs Abery is joining us on Wednesday mornings for five weeks, and then will be with us full time from 14th February. 
We have a PGCE student joining us soon who will work alongside myself and Mrs Gyau-Awuah as she trains to be a teacher.

Forest School:
Forest School will continue on Thursday afternoons. It is likely to be very chilly for the next few weeks, so please ensure your child comes to school dressed warmly and has warm Forest School clothes and snow boots in school. Gloves, hats and scarves will be needed!

PE:
PE will continue to take place on a Friday afternoon. Year 1 will learn with Mr Small while Reception will be doing some gymnastics with Mrs Gyau-Awuah.

Milk:
From your child's fifth birthday, milk is no longer free. If you want your child to continue to have milk at school, you will need to arrange payment. We will then receive an updated list with their name on it. All Reception children who are four years old automatically receive milk. 

Posessions in school:
A few children have been bringing things in from home in their pockets or book bags. Please could nothing from home come into school, including necklaces and bracelets, as they are likely to get lost or damaged. A simple watch is fine if your child is learning to tell the time, but please nothing big and distracting!

Reading:
Now that the Reception children are more confident readers, we will be hearing them and the Year 1 children read in pairs, instead of individually. This is so that the children can practice reading aloud to each other, gain confidence with their reading and have a good discussion about the book with a friend and teacher. Children will be heard read in this way once per week, but will continue to change their own individual reading books as needed. 

Children who need more support reading will be heard on a 1:1 basis, daily where possible. 

Please continue to read with your child daily and to help them to learn their sight words (Reception children and any Year 1 children that have them). Please make a brief note in their reading records so we can see how often you are able to read with them, and any problems you may be having. 

Maths:
Both year groups continue to follow the Mastery of Number programme, looking at the basics of number and how numbers are composed. This takes place four days per week. 

In addition, over the spring term year 1 children will be looking at:

* Numbers to 20

* Teen numbers as '10 and some more'

* Addition and subtraction within 20

* Length and Height

* Numbers to 100

* Fractions

Phonics:
Reception children will learn the final few single-letter sounds. Then we will focus on applying them in reading and writing, before moving on to digraphs (where two letters make one sound, such as 'sh' as in 'ship').

Year 1 children will continue to learn alternative graphemes (such as 'ay' for the 'ai' sound that we learnt last term). Friday spelling challenges will re-start - the first spellings will be given next Friday.

Mantle of the Expert:
The children loved being Percy's Park Keepers last term and were very pleased with the work they did. I don't want to give too much away about this half term's story, but it will involve some elephants, and going back in time...

I think that's everything!

Please note that we currently don't have an office administrator, so please bear with us while we recruit. This means that emails and phone calls may take longer to respond to. Thank you for your understanding. 

I am very much looking forward to the term ahead!

From Mrs Simpson