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: