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)