Spring Term Week 10: All sorts.

 Hello Hedgehog Parents,

This week's blog is a short one! It's been a different sort of week, with Poetry Day, Mothers' Day activities and a third of our class away for much of it.

Poetry day was wonderful. The children learnt a poem to perform by heart: The Lion Roars. Incredibly, they managed to learn it all in half a day and performed it outside to the rest of the school. I was very proud of them!

The Lion Roars With a Fearful Sound

The lion roars with a fearful sound,

Roar, roar, roar!

The lion creeps, its prey to catch,

Creep, creep, creep!

The lion pounces with a mighty leap,

Pounce, pounce, pounce!

The lion eats with a crunching sound, 

Crunch, crunch, crunch!

The lion sleeps with a gentle snore,

Snore, snore, snore!

Then they had a go at writing their own poems based on it. The  Year 1 children wrote a poem each about a mammoth, while the Reception children wrote a shared poem. In the afternoon the children joined others from Squirrel and Badger classes to do some shared poetry making outdoors. 

On Wednesday we read the story 'Humbert' by John Burningham. It is about a pony who pulls a scrap metal cart but who has bigger dreams. The children loved this story and did some art work of Humbert as well as writing a diary in role as him. 

Thursday, of course, was Forest School - a particularly warm, sunny and happy one. 

Then on Friday it was lovely to have so many of you at school for our Mother's Day Breakfast. Thank you for coming!

Homework this week is a little different. Your challenge, Hedgehog children, should you choose to accept it, is to learn a short poem off by heart and recite it. Either come and tell me the poem at school, or film yourself reciting it to send to the office email address!

Year 1 children - I am sorry that once again we were unable to do your Friday spelling challenge (though it was lovely to have mothers in for so long!) but we will do it on Monday instead. You have no new words to learn this week, so just focus on your colourful spelling lists. 

Have a good weekend!

From Mrs Simpson

Spring Term Week 9: Goodbye, Mrs Bregu!

Greetings Hedgehog Parents,

After nine weeks with us, and lots of time spent particularly with the Year 1 Hedgehogs, we said 'goodbye' to Mrs Bregu today. The children drew her some pictures and signed a card for her, and she promised to come and visit us once her studies are finished this year. 

In our story this week the children learnt a bit about ice age weapons. As we learnt last week, there were many dangerous animals around during the Ice Age and it was decided that we needed to be able to defend ourselves from harm. The children learnt about the different
natural materials that weapons were made from and went on to design three weapons that might be useful to them when we go back into our story. We really, really don't want to be eaten by a sabre toothed cat. 

The children also completed some art work, learning how to add texture to a painting by using different brushes in different ways. 

During Forest School the children were given the opportunity to see a robin up close. Arthur's cat had unfortunately acquired a robin, and Arthur and his family thought the children might like the opportunity to see it up close because it was so beautifully preserved. The children were given the option to look or not to look at the robin, and they all wanted to see it. They were amazed by its tiny features, especially the miniature feathers. 

Aside from all of the above:

Maths this week:

Reception children have been learning how to estimate. This is a great skill and one which takes practice! You can practise this skill easily in daily life or you can play a game where you take a handful of objects (fewer than 20 is recommended at the moment), place them down, each estimate the amount and award a point to the person who is closest. Then repeat! Tip: to determine whose estimate is closest, use a number track and mark each person's estimate on it, before counting how many objects there actually are and marking that amount on it too. 

Year 1 children have started a new unit of work on measure. They have used the terms: long, longer, longest, short, shorter, shortest and tall, taller, tallest to compare different items. It was hard for them not to revert back to 'big' and 'small' when comparing sizes, but we are getting there! 

For this week, you can just practise this orally with the children as you go around and about. Encourage them to practise using the correct mathematical language to compare the heights of family members, trees or flowers (for example), or the length of their fish fingers. 

They also, along with Reception, began to measure length using non-standard measures - in this case, their feet! They learnt how to measure in their feet by placing one foot directly in front of the other, with no gaps. This work will continue next week!

They've also been counting in 5s. Lots of practise of this would be very, very useful. One option is to use a song like this one, but of course to help the children to pronounce their numbers with 'TY' in them!

Phonics this week

Reception children have added  ar and ow to their bank of digraphs. This week, please just do some sounds recognition practice. A good way to do this is to chalk the digraphs all over a pavement somewhere, or a paved area if you have one, and as you call out different digraphs your child has to race to them. This can be done indoors as well, if you write the digraphs on A4 paper and challenge your child to jump to the correct one. As a reminder, the digraphs we have learnt are: qu sh ch th ng ai ee igh oa oo or ar ow  

Year 1 children looked at the three graphemes ir, ur and er. They focussed on adding 'er' to a verb to make a noun: for example, turning 'jump' into 'jumper' or 'read' into 'reader. 

Here is next week's spelling list. Hopefully there are some rhyming patterns to help!

Finally, I have to apologise because I have been unable to upload any photographs this week. I will endeavour to add them to the blog on Monday!

Have a very good weekend,

from Mrs Simpson

Spring Term Week 8: Ice Age progress

 Dear Parents,

This week, the children made significant progress with their Mantle story. On Monday they were summoned to Devon by Rob Bourn, who had made an exciting discovery. During some excavations, he and his team had unearthed some mammoth remains. The children were invited to carry on the excavations and to their excitement found pieces of mammoth tooths, tusks and bones. They pieced together the finds back in the classroom (this was obviously in our story, but the excavation really happened! To find out more look at this news article).

With that in mind, we decided that, in order to find a woolly mammoth, we should return to Devon, 10,000 years ago. One of the children had the idea to use a time turner (as in Harry Potter) to help us travel back in time, so they all made time turners. This was a great project involving a range of DT skills and tools and the children did a fantastic job of it. 

Next, on Wednesday we travelled back to the Ice Age (having thought about what it would look like and feel like). Unfortunately, we didn't get far before we encountered a range of dangerous animals. We stepped out of the story to find out more, and spent the rest of the session learning about ice age animals and which were the most dangerous (the carnivores!). 

Aside from our Mantle story, the children had a great Friday morning when Mrs Bregu taught them a bit about Albania, her home country. They saw the the landscape, learnt about the flag and (most importantly) tried some delicious food. 

Thursday afternoon was so sunny that we couldn't resist going for a walk. Our original plan was disrupted when we discovered that one of our favourite trees had been severely damaged by the storms. The upside of this was that the children had a lovely time exploring the fallen tree and using their climbing skills!

Maths:

Year 1 have finished their unit of work on numbers to 100. Continual practice of identifying how many tens and 1s are in a number, and how much each digit is worth will be helpful for the children, for example: 
64 has 6 tens and 4 1s. The 6 is worth 60 and the 4 is worth 4. 

To practice this play shark numbers. 

As you play, talk about what each digit is worth in each number and practice counting in 10s and on in 1s. 

Reception have continued their work on subitising and have also been ordering numbers and revisiting number bonds to 5. 

To practice bonds to 5, you can use this 5 Specked Frogs animation. As you go, talk about the bond it represents (eg if there is 1 frog in the pond and 4 on the short, 1 and 4 makes 5) and keep reciting the bond. 

For an extra challenge, you can create a 'pairs' game. Lay down the numbers 0,5,4,1,3,2 face down and play pairs, turning over two numbers and keeping them if they make 5. You can add spots to the cards to help your child to work out whether they make 5. 

Phonics:

Year 1 have focussed on 'oo' alternatives:  oo, u_e, ue and ew (the last one was brand new). They also looked at alien and real words and practised spotting digraphs and trigraphs in order to read them. This is a necessary skill for June's phonics check, so your challenge this week is to practice it! 

Go to phonicsplay.co.uk, click on 'resources' and play 'buried treasure'. Choose 'ue' or 'ew' and play the game, reading alien and real words. 

Due to our lovely Albanian morning, we did not do our spelling challenge - we will do this on Monday instead. 

Reception have added 'igh' and 'qu' to their bank of digraphs and trigraphs. 
Practise these using phonicsplay.co.uk - go to 'resources' and 'buried treasure', then choose 'phase 3' and the digraph you want to practice. This is a good game for spotting digraphs in words and for sounding out and blending. 

We have had a really lovely week. It feels like spring is on its way!

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Simpson

Spring Term Week 7: Books!

 The main theme of this week was... BOOKS. 

The children visited Waterstones on Tuesday where they were given a tour of the book shop and learnt all about what goes on there. Then on Wednesday we celebrated an early World Book Day which was just lovely. The children made a World Book Day t-shirt and a mini book (which they brought home to finish off), and they created a new front cover to enter into a competition that Mrs Bloomer set us at Waterstones. 

Aside from that, we have also managed to fit in some reading, writing and maths!

Phonics

Reception looked at the new digraph 'oo' which can make a long sound (as in moon) or a short sound (as in book).

You can use the grids and pictures here (ignore the 'ar' ones!) to play a game: each player has either the short or long oo grid. Cut out the pictures, turn them face down. Take it in turns to turn one over and say the word. If it goes on your grid, keep it and glue it down. If not, put it back. The winner is the person to complete their grid first. 

Year 1 learnt one new grapheme this week: ie. This grapheme makes two different sounds:

'ee' as in 'field'
'igh' as in 'tie'. 

Next week's spelling challenge words are here.

Maths

Reception continued subitising this week, looking at numbers 1 to 5. Once again, you can use some of these cards to play pairs or snap! For an extra challenge, ask your child how they know what a number is (e.g. they might say they saw a row of 3 with 1 on top so they knew it was 4). 

Year 1 have been ordering numbers from greatest to smallest and vice versa, and also looked at patterns of numbers within a 100 grid. You can practise this using one of two sheets - a tricky one here, and an even trickier one here. 

Have a good weekend!

From Mrs Simpson