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
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