Summer Term Week 2: four days of fun

 Hello Hedgehog Parents,

Our usual five-day weeks in Hedgehog class always fly by, so I'm really not sure where those four days went! It was lovely to see you all at the May Fayre on Sunday - the children did a great job of their dance and their costumes were stunning. 

In the short time we've had together this week we've been re-telling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, caring for the guinea pigs, spending time in the sun and doing a lot of maths. 

Year 1 have continued their new Great Fire of London Mantle. At the moment we are still learning the story - the children made a representation of Pudding Lane outside in order to re-enact the key events. 

Reception spent some time planting some seeds for our green house. They'd previously did a lot of planting, but the unfortunate wind storms we had blew every single thing over! Thankfully the children were keen to do some more planting. 

We were very lucky to have some visitors at Forest School on Thursday. Mrs Davies picked up the Reception class from Thornborough School and they spent the afternoon with us. The Hedgehogs were so friendly and kind to the visitors, I was very proud of them. 

In other news:

Phonics:

Reception spent the week revisiting their phase 3 digraphs and taking part in some assessments. Next week, they will move on to phase 4 which involves reading and spelling consonant blends (such as fr, bl, st...).

Year 1 learnt a third way to spell 'air':  are. They've therefore learnt that the trigraphs air, ear and are can all make the 'air' sound. Here are next week's spelling challenge words! There are not many words, so I will probably give the children a couple of sentences to write with the words in, for a change. 

Maths:

Reception have been learning what 'double' means and have been learning how to represent and recite doubles to double 6. To practice this you could...

1) create a butterfly paint picture - create one side with 1 to 6 spots on, fold it over and recite the double you have created. 

2) play dice doubles. Each player has two dice. On 'go' both start rolling your dice. Each time you get a double, shout it out eg 'Double 2 is 4!' and record a point. After a set time, perhaps 3 minutes, see who has the highest score. 

Year 1 have moved on from looking at equal groups and began to look at equal rows - arrays. They learnt how to decide a) how many rows they could see b) how many there were in each row and c) how many that is altogether. 

To practice this, use whatever objects you can find to make arrays. You could do this outside or inside. When you have made one, record on a piece of paper:
How many rows
How many in each row
How many altogether. 

We also learnt the 'lazy way' to write this - for example, 
3 rows
2 in each row
6 altogether

3 2s = 6

Finally, thank you for the kind comments I've had about me moving on from Whaddon. I've had a lovely ten years at our school  teaching your wonderful children and will miss you all very much. 

See you next week!

From Mrs Simpson