5,4,3,2,1 blast off!
Our focus story this week has been ‘The Hundred Decker Rocket’ by Mike Smith. This is a fantastic story based on looking after the places we live and creating a huge rocket for everyone to travel on.
In Reception we began thinking about how we could look after the places we live. We had a great discussion about litter and decided to do a litter pick in our school grounds. This also allowed us to go and see if we could spot any signs of Spring!
In maths this week we have been working on our counting skills and spotting patterns when counting. Did you know when we add 1 more to towers they look like stairs! We had great fun taking part in a bean bag challenge.
We created maps of our school to help others find their way around school and even created maps for the Beebots to follow. It was tricky to program the Beebots at first but we soon got used to what we needed to do.
Our poem this week had lots of fun actions! please check it out on the link.
World Book Day
On Thursday we had a wonderful day celebrating reading! Parents and carers joined us for bedtime stories in class and then we had special visitors from year 3 and Mrs Valentine.
Living & Learning: I know we’re all the same and we’re all different
In this week’s Living and Learning lesson, we thought carefully about how we’re different yet all the same.
We explored what’s meant by discrimination and alongside that, discussed what the term ‘stereotype’ means:
It was fantastic to listen to and see how mature Year 4 are about topics such as discrimination. Everyone was incredibly respectful, mature and knew that to discriminate is not a good thing.
Going forwards, it’s great to know that this class knows how to be great members of our community outside of school! Nice one, Year 4!
English
Our class text is Nothing by Mike Inkpen (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip). We have enjoyed reading and sharing our thoughts on the book this week. We picked out some vocabulary that we weren’t familiar with, explored the meaning and added them to our word wall.
Challenge: Can you use any of these words when talking to friends or family?
Today, we looked at the nouns and adjectives used in the book and wrote some expanded noun phrases.
Check out our fantastic writing!
Challenge: Look around you and come up with an expanded noun phrase.
“The orange, chair”.
“The round, yellow table”.
World Book Day
What a wonderful day we have had celebrating reading. We have enjoyed sharing our books with each other and listening to a few stories and books being read aloud by different adults in school.
This morning, we had a surprise visit from Miss Gledhill who read Ping and this afternoon Year 5 and 6 came to our classroom to share stories with us too.
Computer Coding
Today, the children explored a digital game called Scratch. They created a sprite (a 2D character) and used the coding blocks to form an algorithm. The children enjoyed creating, coding and testing their ideas.
What is Scratch programming?
Scratch is a programme aimed at supporting children developing their coding and programming skills. It can be used to create stories, games and animations. Scratch promotes computational thinking and problem solving skills.
Have a go at home – it’s free!
Zooming Julia Donaldson
To kick off world book day, we enjoyed a zoom with Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. We enjoyed a story about a hare and a hedgehog who were in a running race. Axel Scheffler showed us how he draws the characters. Julia Donaldson then read us a new story about some baddies. The children were gripped!
Food Technology
This week, we have made some overnight oats.
We washed our hands before we started to wash away any germs. We read the recipe and worked together in pairs to follow the method. We used a claw grip to keep us safe when cutting the banana with a knife.
After, we evaluated our oats saying what we enjoyed and what we’d improve if we made them again.
If you make this at home, please email some pictures to share with us.
Working Scientifically… and investigating nappies!
This half term, we will be working scientifically using our 5 enquiry types.
This week, we observed nappies to help us with our investigation. We thought about the properties of a nappy and what it’s function is. The children had some great ideas and many recognised a nappy need to be soft to protect the skin, stretchy and it needs to absorb liquid.
Check out the key vocabulary for our new topic and help at home by discussing these words with your child. 
All aboard for a new term
I hope you all had a fantastic half term break and are ready to enjoy our new topic ‘let’s go’. This week our focus story was ‘The train ride’ we had lots of different transport activities in our provision areas. We really enjoyed learning more about what trains were like long ago and what they are like today.
We are very excited as we think we have started to spot the first signs of Spring. We have been looking carefully on our journeys and Arthur painted a beautiful daffodil that he had seen on his way to school.
We have been using our phonics skills to build words and sentences. We really enjoyed finding the sound balls and making a word.
Poetry Picnic
We have been popping crazy with our poem this week. We hope you enjoy it too.
On Thursday 2 March it is World Book Day. This year we are not dressing up however we would like invite all families into class to share a story together. Please could you bring a favourite story and teddy with you on Thursday morning.
Mrs Payne
Jaspers beanstalk
This week in nursery our focus book has been Jaspers Beanstalk. The children really enjoyed listening and joining in with the story.
‘he isn’t happy his bean hasn’t grown’
‘he needs to get all the slugs off so that it doesn’t get eaten’
‘he wants to climb the beanstalk to go find a giant like Jack did’
We planted our own beans to what them grow!
We started to explore what we might need to help seeds grow…
‘we need some mud to put the seed in’
‘ the water helps make it grow’
Polite notice
Next week we will be drawing our faces. If you could bring in a photo of your child when they were a baby so we can compare how we have changed!
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Ward