We’ve had a fantastic first week back at school, returning fresh and ready for all the new challenges that 2020 has to offer us. We’ve been recalling the rules and routines for our school day and have begun to learn about the polar regions, weather patterns, animals and people that inhabit these incredible places.
Our adult-led learning has focused on creating our self-portraits and recounting the activities we did over the holidays, what amazing writers our children are becoming; using their phoneme fingers and sound mats to help them recall the formation of sounds and tricky troll words I, to and the.
We have also been busy exploring our new role play areas and enjoying taking on the role of scientists, animal doctors and explorers.
Next week we will focus on investigating how ice is formed and how it can be melted using different things such as salt, heat, etc. We will also be learning about Antarctica’s most famous animals, penguins. Learning about some different types of penguins and their lifestyles.
In Maths we will explore the ‘oneness’ of one and the ‘twoness’ of two, observing these amounts in our environment and ensuring all children are confident in this to support them later with partitioning, number bonds and number sense more broadly.
Our rainbow challenges will be…
Orange (Adult-led): Writing a speech bubble from an adult penguin to a snow chick to encourage it not to be afraid of snow. This will support children’s emerging writing and ability to segment and use tricky words in their writing. We have also been exploring the use of finger spaces between words and full stops which we will continue to support children with through this activity.
Yellow: to create a patterned scarf to keep a penguin warm in the deep winter, this will support our fine motor development.
Red: to create an observational drawing of a penguin and decorate it using a dotted pattern.
Blue: to use a range of 2D shapes to create an overlapping picture and then to fill in these shapes using four different colours making sure that none of the same colours touch one another, enhancing our knowledge of shape and supporting our problem solving skills.
Green: to use construction materials to create a maze for a peer to use a straw to blow a ‘snowball’ (ping pong ball).
Purple: to make a shelter with a roof using large construction for the scientists to hide away from the snowstorm.
Some Important Notes
- PE KITS: could parents please send in children’s outdoor PE gear, this includes: long tracksuit trousers, socks, outdoor trainers (no plimsoles), a tracksuit jumper.
- MEETINGS: should you wish to have an in-depth conversation with your child’s class teacher, it is important to use the meeting booking forms which you can request from the school office. Please note that in the morning and at the end of the day is a busy time for everyone so it’s important to follow this procedure to ensure the smooth running of the day for all teachers, families and children.
- MYSTERY READERS: we are welcoming Mystery Readers again into our classroom, please see your child’s class teacher for available dates.