WEEK COMMENCING 5TH FEB – SRPING 1 2024

On Monday we realised we are on our last 4 sounds – ear, air, ure and er. We have been practising writing our new sounds in words, putting these into sentences and showing off our skills by cracking our phonics passwords. We will be continuing to develop our fine motor skills after half term and strengthening our pencil grip, this will support our beautiful handwriting.  

On Monday we went on a bird hunt around the school grounds, using our binoculars, which Mrs Hart very kindly leant us to use, we saw pigeons, sparrows, crows and magpies. We discussed why we use binoculars and how they work. After we went for our walk, we talked about how we could attract more birds to come into our Year R outside space and Zan came up with the solution that we could put some food outside for them. We then went to talk about making bird feeders and what we could use. We decided on cheerios and threading these onto pipe cleaners. We dotted these around the outside space and have been keeping an eye on whether we have attracted more birds.

This week we also had a fire drill at school. Year R were absolutely amazing and listened to their teachers perfectly. Afterwards, when we came back inside, we talked about the importance of a fire alarm, why we have fire drills and what we would do in different situations. The children were very responsible and understanding and had some great ideas as to how to keep ourselves safe!

In maths we have been looking at finding, representing and the composition of 6, 7 and 8. We have been very practical and making the different numbers out of our loose parts resources, and using pictures to support writing simple number sentences. We started to look at part whole models and the composition of 6,7 and 8. The children were amazing at explaining their reasoning as to how we know our two parts and our whole. We have also been looking at double 3 and double 4.

The children have been enjoying the role play area outside, the vets has been open for business looking after the sick animals, whilst others have been wildlife rangers and creating habitats for our different woodland animals. The children have been getting messy in the mud and sand and have been making pretend fires to cook their food on.

It has been ‘Children’s Mental Health Week’ this week, and Mrs Busby and Mr Backhouse challenged us to talk about where we feel the safest in school. We came up with some great answers, and it was lovely to hear children talk about the school as somewhere they feel safe. We have been doing lots of mindfulness, relaxing mediation and focus activities, and talked about how these simple activities can help look after our minds.  

We had our reward day on Thursday, we loved dressing up in our fancy dress and it was amazing to see so many fabulous outfits. The children did a catwalk in front of the whole school during assembly, they were all so brave and strutted their stuff around to show off! We had a great day making Valentines Day cards and making playdough, pretending it was pancake mix.

On Friday we had such an exciting morning, we had our visit from Head Falconer, Neil, he bought in 4 different types of Owls, as we have been reading Owl Babies. It was amazing! Lots of the children used their courage to hold the birds, which was very impressive.

What a fantastic end to our Spring 1 Term! We look forward to seeing you all on return after your relaxing half term.

Miss S 😊