Coronation celebrations
We had a great time joining in with the coronation celebrations on Friday. Children looked at pictures of royal crowns and loved trying to pick up the tiny jewels to stick them onto their own crowns. It was very tricky to get the jewels to stick – a great fiddly fingers activity to improve fine motor skills!
In maths, we’re learning about the number 5 . We’ve been looking at the numeral 5, showing 5 on our fingers and noticing the pattern of 5 dots on a dice. We know that when we have 5 things, a five frame will be full.
Help at home: Can you put 5 strawberries on your plate? Remember to count each one carefully and stop when you reach the ‘stop’ number of five. If you have 4 Duplo bricks, how many more do you need to add to make a tower of 5? Spot the numeral on doors and signs when you’re walking to Nursery. Sing number songs such as 5 Little ducks, 5 Currant buns or 5 Little frogs. If you’re drawing, can you add 5 fingers to your person, 5 flowers or 5 bees?
We hope you enjoy the long weekend and look forward to hearing about any coronation parties next week.
Walking through the jungle
This week we’ve gone WILD exploring animals! We’ve been constructing animal habitats, making animal artwork and sorting images of deserts and rainforests.
Walking through the jungle
We’ve been reading Walking Through the Jungle by Julie Lacome.
This repeating story was great for retelling from start to finish, as we recalled the ‘action words’ used throughout the story: walking, running, leaping, swinging, creeping and wading.
In our writing, we’ve been re-writing parts of the story in our own words.
Design and Technology; using a tool
Last week, we shared pictures of our ‘bug hotel’ project. This week, we’ve been adding to our construction by filling the structure with lots of hiding places for our minibeast friends. We looked closely at designs of existing minibeast homes and noticed that we needed to add holes to our pieces of wood. We’ve been carefully using the hand drills to create holes, holding the tool firmly in place and using our strength to wind the handle.
Maths; composing 5
In Maths, we’ve been composing 5 and using the song ‘5 little monkeys’ to explore the parts that make the whole number.
We’ve been using full sentences to explain what we can see on our fingers, as we move through the song:
“There are three monkeys on the bed, there are two monkeys that have bumped their head, there are five monkeys altogether”
We’ve represented our parts on a Hungarian frame (or ‘die frame’):
Help at home- Use 5 toys or teddies at home, to sing and act out your own version of ‘5 little monkeys’ (ie. ‘5 little teddies jumping on the bed…’) Pause after each object is removed (fallen off the bed) and encourage your child to describe the parts of 5 they see, using the full sentences described above.
Market stall maths!
Over the past two weeks, Rainbow and Sunshine class have enjoyed ‘paying’ for snack at the ‘market’ The children had to choose the correct coin (1p or 2p) depending on whether they wanted snack or snack and milk. The shop keeper had to collect the coins and give change if needed and then we counted the coins together- we even did a fantastic job of counting in 2’s, adding the 2p coins first! We recorded how much the market stall had taken each day.
Phonics
Summer 1 week 3 has focused on phase 4 words with short vowels and longer words. We’ve learnt the tricky words; were, here, little, says
In provision, we’ve been playing the game ‘Please Mr. Crocodile’ to revisit the phase 4 tricky words that we’ve learnt so far.
Help at home- Please continue to work through the weekly learn at home phonics sheets. We’ll continue to send these home each Friday.
Poetry Picnic
One week in every half term, we focus on a traditional nursery rhyme. This week we’ve been reciting Sing a song of sixpence
More pictures of our learning this week…
Reminders and Dates
Monday 8 May- Bank Holiday for The Coronation of King Charles III
Monday 15 May- School Closed: Training Day
Friday 19 May – Mini Bug Ball: Please don’t go to the expense of buying anything new – creative adaptations of something you’ve already got will be fantastic. Outfits need to be suitable for school, safe and warm enough to be worn all day.
SWIMMING DATES- Summer 1
Rainbow Class- 17 May
Sunshine Class- 10 May, 24 May
Coronation celebrations!
This afternoon we have had a fantastic time celebrating the Coronation of King Charles III. We had a special picnic as a school in the lunch hall. We also had the opportunity to go to different classrooms around the school, to play games. At the end of the day we had a little party back in our classrooms whilst we enjoyed some lovely snacks brought from home!
Have a fantastic Coronation weekend everybody! From Miss Young, Mrs Latham and Miss Lowry.
Imagining life as an evacuee
This half term, children in 5/6 have been learning about what life was like in Britain during World War II. After carrying out some research, watching some interviews and reading our class novel (Letters From a Lighthouse) we acted out what it would have been like for evacuees meeting their host family for the first time.
A home: discuss how it might feel having to move away from your home due to war. Link the experience of life in World War II to the experiences of refugees today.
Reproduction of flowers
In science children have been desecting flowers and conducting secondary research into finding out about how flowers reproduce. They have learned about how some flowers and plants, such as tulips, use pollinators to help reproduce while others (potatoes and strawberries) are asexual.
At home: grow some potatoes in a large tub or conduct a pollinator count as the weather improves. Take a walk in a wild meadow and count how many bees you see over a certain time. Watch as they visit flowers can carry pollen from one flower to another.
Creating Music
Children in 5/6 have been composing their own music using tuned and percussion instruments.
At home: discuss some of the musical elements that children have learned this year. This might include timbre – the particular sound that an instrument makes; pitch – how high or low a note is; tempo – how fast or slow music is played; and dynamics – how loud or quiet a piece of music is played.
Living and Learning – balanced diet
This week’s Living and Learning statement is ‘I know the importance of a healthy diet’.
This week we discussed what a healthy diet might look like and what sort of things we should try to eat. We talked about how we need to have a good balance of different food groups to keep our bodies healthy.
We also discussed how we should aim to eat more of one food group and less of another. For example we should eat more foods like fruit and vegetables, and less of sugary foods like sweets and cakes.
Why not watch this clip at home and see how you can have an even more healthy, balanced diet at home? Keeping my body healthy – BBC Teach
Science – growing plants
This half term we are looking at plants and what they need to survive.
We have planted seeds, bulbs and peas and put some of them into different conditions. We started off by planting bulbs (see below).
We kept watering two of our bulbs and they started to grow! See our 3 week progress picture below. We noticed that these bulbs started to grow roots, and several green shoots started to grow from the top.
The bulbs that were not watered did not grow at all and have started to turn brown.
We also planted 6 different types of seeds. Our sunflowers have been the most successful so far. We decided to move them to their own pots to grow the best that they can.
Once the plants grow a little bigger, we are hoping to plant them outside, around our KS1 playground.
It has been brilliant to see how engaged the children have been with the Science topic this half term. We can’t wait to see how our plants grow and what will happen next.
Help at home by encouraging children to plant some seeds, bulbs or peas of their own!
Times Table Rockstars!
A massive well done to 5,6B who have won the TTR tournament two weeks in a row. They have worked super hard at home to make sure they are learning their times tables and have worked hard as a team to continue their winning streak. I wonder if it will be three weeks in a row?!
Wiggly worms!
We’ve loved searching for worms in the garden this week and learning about where they live. In the maths area, we compared the length of different worms and sorted them into short worms and long worms.
We continued sorting worms in the sensory area; children enjoyed using the tongs to try and pick the longest worm that they could find!
Here are a few other photos from this week, including making perfumes with flowers in the water area, exploring spirals in the creative area and using paper clips to help develop our fine motor skills in the Fiddly Fingers area.
We’ve been watching our caterpillars getting bigger and bigger. We’re waiting to see what happens next. In the book corner, children have been retelling the story of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ using the props and the puppet theatre.
Help at home: If you have a copy of the story at home, use the illustrations to help your child retell the story in their own words. Can they use some of the repeated language from the story? For example…He was still hungry!
