We have had a lovely week this week because the Brilliant Bears are FINALLY back together! We celebrated by having a tea party with our friends on the first day back with treats and drinks! We have loved spending time with our friends that we missed over the past two months. We have spent lots of time taking part in activities in the provision areas this week and also learnt about emotions. We have taken part in a circle time about being happy and we all thought of a time or event that made us happy that we can think about when we feel sad.

This week has been the start of our Science fortnight. We have enjoyed taking part in experiments including a light and dark experiment with Miss Overton. We made predictions and tested our results to see if we were right.

​We also watched a fascinating video of the Rube Goldberg  machine and have really really enjoyed trying to make our own with our friends! We learnt to make changes and try new ideas which was so much fun!

This week we have been listening to stories by Julia Donaldson! Our particular favourites are Zog, The Gruffalo and Stickman!

After reading the Gruffalo we designed our own imaginary creature and wrote labels about it. We had some AMAZING ideas and they had wings, fangs, fur and tails amongst other things!

We also enjoyed playing a game to support our language skills. We drew characters from stories we have read this week and stuck them to our friends back! They had to ask questions to guess the character and we could only answer yes or no! We asked some great questions including:

"Is it a boy?"
"Does he have purple prickles on its back?"
"Does he live in water?"
"Does he have a family?"

We were really good at this game and most of us were able to guess the character. We were really good at listening too!

Our topic has been Diwali and we learnt about the story of Rama and Sita. We took part in lots of activities including using pasta to make Rangoli patterns, making mhendi patterns in our motor skills area, creating diva lamps in our creative area and building a palace for Rama and Sita with shapes.

In History we learnt about Remembrance and why we wear poppies and what their significance is. Some of us made poppies to wear and some of us wrote what we learnt about Remembrance.

In phonics we have been continuing to read tricky red words and reading set 1 and 2 sounds. Some of us have been learning to blend in our head to read words.

In maths we were learning the names of flat shapes and describing their properties. We had to "prove it" that we could name the shapes and explain how we knew based on their properties. We also ordered shapes from our shape shop using key vocabulary to describe them.

We supported Children in Need and discussed where our donations went. We coloured pictures of Pudsey and made some split pin Pudsey bears to develop our cutting skills.

We have had so much fun this week learning about Bonfire Night. We have taken part in lots of activities including matching pom pom fireworks to numerals, "Fred Talking" words to build up word rockets, covering different patterns with counters to develop our fine motor skills along with colouring, creating small world bonfire stories and creating firework pictures by mixing colours in our painting area! We have also been practicing colour by numbers and are getting really confident!

In maths we have been learning to find the missing numbers in a number sequence by counting forwards and backwards. We have also been explaining how we know the missing number. We have been looking at problems and trying to work out if they are correct or incorrect and explained how we know.

In phonics we have begun our new phonics groups after our recent assessment. Some children are working to consolidate the Set 1 alphabet sounds and practising blending, some children are beginning to read sentences, are practising reading nonsense words and tricky red words and some children are reading books and answering comprehension questions.

In history we have begun to look at chronology and our history timeline. We have learnt the story of the Gunpowder Plot and why we celebrate Bonfire Night. We have learnt the important date and the people and have sequenced the events. We have also done some drama and created Freeze Frames of the characters in particular events in the story. We enjoyed discussing how they would be feeling and why and we loved using different facial expressions and poses to retell the story!

We have been learning about superheroes and have loved reading the story Supertato! He has also been helping us with our maths! In maths we have been subtracting this week. We have been using cubes to help us takeaway and have enjoyed understanding this concept! Some of us have been reading number sentences and working out the answer, taking more than one number away and some of us have been subtracting using tens and units.
 
We have focused on mindfulness and mental health this week to accompany our non-uniform day to raise money for Scope. We have been practising giving compliments to people and understanding how this makes us feel. We have been learning to relax and listen to mindfulness music and sleep sounds to help us calm down. We have been learning to tense parts of our body and count to 10 then relax them. This helps us feel more relaxed which will help us when we are frustrated or cross.

In phonics we have been doing “Fred Talk” to read the sounds in words and blend them together to read a word. Some of us have been hearing the sounds in words and are beginning to write CVC words and words with “special friends” sh, ch and th.

Our topic this week has been about jobs. In our role play area we have had a baby clinic and been learning to care for them. We have also discussed what we would like to be when we are older and some of us have great aspirations! Our artist of the week has been Roy Lichtenstein and we have been making our own "Popart" paintings using bright colours and circles.

In Science we have been learning about "touch" and enjoyed using feely boxes to identify different objects. We covered our hand with a sock and tried to guess the object and found out it was much trickier to guess correctly if our hand was covered. In maths we have been problem solving and learning to answer questions recording marks and numbers to help us find the answer. In phonics we have been continuing to learn the new Set 1 sounds and some of us have continued learning "Special Friends" sounds.

Just a reminder to say please login to Seesaw to see homework and any announcements and reminders for our class. You can post the children's "Wow Moments" there too so I can share the photos with the class. They could be photos of certificates/trophies or videos of your child riding their bike for the first time or trying a new sport.

The children have loved looking at their friends achievements so far!

Our artist of the week has been Andy Warhole. We have used different rollers to create printed patterns and repeated our paintings to make four prints using different colours. We have decorated necklaces to make repeating patterns for Handa and her friend Akeyo. We have sold fruit and vegetables in our shop and used 1p coins to pay for items. We have been sorting and sifting lentils and beans to support our motor skills and have described fruit and vegetables using our senses. We have written some CVC words for our What's in the Box activity.

Our new sounds in phonics have been b,f,e,l and h. We have continued to reinforce tricky red words and have used Fred Talk to hear, read and write CVC words.

In maths we have been learning the numbers 1,2 and 3 and different ways to make each number. We have ben learning to say how we know there is that amount altogether. Some of us have been splitting amounts into two groups to see what two numbers make an amount.

We have worked very hard this week and loved our story!

We have had a very busy week this week learning about Goldilocks and the The Three bears. We have been matching bears to numbered paws, playing Goldilocks I-Spy and planning and making a chair for baby bear in the construction area. Our artist of the week has been Kandinsky. We have loved drawing lots of coloured circles like his famous painting and have been mixing new colours too!

Our new sounds in phonics have been g,o,c,k,u and b and have continued to learn the handwriting phrases to form them. In maths we have been continuing with counting and number recognition. For Science we learnt the names of the body and discussed what our body can do, for example run, clap and whisper!

Our theme this week was friendship. We read the story of The Rainbow Fish to help us learn how important friendship is and what it looks like. We also learnt that sometimes friendship can be tricky but by working together some disagreements or upset can be fixed. We made each other friendship bracelets by threading paper straws on to string and we shared them with friends and with people we would like to be friends with and get to know better. We counted scales on to the Rainbow Fish to match the number, and used magnetic letters to make and read nonsense words for sea monster names. We experimented with a cellophane fish to see what happened when we placed it on our hand for 30 seconds and printed colour patterns on the Rainbow Fish using celery and paint. 

We continued to learn the handwriting phrases for forming letters and have been segmenting and blending to hear and read words. We have been continuing counting and matching amounts and numbers and have been adding maths to our daily routine to give a context for numbers and amounts. For the topic "Ourselves" and for Science we learnt the names of different parts of our body and labelled pictures.