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.

We have enjoyed the story "Funny Bones" this week, especially looking at the animal skeletons and guessing what animals they are! We have enjoyed painting pictures of skeletons on black card and been really careful to try and add some detail. We have painted some self portraits using mirrors to help us identify the correct hair and eye colour. We have also looked at some facial features including freckles, eye brows and eye lashes. We have used the dough to create some models of ourselves and have also made some shape pictures using flat shapes to create faces.

In maths this week we have been practising counting in different ways. We have been counting claps, jumps and taps on a tambourine. We have been practising stopping counting after the last tap rather than carry on! We have been identifying numbers on a number square and some of us have been counting in twos to 20 and tens to 100. In phonics we have revised some previous sounds that have been taught including set 2 sounds for Read Write Inc. Some of us have been practising "Fred Talk" (segmenting and blending) to read green word cards. Most of us have begun to learn and consolidate set 1 sounds and have begun with m, a and s this week. We have been learning the handwriting phrase and this has helped us begin to write the sounds.

At the beginning of the week everyone should have received a login for the learning platform Seesaw. I will be adding information (and sometimes activities) to Seesaw weekly so please try and login each week so you don't miss anything!

What a fabulous first week we have had in the Brilliant Bears! I am immensely proud of every single Brilliant Bear. It is never easy coming back to school after such a long time at home and everyone has listened well, worked hard, been kind and caring and used beautiful manners!

Over the past few days we have been learning the names of our new friends and how to use all the different areas in the classroom. We have tried new activities and got used to our new routines. The younger children stayed for their lunch and really enjoyed it!

We made some split pin teddy bears by cutting around the outline of their arms and legs, we created some textured bears in the creative area, coloured some bears having a picnic and created cut and stick shape bears. We started our yoga lessons and loved taking part!

Our topic next week is "All About Me" and the story we will be reading is "Funny Bones".

After such an amazing first week back in school I am really looking forward to seeing everyone again next week for lots of fun!