This week we have focussed our learning around Seaside holidays and have learnt about Spain. We talked about Barnaby Bear’s holiday in Poole and the activities he enjoyed. We then discussed what activities the children like to do at the seaside and this has been the inspiration for writing this week. We looked at Spain and some of the cultural differences, such as a siesta, in the afternoon. We have used our class travel agents to find beach holidays and other pictures to make brochures of places we would like to visit. In the creative area we have created mixed media seaside pictures as well as exploring colour mixing with the powder paints.

​Our Maths theme of the week has been problem solving and we have solved problems looking at different possible answers to a problem using the stories ‘ How Many Leg?’ and ‘Mr Gumpy’s Outing’.
 
This week we have also been practising for our concert next Wednesday with Team EO. We had our sports day event on Tuesday and Team CW staff are hugely appreciative of all the support for the event from our lovely parents and families cheering the children on. 

This week we have learnt some facts about the continent of Africa, thanks to the Go Jetters on Cbeebies as well as sharing stories which as set in Kenya and Ghana such as Mama Panya's Pancakes and Handa's Surprise. These stories encouraged discussion about village life and schooling for children in these villages.
We made safari sunset pictures, choosing a African animal and exploring using colour washes for the sunset sky.
We have learnt some African dancing as well as a popular children's song called Che Che Kule.
We also explored some African instruments we have at school and performed percussion for a drumming song.

This week we have been focussing our learning around travel. We started the week with thinking about planning holidays, and how you might travel there. We looked at globes and talked about how some journeys needed to be by aeroplane or boat to travel if you were going across oceans or on a long journey. We set up a travel agents in our classroom so that we could think about journeys. The Rainbows have written sentences about places they have travelled and how they got there inspired by stories with a travelling theme, such as ‘The train ride’ and talking about their travelling experiences We then read the story ‘Balloon for Grandad’. This story lead us to discuss geographical features, such as mountains, deserts, rivers, oceans, cities and islands. The Rainbows designed hot air balloons using mixed media and then wrote about where their balloon would travel. Continuing with stories on Welly walk we played a game of stuck in the mud, in this game you make up a story as your friends listen and then you say stuck in the mud and have to chase and catch a friend who then becomes the next story teller.

It’s been very hot this week and the weather has made us think about seaside holidays. In the story the train ride the journey ends at the seaside. This was an opportunity to look at pictures of seaside holidays now and in the past and make comparisons. There has also been opportunities to make little boats and model vehicles.

In Maths we have been learning about sharing between two groups and into different sized groups. We listened to the story ‘As the Doorbell Rang’ which is a story about sharing cookies between different numbers of children. We have used the vocabulary equal, same, different, more, less, fair and  unfair in our work on sharing this week. 

Our focus for learning this week has been caring for our planet. The Rainbows have been very concerned about the impact litter is having and have been inspired to learn more and to do something about it!
 
We have listened to the song ‘What a Wonderful World’ By Louis Armstrong and learnt Makaton to go with the song. We have thought about the beauty of the planet and what we can to look after it. Our other stories this week ‘Some one Swallowed Stanley’ ,‘Messy Magpie’ and ‘Dinosaurs and all that Rubbish’ have helped the Rainbows think about the impact of rubbish on the environment. Some of the Rainbows were even inspired to do a spot of litter picking at lunchtime.
 
We have been learning about recycling and how different materials can be made into new things! We have sorted the materials into separate crates just like at a recycling centre. We have sorted rubbish items into things that can be recycled and things that cannot and we need to throw away in the bin.
 
In maths we have been recapping our key skills. We enjoyed playing a maths game with our friends and adding up the scores to see who won! We have practised our number formation and written numbers to and beyond ten.

Our new topic for this half term is “Off we go!” - Travel and Holidays.

As everyone has been in the Jubilee spirit we have been learning about London. We have learnt some rhymes including London Bridge is Falling Down and Oranges and Lemons. We have looked at where Paddington has travelled to around London and have been naming landmarks and building them using art straws. Our Creative area has been busy with making the Queen’s Guards and painting pictures of landmarks. Some of us have been writing postcards to our friends and family from different places around London and we have been telling the time after learning about Big Ben in the tower.
 
We watched Paddington visit the Queen and drink all her tea and squash her cream cakes. We loved that they both keep marmalade sandwiches for later and have written instructions to make our own. We enjoyed reading these and having a try at making them as well!

We had another lovely day for Welly Walk and practised our drawing skills! We have been learning to add detail to our drawings to make them life like.

This story about the Queen has entertained us this week.

​Next week our theme is caring for the environment and we will be reading “Someone swallowed Stanley.”

Look at our amazing grass caterpillars, There are 62 caterpillars in the picture from Team CW and Team EO. We have entered our caterpillar picture in to a competition to win prizes for school. Fingers crossed!

This week we have continued our learning about healthy eating. We have talked about and listened to information about healthy eating and which foods are healthy. The children were really good at sorting food, making plates of healthy foods and talking about why some foods are less healthy because he have more sugar.

We have listened to the story of Oliver’s Vegetables and other stories from the same author, such as Oliver’s milkshakes and Oliver’s fruit salad. The children have been great at recalling the different fruit and vegetables in the story, their order and why the main character Oliver should make healthy choices.

In our mathematics learning we have been suberizing to 5 with fruit and vegetables as well as solving addition word  problems with vegetables and finding the difference within numbers to 10 by counting on.
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We have been continuing our planting and growing topic and have read “Tad” and “The Hungry Caterpillar.” We have been learning about lifecycles of caterpillars/butterflies and tadpoles/frogs.

Our class robot “Beebot” has been very hungry and we have programmed him to move around the map to collect different pieces of fruit. The Hungry Caterpillar has visited and we used a hole punch to make holes in leaves and threaded some “wriggly” caterpillars through it. We made some beautiful butterflies by folding wings and tying pipe cleaners around them to create antennae. We started to learn about healthy food and some of us have designed a healthy lunch for the caterpillar!
 
In maths we have been learning to double numbers and have used ladybird’s wings to help us! In the creative area we made split pin frogs and paper plate ladybirds. To support our physical development we have been frog jumping across lily pads (hoops) and have been learning about symmetry on butterfly and ladybird wings.
 
We have planted some seeds this week and within two days they started to grow! We have used magnifying glasses to carefully spot their features and explain what we can see happening. We have had a very busy week!

​This week, following the bank holiday weekend we celebrated Eid. The children listened to the story of Rameerah’s Ramadan and  learnt the Eid greeting Eid Mubarak, which means happy Eid. In class we looked at how Eid celebrates the end of Ramadan for Muslim people around the world. We looked at the moon and star as the sign for Islam and how the crescent moon marks the end of the month of Ramadan. We made cards with the moon and star as well as creating Mendi patterns. We also looked at some different mosques and noticed features such as the tall minarets, domes and symmetry. In maths we looked at examples of symmetry in buildings, shapes and nature. We played games to identify if a picture is or isn’t symmetrical.
 
For the remainder of the week we continued with our growing topic, looking at minibeasts. We listened to the story of Superworm and talked about the rhyme of the story as well as noticing all the different minibeasts in the story and sorting them by the number of legs and writing captions to describe the creatures. We have had a wormery in class to observe the movement of the worms and we made wool patterned worms and compared different length playdough worms.  On Friday we continued with our bean diary, looking for changes in our bean plants.

​We began our Growing and Planting topic in the Rainbows this week. Our two stories have been The Enormous Turnip and The Tiny Seed. We enjoyed making our seed packets as well as sorting different seed packets into groups. We used our senses to describe different vegetables and write the words. To help us develop our team work skills we passed different objects from one side of the room to the other without missing anyone out and listening carefully to instructions.

​We have been experimenting with food colouring and celery to see how plants drink water. We observed the celery over a few days and noticed that it slowly turned blue as the celery was sucking up the food colouring. In our Loose Parts area we made some beautiful flower pictures using different shapes, colours and sizes of buttons. We made some butterfly feeders for our school garden and when it gets warmer we will add some honey to them for the butterflies to feed on. We have been using a range of resources to make numbers in different ways.
 
In maths we have been learning to weigh objects and how to balance scales. We have also been recapping subitising numbers to 5 and have been learning to say how many items are within a group without counting them one at a time.
 
In Literacy we have been shared writing some sentences to describe what happens to a seed as it grows, and we have started to write a seed diary for the beans we planted!