This week Team CW staff have been extremely proud of the Rainbows for sharing and team work! This is something we promote everyday and encourage from all of our children all the time. Even members of staff from other classes have been commenting on the Rainbows doing this, and this has made our school a lovely place to be.

Staff have been particularly proud of some Rainbows as they have been sharing their balance bikes with Nursery children, completely independently! We know that all our children are so excited to ride the bikes and it has been lovely to see them handing their bikes and helmets over to the younger children.

​Keep it up Rainbows, we are VERY proud of you!

Our topic this week has been Life Cycles and the books we have been using to support our learning are The Hungry Caterpillar and Tad (our key text this half term.)

We have learnt lots of new vocabulary this week and have been able to explain the lifecycle of a frog and a butterfly!

In Literacy we have been reading words by segmenting and blending to match labels to food in a shop for the hungry caterpillar. We then progressed onto writing labels for food in the shop, using Fred Fingers to help us segment each sound. Some of us read and wrote words with Set 1 sounds and some of us read and write words with Set 2 sounds from Read Write Inc. Some words were very tricky as they had more than one Special Friends sound and were longer words!

In the creative area we developed our physical skills by cutting and colouring in frogs, we practised doubling playing a ladybird game and created symmetrical pictures of butterflies in the painting area. Outside we were very interested in minibeasts as we weeded the garden and found different types. We have been setting ourselves challenges on the climbing frame and have been balancing, swinging and climbing to new heights! 

We have had fun with the Beebots again revisiting our programming skills and have been enjoying reading books about animals and plants in the reading area.

Here are some of our independent learning activities and challenges!

One of our favourite games this week in maths has been using the counting wand! We have been learning to continue counting from different numbers. We sat in a circle and when the wand tapped us we started to count and when it tapped us again we stopped. The next person carried on counting from where we stopped, and so on and so on! We tried really hard and had so much fun, and we were able to count to 20 and beyond! Some of us were well on the way to counting to 100!

We also practised turn taking skills as we repeated this counting game with a partner. We will continue playing this game to secure our knowledge of numbers and counting!

This week we have been learning to ride our balance bikes! We have had so much fun learning new skills!

Before we rode the bikes we learnt about keeping safe. We know we have to keep safe so we don't hurt ourselves, as accidents can happen. We know that we wear a helmet to protect our head in case we fall or ride into something. We also know that we need to ride safely and watch out for others. This means not going to fast and being aware that other child may be learning at a different stage to us and find it hard to turn or stop.

Some of us have been learning to balance and ride in a straight line. Some of us have been learning to turn and move in between obstacles and other children and some of us have been learning to pick up speed and move faster.

We have become more confident in just a few days. Here are some photos of us showing off our skills!

Team CW have been enjoying PE with Mr Smith and have been developing their listening skills to join in with games. They have also been developing their spacial awareness, following rules and moving around safely.

They have enjoyed games including Stuck in the Mud and Banana Peel and have been listening carefully to instructions. You can see by the blurry photos they are beginning to move confidently and quickly around the hall!

We have had so much fun this week on Welly Walk looking for signs of Spring! After such a cold and miserable few weeks, including lots of snow at one point, we are excited that warmer weather is coming and Spring is well on it's way! We know that Spring comes after Winter, and Summer follows Spring.

During Welly Walk we looked at how our environment is changing over time. We learnt some new vocabulary; blossom, buds, shoots, bluebells, daffodils and catkins. We also used our senses to explore our environment. We listened carefully to see if we could hear birds and felt how catkins and different leaves felt. We spotted so many sings of Spring! Some of us drew pictures and wrote about what we found, and we completed a spotter sheet of different signs. See below for all the fantastic fun we had!

We have been continuing to learn road safety on our way to the Nature Area. We "Stop, look and listen" and keep checking the road for traffic as we cross. We will keep practising this every week so we stay safe and can do this when we are out of school with our parents.

This week we started our learning on the theme of growing thing with the story The Extraordinary Gardener. Following  on from the story we planted some sunflower seeds, made seed packets for a surprise seed to be planted at home and talked, drew and wrote instructions for how to care for a plant and what is needed for growing a plant from a seed.
 
In the dough we created flowers with dough and fabric petals. In the creative area we painted gardens, inspired by some amazing gardens and the paintings of Claude Monet and his garden at Giverny.
 
Later in the week we focussed on the parts of plants, matching labels correctly, and the story The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle.
 
In Maths we have sorted objects by different criteria and attempted to give reasons for why objects may have been selected for a group. This led to discussions about natural and  manmade materials, different uses for objects and sorting by texture, colour and shape.
 
On Friday it was the end of Ramadan and the start of Eid for Islamic communities around the UK and world. The children listened to information about Eid and  how it is celebrated in the UK. We will be revisiting this next week to find out more about the weekend celebrations.
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