This week has been Road Safety Week and the Rainbows have been taking part in lots of different activities. They have been learning to stop, look, listen and think before they cross the road. Please see the photos linked to the previous post to see the Rainbows being safe and crossing the road. They know that a lollipop person helps them to cross the road and zebra crossings and traffic lights help to keep them safe. They also know that crossing between parked cars is very dangerous as you can't see the road clearly to check for traffic. The Rainbows also learnt about being safe whilst riding a bike. They wore helmets to protect their head and talked about riding at a safe speed. They also made or coloured some road signs which they later used in their play. 

Later in the week the Rainbows focused their learning on this terms core book Peace at Last. They mixed primary colours in the painting area to make secondary colours and painted a blanket for the bears in the story. They sorted activities into day and night time things, including getting ready for bed, having breakfast and going to school. They also focused on the words first, next and last and chose pictures of their morning and evening routing and ordered them. Some Rainbows played a matching pairs game with their friends to support their turn taking and they also counted the holes in the Numicon and threaded the correct number of beads onto a lace attached to it. They also practised some secret writing by writing sounds or words in white crayon and painting over it with watercolour paints.

​What a busy week the Rainbows have had. Here are some of our fun activities!

 We have been reading this half term's core book "Peace at Last." The book is set at night time when the lights are on in the bear's house and they carry a lamp up the stairs. We know lights cast shadows. This week we made our own shadow tubes.

The children had to roll card and stick the end down so it didn't unroll. It was tricky to stick the tape on both of the sides across the end of the cylinder so it didn't open up! We needed to put a few pieces of tape to keep it secure. We had to carefully stick the cellophane to the end of the tube, again sticking the tape on both the tube and the cellophane so it didn't spring off. We also practised cutting tape with scissors trying not to lose the end or drop the roll on the floor! We are becoming more confident with holding scissors correctly.

It was a very tricky activity but we kept persevering and some of us worked together with a friend. We then drew a picture on the cellophane and tested our shadow tube with a torch!

It was lovely to see a Rainbow make their own shadow tube at home and bring it into school to show us!

The photos of the shadows did not come out very well and were much clearer on the wall!

This week in Literacy we have been learning to use a phoneme frame. This is building on our learning during phonics lessons. We know that we can count the number of spaces in a phoneme frame and know how many sounds are in the word shown in the accompanying picture. We put up that amount of "Fred Fingers" and pinch each finger as we say a sound in the word. We can then either find a letter and place it in the phoneme frame or write sounds in the phoneme frame to write a word. We then segment the sounds and blend them together ("Fred Talk read the word") to read the correct word.

We have also been "Fred Talking" to read words and match the word to the correct picture.

We have been applying our phonics knowledge learnt in Read Write Inc. sessions to do this. Here are some photos of our fantastic work!

We would like to share with you how we celebrate achievements at Park Street. We ALWAYS celebrate when children achieve something, no matter how big or small. Whether it is lots of praise, sharing photos or examples of their work or homework, showing swimming certificates or giving out certificates/awards, speaking to parents at home time, there is always some celebrating happening in class!

Here are some of the children that have achieved awards this week.

Golden Book certificate. These are for a child who in particular has stood out for following this weeks whole school golden rule focus. This is awarded by the class teacher/s.

Dojo certificates. Dojo points are awarded to children for being kind, helpful, trying their best, outstanding behaviour, sharing, tidying away, looking after property and lots more things! After the children gain a certain amount, 25, 50, 150, 200, 250, they get a certificate and reward time taking part in a fun activity. These are awarded by all staff members in class. You can see some of the Rainbows taking part in their special activity below. They made some slime!

Incredible Me! certificates. These are for doing something incredible during learning time and for acts of kindness and other wonderful things. These are awarded by any member of staff in school.

Phone calls home. Sometimes staff may also make phone calls home so achievements can be celebrated at home too! These are made by the class teacher/s.

Lunchtime award. This is awarded to children for doing something outstanding at lunchtime, such as caring for others, sharing playground equipment, being a great listener and for other brilliant things. This is chosen by lunchtime supervisor staff.

This week has been road safety week. The Rainbows know they need to stop, look, listen and think before they cross the road. They know they need to keep themselves and others safe so no one gets hurt. They know roads can be dangerous. The Rainbows had lots of fun learning the Road Safety rap from Twinkl to help them be safe.

The Rainbows practised crossing the school drive following the instructions in the rap and walking slowly in case they tripped and fell.

Well done for keeping so safe Rainbows!

On Friday the Rainbows talked about what they had learnt throughout the week and what they remember. They also talked about what they really enjoyed learning about. The Rainbows always share with adults that they love school which is lovely to hear! What a lovely class!

"I love to draw!" (Esme)
"I liked to draw a number block on the board." (Rio)
"I liked making slime and I liked the sparkles in it. (Mylah)
"I liked playing with my friends, running and dentists, and we talked." (Violet)
"I liked doing acts of kindness because they smiled so much! (George)

To help develop Oracy we have been learning to ask questions. We know that questions can start with who, what, why, where and when.

We chose the topic of Christmas as we have been practising for our Nativity play. First we shared with our partner what we already know about Christmas then discussed what we would like to find out. We practised MTYT to repeat back the questions as a class that we generated with our friends.

We then had the opportunity to ask Google our questions to find out the answers. Here are some of the questions we generated;

Why does Santa have a magic key?
Why does Santa have reindeer?
What does Santa's factory look like?
Where does Santa live?
Why does Santa give presents?
Why does Santa go on the roof?
Why is there snow at Christmas?
How does Santa get down the chimney without getting stuck?
How does Santa get down the chimney when there is a fire?

Next time we will ask questions about a different topic or about something we are interested in and would love to find out about!


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Today the Rainbows learnt about the fantastic cause of Children in Need. We took part in lots of different activities including colouring Pudsey pictures, completing a treasure hunt for Pudsey Bear pictures hidden in the classroom, guessing the number of sweets in the jar to raise some money and buying buns to raise money for children in Need. Pudsey also lost all of his spots so we went on a spot hunt in our outdoor area to find them all. We thought we saw Pudsey run past looking for his spots, then we heard banging coming from inside so we went to investigate! Some of us made some Pudsey ears to wear. We practising our cutting skills to cut out the ears and coloured in some spots. What do you think of them in the photos below? Don't the Rainbows look great?

Here we are in our spotty, yellow or Pudsey Bear clothes and non uniform! What a fantastic cause to support!

This week is Antibullying Week and we have been reading the story of Elmer. We know that being unique is wonderful and that everybody is different and it makes us special!

Our Elmer activities to develop our knowledge and skills across the seven areas of the curriculum have included printing shapes on Elmer ears and describing and naming the shapes, painting Kandinsky Elmers, retelling the story of Elmer with masks, exploring different textures and materials to decorate Elmer and sharing different Elmer stories with our friends.

We have also completed our Diva posts for Diwali and carefully painted them and added glitter on top.

Here are some photos of us enjoying our learning! 

This week we have been exploring instruments. We have been learning their names including Djembe, jingle bells, shakers, rain sticks, triangles, drums and a guiro.

We practised making loud and quiet sounds, and fast and slow sounds. We also made slow and loud sounds, slow and quiet sounds, fast and loud sounds and fast and quiet sounds.

We read Elmer and the Wind and used our instruments to make some sounds like stormy weather. We used shakers to sound like the wind, drums to sound like thunder and a guiro and rain sticks to sound like rain drops!

Here we are having lots of fun exploring the instruments and making storm sounds!