Here is this half-terms learning journey for our "Watch It Grow" topic.

Have a lovely half-term and we can't wait for our next learning journey to begin!

We have enjoyed lots of time in our outside area and have had the opportunity to sort the food items between the plates, use the tweezers to separate the peas and pasta, write shopping lists and build towers with the wooden blocks to see how high we can build it and then count how many blocks we have used. Our Year 1 children have been using the creative materials to make pictures of plants and labelling them!
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We have been learning the following Makaton signs: apple, banana, blueberry, grapes, melon, orange, pear, pineapple, raspberry and strawberry.
We have enjoyed listening to ‘The Runaway Pea’, ‘Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds’, Oliver’s Fruit Salad and a range of the Supertato books! 

In Literacy, Year 1’s have worked hard to write their questions to ask Mr Davison about Computing. In Maths, Reception have been saying which set of up to 10 objects contains more than the other, using
rekenreks to push amounts of beads that are equal to, more than and fewer than a given number, ordering towers to 10 – recognising the ‘1 more’ pattern of and exploring the order of numbers to 10. 

On Monday, in science we listened to a song to teach us the parts of a tree. We then worked with our partners to label a picture of the tree before moving on to drawing and labelling our own diagram of a tree. We know that;
The leaves turn energy into food for the tree.
The roots absorb water from the soil and help to support the tree.
The trunk supports the tree and transports water to the leaves.
The branches help to transport water to the leaves.

Our learning focus has been on ‘what foods are good
for us?’. Our book of the week was “Oliver’s
Vegetables”.  The children have learnt about the
different ways we can keep healthy such as eating  a balanced diet, exercising and getting a good nights sleep. We learnt from the story "Oliver's Vegetables" that it is good to try food that we have not tried before as we may actually like it!

We have tried a variety of different fruits at snack time.
On Monday, we tried pineapple. This got a big thumbs up from the majority of Team EO.

On Tuesday, we tried lemons and strawberries! Team EO said that the lemon was sour but the strawberries were sweet. 

On Wednesday, we tried kiwi, grapefruit and raspberries. The kiwi got a mixed reaction and we weren't very keen on the grapefruit but we enjoyed the raspberries.

Today, we ate  a piece of watermelon, a blueberry and half a red grape and half a green grape each. We love the watermelon and grapes but not so much the blueberries!

We then had a think about which fruit out of all the ones we had tried this week was our favourite. We each voted for our favourite fruit and Miss Overton recorded this as a tally chart. Team EO's favourite fruit was watermelon and we know this because it had 11 votes. The least favourite fruit was the blueberries with 0 votes!

This afternoon we made our own fruit salads using the fruits we had tried this week as well as oranges, apples and bananas! We said they were delicious! We have thoroughly enjoyed trying a variety of new fruits and learning how we can keep ourselves healthy!

 This week minibeasts remained our focus in provision, our story of the week was “All About Minibeasts” by Giles Andreae.
Children have had the opportunity to write “What Am I?” cards for different minibeasts using their Fred Fingers. We are having a big focus on Reception choosing to write short captions and sentences independently and are so proud of the writing they are producing – keep it up!
​We have had small world minibeasts to explore and we have continued to create our own junk modelled minibeasts in the creative area! Our funky finger activity was to thread the laces in and out of the different shapes.
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In our outdoor area we spotted a beetle and on Welly Walk we took part in a minibeast hunt and had lots of fun!
We have continued to have lots of fun on the tractor tyre. This week we used it to balance on whilst playing a throwing game with our friends. We have also enjoyed practising writing our numerals and playing ‘tic-tac-toe’ with the chunky chalks!
Here are some photos of us having lots fun and doing some wonderful learning in our outside area and on Welly Walk!

In Literacy, Y1’s text driver for the next two weeks is “A Coder Like Me” by Dr Shini Somara. The children are working towards writing questions to ask Mr Davison about Computing. Last week, and over the coming weeks Year 1's will be practising forming upper case letters correctly and will continue to learn the names of the letters as well as the sounds they make.

In Maths, Reception children have recapping subitising and counting. We started the week counting out a small quantity of 6/8 from a larger group, we worked with a friend one of us was the collector and the other the checker and then we swapped roles! We then joined in with the counting sequence to 10, ensuring we remembered to stop when we count to the end of a set of up to 10 jumps/claps/hops. Next we counted objects to 20 and practised saying the tricky teen numbers and finally we practised counting to 100 and larger quantities that cannot be moved! 

​In PE, we have been developing our jumping for height (high jump) and practised our underarm throw by throwing beanbags into hoops of 2 distances.

Today in Science, we have been learning to know the names of the basic parts of a plant and their function - leaves, flower, stem, roots, petals.

We watched the following video -  https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/science-ks1-ks2-ivys-plant-workshop-parts-of-a-plant/zvdkpg8 and learnt that the:

stem - supports the plant and transports the water and nutrients
roots - keep the plant in the ground and absorbs water and nutrients
leaves - get energy from the sun and makes food
petals - attract insects 
flower - create the seeds.

Here are some of our labelled sunflower diagrams:

Team EO were very surprised and excited when we opened up for outdoor provision this morning to find this gigantic tyre! We learnt that it was from a tractor.

We had lots of fun exploring the tyre, we brought over smaller tyres to make steps up to the tyre as it is so high up and we used it for balancing, jumping, follow the leader and lots of other fun games. 

I can't wait to see how our play and learning extends with our newest addition!

Our learning this week has focused on minibeasts and where they live. We started the week listening to the story “Superworm” by Julia Donaldson. This week our Funky Finger activity is to wind the wool/thread around the worm templates to make our very own "Superworm"! We have been writing about our favourite minibeasts and have produced some wonderful junk modelled minibeasts!

​In Literacy, Year 1’s have been focusing on adding the suffix ‘er’ to words. The children have learnt that we add the suffix ‘er’ to compare two things. We have then practised using these words in sentences, we are trying really hard to ensure our ascenders and descenders sit in the correct place on the line.

In Maths, Reception children explored a new mathematical resource that they will be using in their learning going forward. The children learnt that it was called a "rekenrek" and we have spent lots of time learning how to use this equipment correctly.

​Year 1 children have used their knowledge of doubles to find near doubles, used their knowledge and strategies to add 5 and 3 and 6 and 3 and have been able to explain that the digits in the numbers 11 to 19 express quantity.

In Science, we have learned about the terms ‘deciduous’ and ‘evergreen’ trees. We know that deciduous trees lose their leaves in Autumn and evergreen trees have green leaves all year.
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In PSHE, we have been identifying the people who love and care for us and saying what they do to help us feel cared for.

Today Year 1's had a little competition to see who could get the highest score on 'Hit the Button' for number bonds to 10! 
Follow the link https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button to practise at home so you become even quicker at recalling pairs of numbers to 10!
Here we are in action;

This week our Funky Finger activity is to wind the wool/thread around the worm templates to make our very own "Superworm"!

Our funky finger activities helps our fine motor skills as the activities support finger strength and control which in turn supports our handwriting skills!

The children exploring this activity today found it very tricky to wind the wool around the bends of the worm but showed excellent characteristics of effective learning - they explored how was best to wind the wool around the template, they had fantastic concentration and they persevered even when it was difficult! The children were very proud of themselves and their worms which they produced, as were the adults in Team EO!

Today, Reception children explored a new mathematical resource that they will be using in their learning going forward. The children learnt that it was called a "rekenrek". We discussed how many red beads were on the top row and how many white beads were on the top row.  The children said that there was the same amount of beads on the bottom row as on the top row and we used the language "equal to" to compare. 

The children used excellent listening skills to get their rekenrek in the 'ready position' - beads on the right hand side of the rack. 

The children learnt how to move the beads on the rekenrek using their first finger on their dominant hand to push the beads to the other end of the row.

Here we are show different numbers on our rekenrek by pushing the beads over to the left side of the row ensuring our beads remained together as a group. This helped to consolidate our composition of numbers to 10, using the '5 and a bit' structure.

​Super learning Team EO!