This week our learning activities have been focused around rainbows and we have linked this learning to the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark. We have enjoyed singing ‘The animals went in 2 by 2’ and we have been learning the Makaton signs for colours by singing and signing ‘I can sing a rainbow’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLpEGM34Fic).

This week, in the painting area, children have opportunity to do bubble paintings. The children mixed powder paints into bubble mixture and used pipe cleaners as bubble wands to blow bubbles onto paper. It was lots of fun! In the creative area, we have been scrunching up the different coloured tissue papers to make our own rainbow – they have looked fantastic! In the funky finger area, we have been using the peg boards to make our own patterns. We have had the opportunity to retell the story of Noah’s Ark using the small world resources. We have also enjoyed using the 'how to draw' sheets to begin to learn different types of objects and animals! We have some future artists in Team EO!

​Team EO have also been working hard to learn all the songs for our Nativity performance – we cannot wait to share it with you!

Reception have continued to consolidate and learn new sounds in phonics. All Reception children have had a go at writing a Rainbow simile poem.

In maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge of the counting sequence to 10, representing 5 and showing equal amounts.

In Computing, Year 1 have continued to work on grouping and sorting unit. On Purple Mash we have been sorting shapes based on colour, if they have less than 4 sides or 4 or more sides, if the shape has 4 sides or more than 4 sides and if it is red or if it is 3 sided! We have worked fabulously in Computing this half-term! 

In Geography, all Team EO are super confident at naming the 7 continents so this week we moved our learning on to begin to learn the names of the 5 oceans. We know that an ocean is a large area of saltwater.

In Science, we all discussed what the weather is like in Spring and the different signs of Spring.

In maths, we started by learning to explain that items can be compared using length, height and mass. We compared Miss Overton to different children to see who was taller and shorter, we then got into pairs to compare who was taller and shorter. We then pushed cars along the floor to compare which car had travelled the longest/shortest distance. We then spoke about heaviest and lightest to compare the mass of different objects.

Following on from this, we practised counting out objects. We then compared the number of side a shape has using <, > and = before moving onto comparing cubes in a tower using <, > and =. We have a super busy week in maths and we have worked super hard, well done Year 1!

Today, in Team EO we recapped on our previous learning on Christians. We were able to recall that Christians go believe in God and Jesus, that they go to Church to worship and the Christian Holy Book is called the ‘Bible’. We discussed how the Bible contains lots of stories about God and Jesus and their lives.
 
As a hook into our learning we listened to the song “The animals went in two by two”.
We then carefully listened to the story of ‘The Great Flood’ (Noah’s Ark) from our children’s Bible that we have in class. After listening to the story, using our talk partners we were able to answer the following questions:

• Who are the main characters?
• What happened in the story?
• Who did God tell to build the Ark? Why?
• What sign did God give Noah that he will not flood the Earth again?

Our challenge, whilst in provision is to use the following small world set up to retell the story!

Team EO thoroughly enjoyed raising money to support Children in Need today. The children were all invited to donate £1 and wear non-uniform, spots or Pudsey clothes and everyone in Team EO got involved!

During the morning we made Pudsey puppets with Mrs Fitchett, enjoyed the yummy buns that had been donated and after dinner we all took part in the Spot-tacular hunt where we had to search for hidden spots in the big playground - it was very tricky but we worked as a team and managed to find 13 of them! Well done Team EO we are super proud of you! 

We then spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, as part of our Incredible Us! time, colouring pictures of Pudsey whilst listening to music and chatting to our friends!

This week our learning activities have been focused around ‘Elmer’ as this book celebrate everyone being unique which has supported our learning on ‘Anti-Bullying Week’. We discussed what bullying is and what it is not. We spoke about what we need to do if we think we are being bullied. We also spoke about how we can just ask our friends if they are okay as sometimes, we may be having a sad day where we need our friends around us. We also listened carefully to 'Simon Sock' by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet. Afterwards, we talked about why 'Simon' was feeling sad, can your child remember why he was sad?

Children have been very busy this week in lots of different areas of our classroom. In the maths area, children have been pairing up the odd socks. In the creative and painting areas, children have had the opportunities to create their own Elmer’s by using squared-pieces of paper or by mixing the powder paints – they have looked fantastic! In the writing area, children have been writing about what makes them special. Our funky finger activity this week focused on our cutting skills – we have been learning to hold our scissors correctly and to hold the paper to make it easier to cut!

Year 1’s – In Literacy we have been writing ‘Hold a Sentences’ daily about how to make buns and then we finished off the week by writing it up! In maths we have explored a variety of ways to compare numbers. Firstly, we compared numbers using base ten. Then we compared numbers by their position on a number line. Next, we compared numbers by looking at the tens column to see which was greater and finally, we learnt to compare them by looking at the tens and ones columns in case both digits were the same in the tens column!
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Reception – In Phonics, children have continued to learn sounds, some children have been learning to blend using magnetic boards. All Reception children have had a go at using Fred Fingers to write CVC words and this is something we will be working hard on over the next few weeks. In maths, we have been looking at the composition of 3,4 and 5 and we have been making our own ‘stampoline’ patterns just like the Numberblocks did on the video we watched!

Our Y1's have been getting stuck into their provision challenges this week! One challenge was linked to Geography and children had to list the 7 Continents - they used Atlases to help them and they sung the song we have learnt to help us remember them! 

We have had some fabulous learning this week Monkey's - keep it up next week!

During our choosing time this afternoon I caught lots of Team EO choosing to read for pleasure! 

It was lovely to see children enjoying reading the books with their friends and even more so that it was our core book 'Zog' that they were choosing to share with each other!

As part of our learning on Elmer, children had the opportunity to paint pictures of patchwork elephants just like Elephants! For this children were using the powder paints. Children were very enthusiastic to mix the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and white to see what colours and shades they could make to paint there elephant!

There was lots of learning and artistic language used!

J said "I've made purple by mixing blue and red".
J also said "I've made pink using red and white".
A said "blue and red makes dark red".
J said "I'm going to see what blue and yellow make, it makes green!".
Ja made brown by mixing blue, yellow and red!
A said "yellow and red makes orange".
E said "white and yellow makes light yellow".
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To kick start 'Anti-Bullying Week', this years theme is 'Reach Out' Team EO participated in the school wide 'Odd Sock Day'.
Team EO learnt that bullying is when someone hurts someone on purpose and does it over and over again. We spoke about what we need to do if we think we are being bullied. We also spoke about how we can just ask our friends if they are okay as sometimes we may be having a sad day where we need our friends around us.
We then listened carefully to 'Simon Sock' by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet. Afterwards, we discussed why 'Simon' was feeling sad, children came up with ideas such as:
"because he doesn't have another one"
"he's on his own".
We discussed how these ideas were right and that Simon was feeling left out. Children thought about how they feel when they are left out.
We discussed how, today, we are wearing odd socks help us to remember that it is not nice to feel left out and we should try to play with each other so that no one feels left out.
Children then had the opportunity to design their own pair of odd socks and we made sure that everyone had a friend to choose with so no one was left out!