What's it like in Kenya?

We started the week listening to the story Handa’s Surprise. On Tuesday, we learnt that the country of Kenya is in the continent of Africa. We learnt what the Kenyan flag looks like and some of us chose to draw and colour the flag in our choosing time. We compared how Kenya is similar and different to England – such as Kenya only has 2 seasons (dry and wet) whereas we have 4. ​We also learnt that their hottest months are December-March and their cooler months are June and July but we know that December-March are the Winter months and June and July are Summer months in England. The children noticed how the capital city Nairobi has tall buildings just like London! We also learnt that in Kenya there are people from many different cultures just like here in England! We have watched several short videos all about Kenya including one of the National Parks, the Maasai Mara and here we learnt that you can go up into the sky in a hot air balloon to see all the wonderful sights and the African Big Five which are; the lion, leopard, buffalo, rhinoceros, and elephant. The hot air balloons inspired us to get creative and create our own – we have decorated a circle for the balloon, stuck 2 pipe cleaners onto the back of the balloon and at the bottom of the pipe cleaners we have attached a basket. They look fantastic and we plan to stick photos of ourselves in the baskets! In the funky finger area children have been practising fastening and unfastening buttons and zips on cardigans and jackets! In the painting area we have been using the block paints to create African sunsets – we have mixed different shades of orange using red and yellow, we have used black to add in the grass and trees and then we have cut out and stuck pictures of African animals onto our sunsets – they look amazing! Children have had the opportunity to sort pictures into those they think are in Kenya and those they think are in the UK.

Literacy

Y1 children have learnt about features of a letter. They have planned their letter to their new class teacher (who we don’t have the name of yet!) and have begun to draft our letter we have addressed it as “Dear my new class teacher,”.

Maths

 Y1 children started the week using ‘purple pen’ to go through their assessments from last week. Then they have been practising and consolidating previously taught knowledge on counting forwards and backwards within 100 starting with any number.

​Reception children have learnt to name the 3D shapes – cube, cone, cylinder and sphere and know that they are solid shapes. They have also learnt that we use clocks to measure time and know that clocks have a minute and hour hand. Reception know that when the minute (big) hand points to 12 it is o’clock. They have really impressed me at how quickly they retained this information and how quickly they were able to show a given time on the clock! I am so proud of the children - just look at our big proud smiles as we make times to o'clock.

Science

In Science, ​we learnt that a bulb is a short stem with leaves built up around it, that flowers on a tree are often called blossom and that fruit often grows on trees and to describe the life-cycle of a plant.