Our topic this term was E-i-ee-i-o. This topic was truly brought to life by turning our immersive learning area into a farmyard, complete with straw and farmers hats. We loved to sing old McDonald and learn the name of the farm animals. We were able to link a lot of our phonics activities to this topic where we used our listening ears to tune into the sounds the animals made and also listen and remember the sounds. One of our favourite stories this topic was ‘Mucky duck’ where the children loved the repeated refrain ‘oh you mucky duck’. We also enjoyed ‘fix it duck’ where the children were able to hear rhyming words, duck, truck, stuck.

The class were excited to know Mrs Higginbottom had chicken’s at home and I brought them in to school for the day to surprise the children. The children were interested to see the different colours of their feathers and learn about them laying eggs. One of the chickens was really noisy and the children enjoyed ‘talking’ to her. They then all got the opportunity to get a bit closer to one of the chickens and look in more detail at their features, stroke their soft feathers and have their photo taken. Some little learners even consolidated their understanding of the visit by pretending to ‘visit school’ with their own chicken in a pet carrier. 

 

     

 

To extend our knowledge and understanding of the world around us we also tended to our garden. We planted sunflowers at school as well as sending seeds home to plant, and made our own vegetable patch in what is usually our sand tray. By replacing sand with soil the children were able to explore natural phenomena and dig and plant potatoes and carrots.

 

                                  

 

In maths we have been looking at patterns. In order for children to understand what this concept means we started off by looking at our clothes. The children were able to identify stripy patterns on their socks and t shirts, spotty patterns on leggings and even a zebra print pattern on one of our little learners top. Children were asked to identify patterns at home and we received lots of lovely photo’s on dojo. We will use this understanding of patterns moving into our next topic and extend this by looking at repeating patterns on a bee (yellow and black stripes) and also symmetrical patterns of a butterfly.

 

              

 

Towards the end of term we enjoyed rainbow day, celebrating the life of our much loved and missed governor, Julie Mott. The children each had a love heart to write a message on and display for all to see. We also celebrated Eater early with our very own Easter egg hunt. It has been lovely to be surrounding by the colours of spring and see the beautiful rainbow arch in our school grounds. As we move into warmer weather we are busy preparing our garden and activities for our next topic ‘It’s a bugs life’.

                                                       

 

Here is a collection of photo’s of our beautiful room based on our topic ‘walking in a winter wonderland’. We have been very fortunate this term that we have had lots of snow fun which has really brought our topic to life. We have loved playing in the snow and seeing all the photo’s you have shared with us. For our topic work we have been learning all about the arctic animals and the colours of the winter season. We have been moving our bodies to the penguin dance and enjoyed building igloos and seeing how our body can fit into small spaces. We have been very creative this term and one of the children’s favourite activities was painting on silver foil. In maths, we have been learning to count and comparing amounts using the mathematical language of lots, more or same. The children are doing really well with their listening ears, and one of our favourite phase one phonics activities this term has been ‘playing with words’ where we label and talk about familiar objects and then think about the syllables as we clap them out as we say each word. This activity gives children a good understanding of the pattern of syllables in the words presented to them. Here are some more examples of the fun we have had this term. I cannot wait to start our new topic in spring 2,  'ee-i-ee-i-o',  where we learn about farm animals and all things that grow.