Spring Term 2nd Half

This half term our topic theme has been about Superheroes, both imaginary and real life.

On World Book Day, we had an amazing time dressing up as our favourite storybook character and reading our favourite books together.  Many Clever Kittens took part in our Bedtime Story challenge of reading 25 books over the half term and they are really looking forward to receiving their prize. We believe ‘Reading in our Superpower’.

In the home corner, the Clever Kittens dressed up as real life superheroes – Fire-fighters, Police Officers, Doctors and Nurses and showed lots of interest in the different occupations.  They used the available resources to create props to support their imaginative role play.  For the finale to our topic, we welcomed our special visitors, PC Green and Nurse Green. We looked at the different equipment used by nurses and were able to have our arm bandaged.  PC Green took our fingerprints and we all had the opportunity to dress up and ask questions.  The visitors inspired the Clever Kittens and some expressed their desire to become police officers and nurses of the future.

It was so wonderful to welcome families back into the classroom with our Stay, Play and Learn sessions.  We were able to practice our handwriting on the Easter cards we created and use our scissors skills to make a rabbit mask.

In our Talk for Writing, we used non-fiction texts using a list of instructions.  Firstly, we sequenced ‘How to plant a cress head’ and then, ‘How to make an Easter Nest bun’, applying mathematical the vocabulary of first, next, after that and finally.

In Science week, we were very busy being Scientists and had a fabulous time with lots of fun activities. We had construction magnets, and magnets to investigate which objects were magnetic and which were non-magnetic.  A table top was set out with light, colour and reflective resources, exploring how you can shine light through some materials, but not others.  We grew planted our own cress and after a week we were able to make egg and cress sandwiches.  Our final science investigation was a real tasty treat. We made Chocolate Easter Nest buns and had the opportunity to change materials from one state to another by melting the chocolate, combining different ingredients, and then cooling them. Yummy!    What a super half term!

Spring Term 1st Half

Once upon a time … there was a class of children called The Clever Kittens and they began exploring different traditional tales.

They tasted porridge with Goldilocks and the Three Bears and talked about the difference between materials and the changes they noticed when cooking the porridge. They were able to retell the whole of story following our Talk for Writing story map. We have also been using new vocabulary to describe a sequence of events in our story, ‘first, next, after that, finally.’

Again, the Clever Kittens used a story map to retell the traditional tale of The Three Little Pigs and were encouraged to understand questions linked to the story e.g. Who built the strongest house? Why didn’t the house of bricks blow down when the wolf huffed and puffed?  The children also joined in using story language “Once upon a time ….” and “The end”.

We have been learning the key concepts about print, talking about the names of the different parts of a book e.g. the front cover, back cover, the blurb, title and title page. They created Little Red Riding Hood pictures using 2d Shapes, learning their mathematical names and mathematical terms to describe them. 

We have also looked at animals from the North and South Poles.  We made realistic looking ‘fake’ snow from crystals, slowly adding water and watched how it changed from one state to another.  We then separated the animals and created ‘small worlds’ of the North and South Poles.

This half term we celebrated the Lunar New Year of the Tiger by tasting Chinese food - trying hard to use chopsticks.  We made Chinese fans and firework pictures.  We have also been developing our art skills by choosing the correct paintbrush to use and learning which colours to mix together to make orange to paint a tiger. For the festivities finale we had a roaring time watching the Sheffield Lion Dance Company perform a Chinese Lion Dance in school. Gung Hey Fat Choi (Happy New Year).

We have had some exciting adventures and, thankfully, managed to escape the Big Bad Wolf. …..The End.