Spring Term 2nd Half

Old MacDonald Had A Farm 

Welcome Spring 2 and to our Ee-ie-ee-ie-oh Topic.

To start the term with a spring in our step, every child did an observational painting of a Daffodil. Exploring colours, they mixed yellow and blue to make green for the stem, then used yellow for the petals of the flower.

In maths, our younger children have been singing a variety of number rhyme songs, becoming really familiar with the words so they know them by heart and using their fingers to represent each number between 1 and 5. 

The older children compared amounts saying when two groups had the same number of objects. They have been reciting numbers to 10 and seeing what numerals look like by ordering them as a group. We then moved onto comparing sizes of farm animals and using the language of big and little/small. 

In literacy, everyone has enjoyed listening to a variety of farm animal stories. Their favourite has been The Three Billy Goats Gruff where everyone got involved in retelling this story through Talk for Writing. Each child was given a copy of the picture story map so they can recite it at home with their families. 

Everyone looked fantastic dressed up as their favourite book character for World Book Day. 

Once again, the children put their art skills into practise by drawing a picture of their favourite farm animal using oil pastels. They followed simple step by step instructions to create their picture. Using lines and circles, we had lovely drawings of sheep, cows, pigs and chickens. 

During this half term, we have had Science week. We looked at Veterinarians James Herriot, Julian Norton and Peter Wright as Scientists and talked about how important their job is in looking after animals. We set up a veterinary clinic in class for our aspiring future veterinarians. 

To conclude our topic of farm animals, the children were lucky enough to experience a visit from Donna's chickens, where they were able to pet 'Bob', 'Olaf' and 'Rooney' and have a photograph taken with one of them. We then went over to school to see Class 5's baby chicks. The children were able to hold the chicks in their hands, if they felt brave enough!  

In our final week, we all enjoyed a visit from Easter Bunny, bringing us a chocolate treat. 

Spring Term 1st Half

Spring 1 half term has been a Winter Wonderland. It was a chilly start and our water tray was no exception! We froze water into ice blocks, added Arctic animals and watched the ice melt away in artificial snow. 

We talked about what animals live in the colder parts of the world, in particular penguins. The children created their own penguin pictures by painting one of their feet black and printing it on paper. Then they added the features to make it look like a penguin. Lots of children said their foot tickled when it was being painted! Unfortunately, we did not get any real snow to play in, but the children were still able to build a snowman. The body parts of Olaf from Disney's Frozen was cut into pieces and the children could put the snowman together in any way they chose. We continued to be creative by practising our snipper skills to make a Winter Collage. We sprinkled glitter on our picture then added pieces of material that we had cut out. 

For Mathematics, we compared quantities learning to understand the meaning and use the language of 'Lots' and 'more'. We looked at a small number of penguins and added 'more' so we had 'lots' of penguins. 

In literacy, we shared wintry stories, lots of them about Arctic animals. Our favourite book was 'Me...' by Emma Dodd. We retold the story about a small penguin living in a big world using our Talk for Writing story map and actions as we learned new words from the story such as big, small, strong, deep and steep. 

During this half term, it was Chinese New Year. We were invited over to the Foundation Stage playground to watch a Chinese Lion Dance. We really enjoyed seeing the Chinese Lion do different moves. He was wiggling and shaking, coming up close to us. We weren't scared! We reached out to stroke him. 

We have really enjoyed learning lots of new things this half term and we look forward to new experiences as the term moves on.