We are little dragons!

Over the last five weeks we have been taking part in some fantastic karate lessons from Hertfordshire Karate Centre as part of our WOW P.E. We have been developing our skills of balance and co-ordination as well as learning how to strike, punch and kick. We have used a wide range of fantastic resources and have all really enjoyed learning something so new and exciting. At the end of our last session today we were all awarded a certificate which tells us that we are now 'Little Dragons'! Many thanks to our brilliant teacher, Shihan Nigel for working with us this half term!

Exploring Nelly's toy box!

This week we are learning about the opposites old and new. On Tuesday we looked at lots of different old things including photographs, books, a camera, an iron, a typewriter, a kettle and a teddy bear. Thank you to Fallon who brought some terrific old things in for us to explore!

Today we had a visitor from Hertford Museum who brought us lots of old toys to explore. She showed us an old black and white photo of a girl called Nelly, and we had lots of fun looking at and playing with some of the toys she would have played with when she was a little girl! We had to use our thinking skills to work out how some of the toys worked and talked about what they were made of and how they are different from toys we play with today. Look at all these fantastic toys we got to explore and learn about - do you know what they are? How do you think they work?

Amazing adverbs!

This afternoon Reception were learning all about adverbs. These are words that describe HOW we do something, and they usually end in the letters -ly.

We acted out moving in lots of different ways such as quickly, slowly, quietly, sadly, and excitedly. Then we thought about who might be moving, what they are like and where they're moving to. We built up sentences and practised saying them together.

Miss Ayres' sentence was: The fierce dragon flew quickly to his cave.

As a group we wrote the sentence: The handsome knight bravely rode his horse to the castle to rescue the princess.

Can you spot our adverbs?

Then we worked on our own, thinking of a character and describing them, then saying where they were going and using an adverb. We wrote our sentences down and drew pictures to go with them, not forgetting our capital letters and full stops!

Here are our super sentences with amazing adverbs!

The kind knight walked quickly to the castle. - Finlay
The happy unicorn walked slowly to the beach. - Tommy
The beautiful princess was going to the beach slowly. - Summer
The black and white cat is quickly eating food. - Jack
The kind snake bravely slithered to his cave. - Lucy
The bird is bravely going to the spooky woods. - Emily
The cute bird flew slowly to the nest. - Fallon
The pretty princess is happily wearing a pink dress. - Olivia
The fierce dragon flew grumpily to the cave. - Harrison
The big boy and girl walked excitedly to the funfair. - Harry
The kind knight walked quickly to the castle. - Charlie
The bad witch angrily made a spell. - Blue

Thinking about things beginning with 'th'!

Today is THursday, and we have been THinking of THings beginning with 'th', because that's our sound of the week!

Luke brought in two types of THermometers from home. "They show if you are too hot," he said. Some of us had experience of having our temperature taken using a thermometer.

Amber brought in a THorn. "I found it at the garden centre. You have to be careful because it's sharp."

Can you THink of some THings that begin with 'th'?

Changing shadows

Today we were learning about the opposites light and dark. We used a globe and a torch to show how the Earth spins around while the sun stays still and looked at how this made some parts of the world light (during daytime) while the other side of the world was dark (night time).

Outside, we explored our shadows. We stood on a line and got a friend to draw around our shadow.

Later in the morning we went outside and stood where we had before. Our shadow had moved!

We talked about why this had happened. Fallon said "because the Earth is moving round and the sun is staying still." As the Earth spins, it make it look as though the sun is moving across the sky because it's in a different place. That means our shadow falls in a different place! We made predictions about where our shadow would be in the afternoon. Can you guess where it was?

Our shadow had moved around again! Well done to Fallon who was able to predict where her shadow would be in the afternoon. The Earth has moved around again and it makes the sun look as though it is in a different place!

Double, double..!

This morning in maths we were learning how to double. When you double something you make it twice as big. We were doubling numbers and had to remember to add the same amount again. First we practised using ourselves! If we had one child and we wanted to double it, we added one more. So double 1 is 2. Then we doubled 2 children - we added 2 more and found out that double 2 is 4. Summer used children in the group to work out double 3. She chose 3 children to stand up first, then another 3. She counted them and told us that double 3 is 6 - well done Summer!

Then we were exploring doubles using spots on a ladybird. We all had a special ladybird picture and some counters which we used to work out doubles. If we were finding out double 4 we had to put 4 ladybird spots on one side and then 4 on the other side. Then we had to count the total to find the answer.

We enjoyed using our ladybirds to find doubles and will be practising finding doubles throughout the week!