Patterned fruit kebabs!

This morning we made patterned fruit kebabs. We used strawberries, bananas and grapes. First we had to wash our hands. Then we cut up the fruit. We cut the bananas and Miss Ayres cut the strawberries. After that we put the fruit on our kebab stick one piece at a time, making sure it was in a repeating pattern. For example, banana, strawberry, grape, banana, strawberry, grape. Finally, we ate them. They were delicious! Look at our pictures - can you see all the different repeating patterns we made?

Animal patterns

This afternoon we have been exploring animal patterns. We played a guessing game where we looked at close up photos of different animals and had to work out which animal it was from. They all had very different patterns, from the stripes of a zebra to the spots of a leopard! We decorated outlines of animals, making sure we chose the right colours and followed the right pattern. A zebra wouldn't look very good if we decorated it with spots instead of stripes!

We also learnt about camouflage. This is when animals are hard to see because of their colour or pattern. We looked at some pictures of animals that were well camouflaged. Some we spotted straight away, but some were really hard to see! Here are some of the pictures we looked at - can you see the animal hiding in the picture?

Repeating patterns

This morning we learnt all about 'repeating patterns'. Repeat means you do something again - you might say something again, or do it again. Repeating patterns are when the same pattern appears over and over, like red blue red blue. We explored patterns with ourselves, like boy girl boy girl, and nursery, reception, nursery, reception. Then we explored repeating patterns using multilink, stacking counters, coloured vehicles and animals and crayons. We continued some patterns and made up some of our own. Some of them had 2 colours, some had 3 and were a bit trickier. If you forget what your pattern is, you have to look back at the start of the pattern!

In Play and Learn time we were exploring lots of different patterns. We used pegs and boards, beads and threading, pens and pencils and made some threaded necklaces with different coloured pasta and different coloured straws. We also made some patterns with wellie boots and paint!

Shape and number patterns

Today we have been exploring patterns in maths. This morning we explored mathematical patterns using shapes. We made patterns with different shapes and had to try and remember the names of the 2D and 3D shapes we were using. We also used the shape tiles to make patterns and explore how they fitted together.

This afternoon Reception were doing some mathematical investigations. We talked about what 'investigation' means - Harry said "it's when you test something out." We looked at some multilink that was in the pattern pink, blue, blue, pink, blue, blue. The question was: If we make this pattern with 10 pinks cubes, how many blues will there be? We estimated how many we thought there were going to be and then worked out how to test it out. We had to make the pattern of pink, blue, blue until we had used 10 pink cubes. Then we had to count how many blue there were. How many do you think? There were 20! We talked about why this was and found out that there are always double the number of blue cubes as pink in this pattern. If there is one pink cube, there are two blue ones. If there are two pink cubes, there are four blue ones. If we made this pattern with 20 pink cubes, how many blue cubes do you think we would need?

Then we explored some more patterns. Lucy, Hope, Aaron and Harry had a tricky challenge! In a pattern of square, square, circle, if I had 12 squares, how many circles would there be? They used paper and a pencil and drew out the patterns to work it out. We found out that the answer is 6. This is because there are half as many circles as squares. If we had 10 squares, we'd have 5 circles. If we had 20 squares, how many circles do you think we would have?

Musical patterns

This afternoon we have been exploring musical patterns. We looked at music cards and said which instrument it showed. Then we had to practise playing it so we knew how to hold it properly to make the right sound. We put four cards in a line and played the instruments in the right order - for example: triangle, bell, tambourine, wood block. We had to make sure we took it in turns and only played when it was our turn.

Then we split into groups and composed some musical patterns of our own. We used the cards to make up musical patterns, then practised playing them in the right order. As well as developing our musical skills we were showing good speaking and listening, turn taking and teamwork - we had to show this month's value of patience!

When we had rehearsed we performed our pieces of music to the rest of the class. We had to make sure we did good listening when the other groups were playing.

Whoops!

This morning we have been singing nursery rhymes and songs with rhyming words. We learnt a funny song called Whoops! about a peanut who sat on a railway track. The first verse goes like this:

A peanut sat on the railway track
His heart was all a-flutter,
Round the bend came number one
Whoops! Peanut butter!

We looked at which words rhymed and talked about what had happened. The second verse goes:

A strawberry sat on the railway track
Her teeth were wobbling loose,
Around the bend came number two
Whoops! Strawberry mousse!

Then Miss Ayres read the rest of the verses and we had to guess what the last word of the poem was. Can you fill in the missing words? Remember that the last word has to rhyme with the last word of the second line, and it has to show what happened to the food when the train came round the bend!!

A lemon sat on the railway track
His eyes were on his belly,
Around the bend came number three
Whoops! Lemon .........!

An orange sat on the railway track
Her face required a wash,
Around the bend came number four
Whoops! Orange ........!

A tomato sat on the railway track
His skin was red, of course,
Around the bend came number five
Whoops! Tomato .........!

A potato sat on the railway track
A smile was on his lips,
Around the bend came number six
Whoops! Potato ........!

A biscuit sat on the railway track
A-twiddling her thumbs,
Around the bend came number seven
Whoops! Biscuit ..........!

Some fruit and nuts sat on the track
Feeling rather sad,
A hungry traveller took them home
Which wasn't quite so .........!
Or was it?

Alliteration

This afternoon we met Funky Monkey's friend, Freddie Fox. We knew that Freddie Fox's name didn't rhyme, because the end sounds were different. But the first sounds in his name were the same. That's not rhyme, that's called alliteration. We read the book Superhero ABC. All the superheroes have powers and do things that begin with the same letter as their name. For example, 'Danger man duels with dragons!'

We took it in turns to say the first sound in our name, then to think of a word that begins with the same letter. If we couldn't think of something our friends were good at helping us. We tried to think of words that could describe us or what we are doing, so 'laughing Lexi' rather than 'lamp Lexi'!

We drew pictures of ourselves and wrote our names and the word we were using to describe ourselves. Some of them were quite tricky! Here is what we wrote:

Jammy Jamie
Marvellous Matthew
Red Rhys
Lovely Lexi
Orange Olivia

Some of us wrote sentences with alliteration using our names. We wrote:

Amazing Aaron ate an apple.
Lovely Lucy licks a lolly.
Mad Maddie munches meat.
Happy Harry has a hairy hat.
Great Grace grabs green grapes.

Then we played some games to help us practise alliteration and read a story called Super Sid the Silly Sausage Dog. We did such great work that Freddie Fox understood what alliteration was, and how it was different to rhyme. Well done Reception!