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!

Cooking a healthy meal

This morning we were learning all about scales and weight as we explored the opposites 'heavy' and 'light'. This afternoon we continued our learning on weight and combined it with our learning on healthy eating to create a healthy meal. We followed a recipe to make cheese and vegetable pasta and talked about how the different foods would help our bodies. Pasta is a carbohydrate so it will give us energy and cheese is a dairy food so it will help give us strong teeth and strong bones. We should have at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day to keep healthy and in our pasta we had onion, garlic, carrot, peppers, tomatoes and fresh basil.

We made sure we washed our hands first so they were nice and clean and wore aprons. We weighed all the ingredients carefully using the scales to make sure we had the right amount. When we were cooking we were very careful near hot things like the wok and sharp objects like knives, using our special safety knives to chop the peppers. When we had made the sauce and cooked the pasta we mixed them together then let it cool down a bit before we ate it so we didn't burn our mouths. Our pasta was delicious - some of us had lots of helpings! We did manage to spare a little bit for Miss Ayres and Mrs Waites to eat, and then Miss Groves came in and ate some too!

Big and small

Today we were learning all about the opposites 'big' and 'small'. We talked about different words for big such as huge, massive and enormous and different words for small like little or tiny. Miss Ayres showed us a mystery box - what do you think was inside it? It was... a smaller box! We opened that box and found... another box! We kept going until we had five boxes! Each one had to be smaller than the box it was in so it would fit.

We explored lots of things to help us understand size and measuring and help us practise comparing things by size, such as saying "this is smaller than..." or "this is bigger than..."

We explored the stacking boxes and also the Russian dolls - you have to put them inside each other in the right order or they won't fit!

We played a game on the whiteboard where we had to match the right food to the right bear based on its size - the big bear got the biggest food and the little bear had the smallest pieces!

We made models with different sized boxes and tubes.

We explored different sized shapes and explored how they could fit together. We also used 2D shapes of different colours to make pictures.

We drew pictures of things that are different sizes or cut some shapes of different sizes out ourselves.

We explored different sized bottles, jugs and cylinders in the water tray and different sized buckets and moulds in the sand.

We used different sized cutters in the playdough and also used our hands to shape the playdough into different things. Hannah shaped the playdough into a small, medium and large bowl - well done Hannah!

We looked at the plants we are growing and compared them - the bean that is growing in the sand is taller than the bean that is growing in the soil!

We made towers of different heights with multilink cubes and stacking counters.

We did a jigsaw of 'small, medium and large' - you had to match the right things together and put them in order from smallest to biggest to make the pieces fit together.

We looked at lots of books and stories about size including The Smartest Giant in Town, Mr Big and the Little Bear stories as well as non-fiction books about different sized animals.

We used the boxes to make tall towers!

In the role play area we acted out the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, using different sized bowls, spoons and chairs for the three bears.

What things can you find at home that are different sizes? What words could you use to describe them?

Healthy eating

This week one of the opposites we are learning about is healthy/unhealthy. We are learning what we need to do to keep ourselves healthy, including eating healthy food, drinking lots of water, getting exercise and getting enough rest.

We looked at different types of food and talked about whether we thought they were healthy or unhealthy. Then we learnt about the five different food groups and how they help our bodies. We learnt that carbohydrates (carbs) like rice, pasta, bread and potatoes give us energy, fruit and vegetables keep us healthy and we should have at least 5 portions a day, dairy foods like milk and yoghurt help us to have strong teeth and strong bones and proteins like meat, fish, eggs and nuts help us to grow. We also learnt about fats and sugars, like chocolate, sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks - these are foods we should only have a small amount of in our diet!

Then we made a healthy plate of food using paper plates and a range of resources including tissue paper and colouring pencils. We added labels and some of us wrote sentences about how the food in our healthy meal helps us, such as "Fish helps you grow" (Jack) and "Pasta gives you energy." (Emily).

When we have snack now we are going to be thinking about how the fruit and vegetables will help us to keep healthy and how our milk will help strengthen our teeth and bones!

What food do you like eating? Do you know which food group it belongs to and how it will help your body? When you're having dinner tonight, see if you can talk about how some of the food on your plate will help your body.