World Book Day!

Today we had lots of fun dressing up for World Book Day and sharing our love of reading. In our class we had Fantastic Mr Fox, an oompah-loompah and Jack with a beanstalk to name a few!

We enjoyed buddy reading, where an older child reads and shares books with a younger child. As always, the older children did a fantastic job with the younger ones showing not only great reading skills but a lot of understanding and patience.


This year was also our first 'book swap' - children were invited to bring in a book they no longer wanted or perhaps had a duplicate of and could swap it for a book someone else had brought in. Nursery and Reception joined Year 1 and 2 and everyone got to take home a new book to read.


Tomorrow we are going to be developing our writing as we talk more about the characters we came dressed as and think of some good words to describe them!

Noah's Ark

This week we started our new topic on Transport and have been learning the Bible story of Noah's Ark.

We have heard and retold the story and explored it using small world toys. We also made some beautiful rainbow pictures using a variety of resources such as paint, chalk, pencils and felt tip pen. This included making some very big rainbow pictures on the playground using big chalk!

This afternoon we learnt a song called Please Mr Noah. In it we had to make the noises of different animals which were either high pitched (mice and monkeys) or low pitched (lions and bears). Not only did we perform the song making the sound of our animal in groups, we added movement and actions too!

Noah's Ark will help us in our maths this week as we count in 2s and in science as we explore floating and sinking and test materials to see if they are waterproof.

Ice investigations

Yesterday we were exploring the ice that we found outside. The children enjoyed breaking up the ice and mixing it in water, which led to an interesting discussion. Some of the children thought the cold water would stop the ice melting and others thought it would make the ice melt. So we decided to test it out!

This afternoon we did a science investigation to see what makes ice melt the quickest - putting it in warm water, cold water or leaving it in an empty bowl. We discussed with our talk partner which ice cube would melt the quickest and which we thought would be slowest.

Everyone thought the ice in the warm water would melt the quickest. But when it came to which was the slowest we were very divided. Half the class thought the one in cold water would melt the slowest because the water is cold and would keep the ice cold. The other half all thought the one in the empty bowl would melt the slowest.

We wrote our predictions on our investigation sheet and talked about how we could make it a fair test. We agreed that all the ice cubes should be the same size. Luke also said we should have the same amount of warm water and cold water in the bowls. We got the bowls ready, and so we didn't forget which was the warm water and which was the cold Luke and Hannah wrote some labels for us.

We used the lab timer app on the iPad to record the times. When we put an ice cube in we started the correct timer. We had to keep observing the ice cubes so we could see when they had melted!

Here are our results:

As you can see, the ice in the warm water melted the quickest, as we predicted. The ice in the cold water was the next to melt, and the ice cube in the empty bowl took much longer! We discussed where we could have put the ice in the empty bowl that would have made it melt quicker. Dexter said we could have turned the heater on in the classroom and put the ice cube near it and Luke said we could have put it outside if it was sunny so the sunshine could make it melt faster. We talked about our experiences of having ice in our drinks that melt and eating ice lollies - we agreed they melt much quicker on a hot, sunny day so you have to eat them really quickly!

Excellent investigative science Reception!

Exploring rope!

Today we had a special present from Hannah's daddy - a big, long, purple rope! We were all very excited and had lots of suggestions about how we could use it, including to climb trees and make zip wires!

Reece said "I think the rope is longer than the playground." We talked about whether we thought it was longer or shorter than the playground and how we could find out.

Outside, we unravelled the rope and stretched it out. We found we could go all the way from one end of the playground to the other, and there was almost enough rope to come all the way back again!

We spent some time playing with the rope, carefully jumping over it or pretending to be on a zip wire or in a cable car as we moved along it. Then we worked as a team to hold the rope in a big circle. It was so big Miss Ayres couldn't fit us all in the photo at the same time!

We had lots of fun exploring the rope today, and next week will find lots more things we can do with it - perhaps using it for building and den making outside? Watch this space..!

Homes around the world

This afternoon we had a really interesting discussion about homes around the world. We looked at lots of photos of different homes and talked about them. We came up with lots of good observations about the houses, for example, whether we thought they were in a hot or a cold country (and how we knew that), what we thought the building was made from and how they looked different to other buildings we had looked at. Mylo explained why he thought one of the buildings was old and Hannah said that old buildings are made of stone and new buildings are made of bricks. We came up with ideas about why some houses were built on stilts, and Dexter thought it might be to stop animals getting in. We also talked about how it would be very different living in a flat in a tall building in the middle of a city to living in a detached house in the countryside.

Not only did we make thoughtful observations, we came up with some interesting questions - Hannah in particular was great at this! When talking about people in some of the houses not having electricity, Hannah asked "do they have food?" We also looked at a photo of a treehouse, but it was difficult to see how the people climbed up to it. Hannah spotted this, and asked "how do they get up to their house?"

Great geographical thinking and questioning from everyone!

In Play and Learn time Frankie and Jack were looking at some of our books about homes around the world and were really interested to see some of the different houses. We read one of the books at the end of the day, and again all the children had really interesting comments and questions.

Well done Reception!

Our learning this week

This week we are going to be learning about...

• addition
• buildings around the world

We will be learning...

• to find and say one more than a number
• to find the total number of objects in two groups by counting all of them
• to solve addition calculations using objects
• to solve addition calculations by counting on from a number in our heads
• to develop rapid recall of simple addition facts e.g 2 + 2 or 3 + 1
• to solve problems involving addition
• to understand that homes and buildings are different within our own country and in different parts of the world
• to understand that people may have homes, cultures and beliefs different to our own but which should be respected
• to use geographical words to talk about places, e.g city, countryside, desert, forest

You can help me at home by...

• exploring addition with me through play, for example, if I have two cars and you have three, how many do we have altogether?
• playing games with me that involve counting on, for example, a board game where we have to move on a given number of spaces
• playing games to develop my mental maths - see http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button and http://www.ictgames.com/funkymum.html
• talking to me about different homes I have lived in or that my family live in and how they may be different, for example, if it is a bungalow, a house or a flat; if it's in the city, a town or a village
• talking to me about places I have been on holiday or where family members have been and discussing differences, for example, does it look hotter or colder than the UK? How are the buildings different? What do you think they are made of?

Reminders:

If you have not already done so, please send the permission form and money for our theatre trip next week into school. Many thanks.
Please bring Library books back into school on Wednesday

On Thursday our sound of the week will be 'qu'

We would appreciate any contributions of mark making or writing from outside school for our 'Learning outside school' board, or any other examples of learning outside school that your child would like to share with us

We would also appreciate any examples of children showing this month's value of 'unity'

Our learning this week

This week we are going to be learning about...

• weight and capacity
• using technology

We will be learning...

• to use words like heavy, heavier, heaviest and light, lighter, lightest to describe the weight of objects
• to use balance scales to explore which objects are heavier than others
• to solve problems involving weighing
• to use words like full, empty, more, less to talk about capacity
• to order two or three objects by capacity
• to explore problems involving capacity, for example, investigating whether a small container that is full has more water in it than a large container which is half full
• to use technology in the classroom such as the iPads, touch screen computer and interactive whiteboard confidently
• to choose games, apps and programmes that will support our learning, for example, to help us achieve a maths or literacy target
• to choose technology for a particular purpose, for example, using a sound recorder to record a sentence so we can remember it when it comes to writing it, or using the iPad to take a photo of a model we have made with construction toys

You can help me at home by...

• exploring weighing with me, for example, when weighing ingredients for cooking
• modelling language of full, empty, more and less during bath time and exploring different containers with me, seeing which ones can hold the most liquid
• talking about the different technology we have at home and what we use it for
• supporting me if I am playing on a tablet or computer at home, talking to me about what I have chosen to use it for and why; maybe to take a photo of my pet?

Reminders:

If you have not already done so, please send or email photos of your child's house into school this week. Many thanks for all those we have received so far - our exciting project begins this week! If you are having any problems with this, please come and speak to me before or after school.

Please bring Library books back into school on Wednesday

On Thursday our sound of the week will be 'p'

We would appreciate any contributions of mark making or writing from outside school for our 'Learning outside school' board, or any other examples of learning outside school that your child would like to share with us

We would also appreciate any examples of children showing this month's value of 'unity'