Happy New Year and welcome back to school for the Spring term. I hope everyone enjoyed a peaceful Christmas time and managed a few pyjama days! Once again thank you all very much indeed for the very generous and amazing array of Christmas gifts for the teachers!  We were overwhelmed with your thoughtfulness, kindness and generosity. Thank you all very much.

Back to school business and out topic for the term is OUT AND ABOUT. We are starting by looking at seasons and the weather. Our first look is at WINTER. We have begun by each making a snowflake… following instructions, folding, cutting, unfolding all easier said than done, so we were very proud of the snowflakes everyone produced.

Our small world play took us to the snowy arctic where the children used their imaginations to make up some wonderful snowy stories and even an igloo- a particular mention to Iris here who very much enjoyed our frozen world.

Fine motor skills and counting were combined as the children challenged themselves to see how much snowy Lego they could fill the snowman with using the tweezers with a time limit. They then counted their results.

Our creative task encourage everyone to make a polar bear face for our wintry display …

Fun and fine motor had the children painting ice-cubes! Again easier said than done – no hands allowed to help – just the pant brush – ice is even more slippery than you think!

 

 

More number work – deciding on number bonds – choosing a piece of numicon, recognising its number value and then finding two more pieces that will match its size exactly. Now you know which two numbers can be used to make a certain bigger number! This numicon play builds to help the children understand value of number and adittion.

 

We have found out a little about the Inuit people who live in snowy, cold lands in the polar regions. We have learnt that the Inuits are nomadic people living across Greenland, Alaska and Siberia. We have watched a short video clip of an Inuit family building their igloo to protect them from a forthcoming storm.  Thank you to all who have provided a 4 pint,  clean, milk carton – our igloo building began with gusto but came to a halt when we ran out of special glue! We will resume building next week! We are happy to receive any more clean,  4 pint milk cartons! Thank you.

More snowy activities have included salty snowflakes which have a lovely rough texture and reflect the light – all will be added to our Winter display.

 

 

We have had stories about weather from Sam Usher – Snow. Rain and Sun and are continuing next week with more snowy stories.

Our role play area – including our igloo building has also been full of hats, gloves, scarves, ear-muffs and mittens to enable us to wrap up as we build our own igloo. The children thoroughly enjoy getting themselves all wrapped up !

 

This weeks sounds have been J V W X Y. All the children have practised saying, reading and writing our new sounds. Our new writing focus is an activity called Traffic Light Sentences, where the children choose a red, amber or green sentence to read and then copy. This enables them to understand as they write, that  they need to think of a sentence as a whole and that it is split into a series of words.

From this week everyone has a  ‘ reading book’   in their book bag. If your not sure which book it is please check the inside back cover of the yellow reading journal. This book is for the children to try and read to you.  It won’t be easy and will be time consuming. Please only embark on it when you have time to sit down and focus on this. If you are stressed or your child isn’t interested please don’t do it! It will put them off before they’ve even started. Even if they sound out one or two words in the book this is a start – you read the rest to them. They will find CVC words easiest – such as pig or bin. However frustrating the learning to read process is – please give lots of praise for any interest and willingness to have a go!   GOOD LUCK parents and carers!

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the weekend