We have loved looking after our visitor, Space Teddy, this week; making adaptations to his spacesuit and adding extra rocket boosters to his spaceship to make sure he gets back home to the Planet Zog safely.

Even though Space Teddy speaks in a different language, we know that you don’t have to speak the same language as someone to be friends with them and that there are always lots of other ways to communicate!  Giving someone a lovely smile is certainly a good start!

Our Spotlight Story this week was ‘Night Monkey, Day Monkey’ which you can revisit in this YouTube video.  Night Monkey and Day Monkey sees things quite differently but, luckily, they do speak the same language so they are able to use their words to help each other understand their different worlds.

This story led to some very interesting conversations about night and day; we learnt that the earth is turning as it travels around the sun and that it is daytime for half of the earth when it is facing the sun, while it is nighttime for the other half which is facing away from the sun.  That’s why it’s nighttime in Australia when it’s daytime in Raynes Park!

We are starting to discover that another way to communicate and to get your message across is to write something down.  This is exactly what Space Teddy decided to do!  He wrote his message down on a piece of paper and, would you believe it, the language he actually speaks is subitising fingers!  In Reception we are, of course, fluent in this language so we quickly worked out that Space Teddy’s message was 4, 2, 3, 3, 1.

This seemed like some sort of code which we would need to crack, so we searched on Google for a codebreaker and look what we found!

We used the codebreaker to help us work out that the word in Space Teddy’s message was…

As it turns out, Space Teddy wanted to taste the most delicious food on Planet Earth which is, of course, jelly!  So, we quickly set to work, washing our hands, cutting up the jelly cubes, adding hot water and then cold water, mixing carefully with a spoon, pouring it into jelly moulds and, finally, popping it in the fridge.

We watched very carefully to see what happened when the hot water was added to the jelly cubes.  I was so impressed by the language the children used, the explanations they gave for what was happening and the links they made between their previous experiences and this one (e.g. it’s like what happens with a bath bomb).

Although we absolutely loved making the jelly, it was even better to eat it!  And Space Teddy joined in too, eating his jelly through a straw, so he didn’t have to take off his spacesuit helmet.

Would you believe it, but one of our sounds this week was indeed j…for jelly!  What are the chances 😉  Here are the three sounds that we learnt:

When learning ‘h’, we made sure we were not saying ‘huh’ and we put our hand in front of our mouth to feel the air as we said this sound.  When writing, be sure to come all the way down the horse’s long neck, otherwise you may end up writing ‘n’.

The ‘r’ sound comes through our mouths (and not from our throats, i.e. it is not a roar) and you will feel your tongue curling near the roof of your mouth.

The final sound, ‘j’ often gets confused with ‘i’.  You might like to have a look at these sounds side by side.  We used the writing repeater to do this and noticed that ‘j’ has a long tail while ‘i’ is much shorter.

Here are the mouth shapes for these sounds:

from https://www.slideshare.net/msg719/abc-pronunciary

We have also been busy using our ‘Fred-talk’ to practise reading lots of CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words.  We used the word machine to generate words for us which we then read and had a go at writing.  Why not have a go at doing this at home – you could try and make the different words using the sounds in your sound & word pot.  If you do not have this yet, please be sure to send in your book bag next week so we can send yours home.

Have a lovely weekend everyone, keep warm and see you on Monday!

This week, we continued with our learning about the past and, in particular, we were inspired by our mix-up play with Nursery, who have been learning all about space!  We watched an old, black and white video of a man called Neil Armstrong as he took his first steps (and the first steps of anyone) on the moon, over 50 years ago!

We talked about everything we already know about space and I was so impressed by the children’s existing knowledge (for example, we know that the moon sometimes looks like a smile, that some planets have 2 moons and that Pluto used to be a planet but is not anymore!).

Our first Spotlight Story was Q Pootle 5 by Nick Butterworth which you can revisit here:

This story led to some very interesting conversations about aliens and whether or not they are real…!

After reading the story, we noticed a visitor in the classroom who we had never seen before.  No one seemed to know where he had come from, so we asked him who he was.  It was very difficult to understand him, as he seemed to be speaking in a different, alien language but, we remembered our kind and friendly good manners and we knew to make him feel welcome despite our language differences.  Eventually, we were able to work out that the visitor had arrived from a planet called Zog.  His spaceship had broken down while travelling through space and he had crash landed at St. Matthew’s!  His spaceship had broken into a million pieces and he needed our help to build a new one.

Thankfully, the children were more than happy to help and set to work building him a new spaceship and spacesuit.  Well done Reception, your teamwork, problem-solving skills and creative thinking was out of this world!

Our next spotlight story was ‘The Way Back Home’ by Oliver Jeffers about a boy who gets stuck on the moon with a martian who is also lost in space.  Together, they manage to help each other to find their ways back home.  You can revisit the story here…

We also very much enjoyed this Planet song…

Finally, we learnt three new sounds: f (which is a stretchy sound), e (a bouncy sound) and l (also a stretchy sound).  When practising these sounds, please be careful not to say ‘fuh’ and ‘luh’.  If you are unsure, do rewatch this video.

images from https://www.slideshare.net/msg719/abc-pronunciary

We also practised lots of ‘Fred-talk’.  This means, we practised sounding out lots of words, saying the sounds in sequence and then blending them together.  We really enjoyed using this word making machine which helped us to understand how to do this.  We loved pulling the different levers to change the first and final sounds.  Why not have a go at using the word machine together at home!

Have a lovely weekend everyone & see you on Monday.

This week, we took some time to think about Remembrance Day. We talked about the past and how grown-ups were once children too!  We know this can be quite tricky to understand, so we used our spotlight stories to help us.  We read two stories which were both written by Martin Waddell, who also wrote Owl Babies and many other familiar stories.

First, we read the story of Grandma’s Bill which is about a boy called Bill who is looking through an old photo album with his grandmother.  She explains that his grandfather was also called Bill and, together, they look at photos of his life.  We could see that the Grandma in the story was once a young girl herself and, as the story went on, she became older in the different photos until she looked like the lady on the front cover.

image from amazon.co.uk

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a video of this story for you to revisit at home but here’s a video of our second spotlight story; Once There Were Giants:

video from youtube – Grandma Fran

This story helped us to begin to understand that everyone starts their life as a baby and eventually grows into a grown-up.  We looked at a photo of Miss Cronin as a baby and all agreed that she does not look like that anymore!  Several parents were kind enough to send in photos of themselves when they were younger and their children did some excellent talking, explaining that this is what their parent looked like in the past.

Some families sent in photos of older generations, such as grandparents and great-grandparents.  These photos were more likely to be in black and white and we learnt that this is because the cameras that took photos in the past were not able to capture colours – even though the colours would have been in the world, just as they are today!

We heard some incredible stories about relatives who had been alive during World War II and the children spoke about them with such a sense of pride:

• a great-grandfather who was a test pilot for the RAF and was the first British man to go faster than the speed of sound in an airplane.
• a great-grandfather who served in the Royal Navy and was awarded several medals for his brave service.
• a great-grandmother who ran a steel company taking over from the men.
• a great-grandmother and a great-grandfather, both flying during World War II.

We learnt that the 11th day of the 11th month is a special day called Remembrance Day when everyone, all around the country, takes time to remember people who have died in wars.  On Thursday, we joined the rest of the school at a special mass for Remembrance Day and, at exactly 11am, we stopped playing and talking to be silent for 2 minutes.  This CBeebies clip helped us to understand how sad and dark wars are and why poppies are used to help us remember those who have died.

video from youtube: CBeebies channel

Each class made a poppy wreath which was handed to Mother Helen during our special mass.  We painted sections of egg boxes red and then added a black spot in the middle.  These were then carefully stuck onto a green hoop.  You can see a photo of the wreaths in this week’s school newsletter.

Our new sounds this week were three more bouncy sounds: k, u and b.

images from https://www.slideshare.net/msg719/abc-pronunciary

Our handwriting focus this week was the letter m: we practised writing m using the caption ‘Maisie, mountain, mountain’.  If you are practising this letter at home, please don’t forget Maisie!  This letter starts at the top, comes down Maisie, then back up over two mountains.  It does not start at the bottom of the first mountain!

And in Maths, we started to explore the stem sentence “____ has more than ____”.  We were joined by Gruffy, who is friends with Stanley, our sloth.  They had been sharing out chocolate cookies and could not agree on who had more.  So, of course, we stepped in to help them work out the problem!

In R.E., we listened to the story of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary and in ICT, we practised our mouse skills, playing this subitising game.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday.

It was lovely to see the children back at school this week and we hope you all had an enjoyable half term!

Before we left for the break, we re-planted our beans in some soil and watered them well.

We couldn’t quite believe it when we returned on Monday and discovered they had grown almost as high as the ceiling!  Perhaps they really were magic beans 😉

Our growing beanstalks inspired some of our maths work this week: we added the correct amount of leaves to each of our previously ordered beanstalks, demonstrating our understanding of numerals as representations of quantity.

And we continued to practise our subitising skills:

image from CBeebies on Facebook

We have been saying “Do not count, see the amount”! which you can practise in this Numberblocks episode.

Our Spotlight Story this week was the story of Rama and Sita which you can revisit on the CBeebies website.  Scroll down to the Diwali story at the bottom of the page.

image from Amazon.co.uk

We also found out how this Hindu festival of light is celebrated; with diya lamps, special clothes, Mendhi patterns, Rangoli patterns, Diwali cards and lots of sweets!  And we met Jessica who explained how she celebrates Diwali with her family.

In our music lesson this week, we learnt that the beat helps us to think about how fast or slow the music is.  We listened to the song ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang and moved our bodies in time to the beat.  We talked about what a celebration is and decided it’s “when everyone gets together to have a party” – just like Jessica does when celebrating Diwali!

We used an online metronome to listen carefully to very slow beats (30 BPM) and very fast beats (244 BPM).  We were able to play Celebration at the same time as the metronome to try and work out how many BPM there are in this particular song.  I was so impressed by the children’s listening skills, as some of them were able to say that the beat on the metronome was too small (slow) or too big (fast)!!  A quick Google search revealed that Celebration is actually 121BPM and we all agreed that that sounded about right!

We also noticed that Diwali is often celebrated with firework displays and many of us shared that we were looking forward to seeing fireworks this week on Bonfire Night!

We watched some amazing firework displays on youtube including this one from New Year’s Eve in London in 2018/2019: