It really felt as though Spring had sprung this week! We took full advantage of the glorious weather spending lots of time outside and making several trips to our lovely field. Some of the year 6 children even came to play with us; they taught us some parachutes games that were so much fun! Thank you year 6 – we love spending time with you!

One afternoon, we took our baskets to fill with leaves, sticks, pinecones and daisies and, when we returned to the outdoor classroom, we created our own mini Garden of Gethsemane to continue our learning about Holy Week. Can you spot Jesus in the garden below?

We used Google Earth to fly on our magic carpet from St. Matthew’s to Jerusalem to have a look at what the Garden of Gethsemane looks like today and we thought “the trees looked very old”. Then, we visited our own beautiful school garden where we spent some time sitting quietly, thinking about how sad Jesus felt after the Last Supper and how he gathered strength for what was to come on Good Friday through prayer.

Back in the classroom, we learned about another beautiful garden; this time, a garden belonging to the famous painter Claude Monet. We read the story of The Magical Garden of Claude Monet and found out that he loved to paint pictures of his garden.

This story, along with the visit to our own garden, inspired us to become artists ourselves! We each created the most beautiful, and very individual, daffodil painting on a tile as a gift for Mother’s Day. Here we are busy painting and wrapping our gifts:

Our Spotlight Stories this week helped us to think about our wonderful mums and all the many things they do to look after us and keep us safe. First, we read Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson:

And then, My Mum by Anthony Browne:

In our picture news lesson, we learnt about the journey of a letter from postbox to front door. We watched this video of a birthday card making its way from a granddaughter to the postbox, through the sorting office to her grandmother. The video inspired us to make our own cards (for our mums) and send them through the post in time for Mother’s Day!

Before posting our cards into the postbox, we each checked that our envelope had a stamp on it, along with our mummy’s full name and our address. We knew that the postman would not know where to take the card if it just said ‘my mum’ on the front!

While we were waiting patiently for our turn to post our cards, a red van pulled up next to the postbox and a postman got out and said hello! He wanted to know what we were doing and the children were happy to explain. He even offered to have his photo taken with us. Thank you so much Mr. Postman – what amazing timing!

We very much hope everyone’s card made it in time and wish all our lovely mums a very Happy Mother’s Day!

We have absolutely loved this term’s topic – Out of the Egg – which has inspired many of our spotlight stories, invitations to play and independent ideas for learning through play. This week, we had the chance to meet some of the actual animals that hatch out of eggs!

Tom from https://www.tomstalkingreptiles.co.uk/ came to visit and he brought with him some very special visitors; two Giant Millipedes, an African Land Snail, a tortoise, a Crested Gecko and a Taiwanese Beauty Snake.

Tom introduced us to all of these amazing creatures and shared his wealth of knowledge with us. He helped us to understand just how important it is to have a positive attitude towards all of the animals in the world (not just the fluffy ones).

We all listened very carefully and even had a chance to touch and hold them. A huge thank you to Tom for such an amazing morning and to all of our families for making this morning possible. Well done to all the children for their bravery and positive attitude. We even had a mention on Tom’s Facebook page for this!

This really was the highlight of our week but, in other news, we also found time to learn two new red words:

To think about all the different ways in which the number five can be made, using the song ‘Five Little Speckled Frogs’ to help us:

And, on Wednesday afternoon, when it happened to be raining heavily, we found out about a beautiful instrument called a rainstick, which is thought to originate from Chile in South America. We listened carefully to some audio clips of rain falling onto different surfaces and, with the help of Google, we discovered how to play a rainstick.

After that, we watched a video of a famous actor and dancer called Gene Kelly from an old film called ‘Singing in the Rain’ which was released in 1952. This video really made us smile (we thought he must have been very wet!) and we were amazed to hear how Gene Kelly used his shoes to tap out different rhythms. We also thought his tap dancing sounded very much like the rain!

We even had a go at making some of our own rainsticks:

Finally, we made a startling discovery in the outdoor classroom this week; three eggs appear to have been laid in a nest. We have no idea what sort of animals might be inside, waiting to hatch. We don’t think they are robin eggs, as they are too big, or chicken eggs, as they are too colourful. We think they might be dinosaur eggs! Watch this space for updates!

The weather was a little bit better this week and we even had some days where we could go outside without our coats on – how lovely! Whatever the weather though, we really love to be outside; throwing ourselves into our messy play and challenging ourselves to build and create on a much larger scale than we might do when we’re inside. Here are some photos from the outdoor classroom this week:

Back inside, we have been continuing to enjoy our dinosaur museum and read the story of Katie and the Dinosaurs by James Mayhew which about a little girl who, when visiting the Natural History Museum, finds herself transported back in time to a land filled with these amazing creatures:

We wondered what it might be like to really meet a dinosaur! We talked about having to use our imaginations to think about this and why it is not possible to actually meet a real dinosaur. We read the story of If the Dinosaurs Came Back by Bernard Most and we made a class book filled with drawings of our own pet dinosaurs! We also thought carefully about how big our pet dinosaurs would be compared to us and we drew ourselves in the pictures too to demonstrate our super understanding of this! We decided the best place for our book was on display in our museum.

We also took a journey back in time in our R.E. lesson where we learnt about the story of Palm Sunday and worked together to create our own Road to Jerusalem filled with palm trees, people cheering “Hosanna!”, coats on the ground for the donkey to walk over and buildings for the city of Jerusalem:

In our maths lessons, we have been thinking about the idea of more and what this means when we compare numbers. We worked with our partners to create one-step stairs of Numberblocks to explore our understanding of this:

We also put on several Numberblocks shows, performing the hit song “I’m bigger than you, I’m smaller than you, diddly, diddly, doo!”…

The audience checking their tickets and waiting for the show to begin!

We also found time to learn a new red word:

And revisit some of our previous learning:

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!

What a jam-packed week we have had with special assemblies, visitors and even a costume parade! It all started on Monday with a special assembly; Father Alastair taught us about the Trinity – such a tricky idea to try and understand but Father Alastair did a super job and we all listened very carefully. We also presented our value poster to the rest of the school which you may have seen details of in Mr Quinn’s newsletter.

Next came a very special Tuesday – Shrove Tuesday – so of course we had to read Mr Wolf’s Pancakes by Jan Fearnley, which you can revisit here:

We were all quite surprised by the ending and it prompted lots of interesting conversations about motives and perspectives! Thankfully, we also listened very carefully during the story so we knew exactly what we needed to make our own pancakes: flour, eggs and milk. We headed off to the nursery kitchen, being very careful to keep ourselves safe around the hot stove, and watched with great excitement as Miss Cronin attempted to flip the pancakes. And, it goes without saying that they were simply delicious – despite not always having been flipped perfectly!

On Wednesday, Mother Helen and Father Alastair led another special assembly – this time to mark Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.

On Thursday, it was World Book Day. Miss Cronin, Mrs Mooney and all the children stayed home and all sorts of storybook characters arrived at school instead! The witch from Room on the Broom read her story:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0102qfj/room-on-the-broom

And the ladybird from What the Ladybird Heard read her story!

We also joined the rest of the school for a World Book Day parade so we could show off all our amazing costumes. Thank you so much grown-ups for your amazing efforts! Do have a look on Seesaw for some photos of the class in costume – there are several – as not everyone was looking towards the front at once, but hopefully you will find one of your child looking the right way!

On Friday, we had some very special visitors. Two of the parents in our class are dentists and they very kindly agreed to come in and talk to us about how we can keep our teeth clean and healthy. Even Mrs Mooney and I were surprised to learn some new things about looking after our teeth, for example, that it is better to brush your teeth before breakfast, it is better to eat sweet things with a meal and it is better to eat sweet things all in one go rather than having them now and again.

We really enjoyed the visit and would like to say a HUGE thank you to them both for giving up their precious time to giving us such an enjoyable and informative morning!

In other news, we learnt a new red word this week – said – and in our maths lessons, we talked about what numerals (or ‘numberlings’ as the Numberblocks call them) represent and matched them to quantities. We continued to practise our subitising skills (‘don’t count, see the amount’) and develop our understanding of quantity as unchanged by a change in the shape or formation of dots.

We have also been learning to recognise the dot arrangements on dice without counting. We put our skills to the test playing games of snakes and ladders, which is also a great way to practise our kind and friendly turn-taking skills.

And we practised our fine motor skills, challenging ourselves to use tweezers to pick up buttons and pom poms, matching them to the correct numerals…

And finally, our tuff tray was full of sand, socks and an assortment of scoops and spoons prompting lots of excited conversations about measuring, sorting and weighing.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday.