This week, we waved goodbye to the Yangtze River and the New Year celebrations in China as we set off on our magic carpet to visit the southern hemisphere of our wonderful world. We were looking for a place where we might find lots of thick, oozy mud as this is the next part of the ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ story. We are using the story as our travel guide this term as part of our ‘Out and About’ topic.

Have you ever walked through thick, oozy mud? I hope you were wearing your welly boots!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ij_5bTLf5I

We decided to land next to a billabong in Australia. A billabong is the Australian word for an oxbow lake – in other words, a pond that is left behind when the river changes course and, at the edges, you often find lots of sticky mud! We visited the Marlgu billabong in Western Australia.

The little orange man brought us down to land safely on a boat with a roof to protect us from the hot Australian sunshine!

It was also lucky that we didn’t land in the billabong because many of us already knew what sort of animal might be lurking in the shallow water…that’s right, a crocodile!

Our first spotlight story was all about this fearsome creature! We read the story of ‘The Selfish Crocodile’ by Faustin Charles and Michael Terry and you can revisit it here:

This story helped us to remember how important it is to be kind and friendly and include everyone in our play. It also helped us to think about another way in which we can be healthy – as well as eating healthy foods – by looking after our teeth. We know that it is very important to brush our teeth twice a day, using a pea-sized amount of toothpaste. We will be learning more about looking after our teeth over the coming weeks.

Our next spotlight story was also about teeth – this time, a rather scary set of teeth! Even though Alan (the owner of the teeth) looks like a crocodile, he is actually an alligator. You can revisit the story (by Jarvis) below:

Although alligators and crocodiles are SIMILAR, they are not the same animal and you will not find alligators in Australia. We decided to do a little research to find out more about how alligators and crocodiles are different. To do our research, we used Google which, we learnt, is a search engine and can be found when we ‘go online’.

This is what we discovered:

Our final spotlight story of the week was definitely about a crocodile. At least, that’s what we thought when we started reading it…! There was a bit of a clue at the start of the story – can you remember what it was?

You can revisit ‘The Crocodile Who Didn’t Like Water’ by Gemma Merino here:

This story prompted a very interesting conversation about whether or not dragons are real animals. Some of us thought that perhaps they did exist but are now extinct like dinosaurs. Others of us were not so sure. We decided to ask Google once again and discovered that an animal called a Komodo dragon does actually exist! It is a large lizard that lives in Indonesia and it is venomous!

In our phonics lessons this week, we learnt two new sounds – both of which are special friends: th (as in Thursday, thick, thin, thunder) and ch (as in chips, chimpanzee, China, children). When saying the sound ‘th’ you need to put your tongue in between your teeth and gently blow air through your teeth. This is a tricky sound to learn and can be easily muddled up with ‘f’ so please do spend some time practising the difference between saying Thursday and Fursday. When learning ‘ch’ the children often confuse train and chrain (especially as we often tell them that trains say choo, choo). Please do spend time helping them to distinguish between these sounds if they find this confusing.

Here are the picture prompts for these sounds:

Here is a video all about ‘th’ that might be helpful:

And here is one about ‘ch’:

We also made a startling discovery in our phonics lessons this week when, while we were getting ready to practise our Fred-talk with Fred, we came across a word that cannot be Fred-talked! Poor Fred had to be put away so we could learn that there are some words that cannot be Fred-talked and simply have to be learnt as whole words. We call these words red words and we say ‘you can’t Fred a red’! The first red word that we learnt is ‘I’ as in ‘I am Miss Cronin’. We will be learning lots more red words over the coming weeks.

Finally, in our maths lessons, we have been learning to order numbers by their relative quantities, singing the Numberblocks song ‘I’m bigger than you, diddly, diddly doo’ and ‘I’m smaller than you, diddly, diddly, doo’ to help us (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC6iqEz_28w).

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

This week, we said goodbye to the grasslands of Africa and headed east on our magic carpet. Our next stop (as inspired by the story of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’) was the Yangtze River, which is the third longest river in the world in the third largest country in the world – China! Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a safe landing spot, so instead, we looked down on the river as we flew over it (and a few of the other 1,499 rivers in the country!).

We discovered that something rather special is happening in China at the moment; this weekend, celebrations will be taking place to mark the Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival. “Lunar New Year is celebrated in many Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, the Koreas, Singapore, and Malaysia. Though some traditions are shared, others are unique to each country’s cultural identity” (https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/chinese-new-year-vs-lunar-new-year.htm)

As we were visiting the Yangtze River, we decided to learn more about the traditions that are specific to China. First, we read the story of the Chinese zodiac which explains how the 12 years of the zodiac cycle were named after the 12 different animals in a race across a large river – just like the Yangtze! The Jade Emperor decided that whichever animal won the race would have the first year named after it.  The second animal to cross the finish line would have the second year named after it, then the third, fourth, fifth and so on. We all thought the rat was not very kind and friendly and we felt sorry for the ox.  Can you remember why? There was lots of discussion about which animal we thought should have one the race!

2023 will be the year of the rabbit and you can revisit the story here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories/lets-celebrate-chinesenewyearperformance

Have a look at the zodiac picture below.  Can you use the words first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth to talk about the picture and the story of the zodiac.  Find out which year you were born in and use the zodiac picture to find out which animal year you were born in. 

Can you find out when some of the people in your family were born?  This chart will help you find out about the grown-ups in your family and which animal year they were born in:

We also felt a bit sorry for the pig and wondered why it had come last in the race. We thought it might be because pigs are not very good swimmers. We decided to ask Google about this and discovered that pigs are actually very good swimmers and that there is a place in the Bahamas called Pig Beach where you can find pigs swimming in the sea!

We read the delightful story of The Pig in the Pond which made us all laugh, especially at the end! You can re-read this story by Jill Barton and Martin Waddell here:

Next, we met a girl called Abbie who explained how she and her family prepare to celebrate Chinese New Year by cleaning their house and decorating it. Later, Abbie watched a parade on the street and saw a dragon dance! You can re-watch these clips here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/chinese-new-year?collection=chinese-lunar-new-year

Our last spotlight story of the week was another story set on a river with lots of animals and a man called Mr Gumpy! We learnt that the word ‘squabble’ is another word for ‘quarrel’ which is used in the version of the story of the Chinese zodiac that we read. We talked about these words meaning to argue or to not agree with someone you are talking to. And we agreed that everyone argues sometimes but it is kind and friendly to do good listening when you disagree with someone, listen to their ideas and try not get too cross! You can re-read the story here:

In our phonics lessons, we learnt 3 new sounds: z, x and sh.

Please note that x is quite a tricky sound to say – it might help to think of it as two sounds (k and s) said together. If you Fred-talk the word f-o-x, it might help you to isolate the final sound and hear this as ks.

The sound sh (as in ship, sheep, fish, etc.) is the first of several digraphs we will be learning. A digraph is a single sound (or phoneme) that is represented by two letters (or graphemes). In the Read, Write, Inc Phonics program that we use here at St. Matthew’s, we call digraphs ‘special friends’. Here are the picture prompts for these sounds:

And a reminder of the handwriting sayings:

In our maths lessons, we have been matching numerals to quantities and playing lots of games of ‘show me’: your partner calls out a number (or shows you a numeral) and you have to quickly show them the same quantity on your fingers (without counting your fingers!).

The reverse of this is a game we play called ‘do not count, see the amount’ – where your partner shows you a quantity of fingers and you have to say the amount without counting – by subitising instead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/numberblocks-see-the-amount

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

Welcome back to a new term and a new year at school. And a very Happy New Year to anyone I haven’t yet seen in person. It was lovely to welcome such enthusiastic and excited children back to school last week and hear all about their Christmas holidays.

This term, our learning will be centred around the topic ‘Out & About’. We will be exploring our wonderful world through storytelling and outdoor adventures. We will also be taking a sensory journey on our magic carpet visiting places all around the world, inspired by the story of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. This wonderful classic by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury was our first spotlight story of the term and you can revisit it below with the author himself:

Our first stop on the magic carpet took us to the grasslands of Africa where we landed in the middle of the Serengeti Nature Reserve in Tanzania. We read the story of ‘We’re Going on a Lion Hunt’ to help us think about the sort of animals we might find in this vast landscape and we quickly realised that this story is SIMILAR to the original Michael Rosen book! In fact, we learnt that it is a different VERSION of the bear hunt book.

We also learnt that the Serengeti is not just home to big animals like lions, giraffes and zebras, but to very small animals as well. In fact, it is full of insects because grasslands provide a good place for them to lay their eggs. For example, this beautiful butterfly is called a Swallowtail and can be found all over East Africa:

Many of the children already knew that butterflies do not begin their lives with these beautiful patterned wings but, instead, start their lives as caterpillars. We re-read one of our favourite stories, to remind ourselves about the life-cycle of a butterfly:

This story always prompts lots of conversations about healthy and unhealthy foods and I was so impressed by the children’s already impressive knowledge of those foods that can be eaten everyday and those that should only be eaten occasionally.

We also agreed that if there is a vegetable or fruit that you don’t think you like, it is often a good idea to try it (or try it again) as you might be surprised to discover that you like it after all, just like Oliver in the story of Oliver’s Vegetables:

In our phonics lessons, we learnt 4 further sounds: j, y, v and w. Here are the picture prompts and handwriting sayings for these:

Learning the sound j gave us the perfect excuse to have a go at making some jelly and, of course, this linked in very nicely with our conversations about healthy and unhealthy foods. We all agreed jelly is only something we should eat occasionally, certainly not everyday for breakfast! We were all fascinated by the way in which the jelly cubes changed from a solid to a liquid as they melted and dissolved in the hot water. Once in the fridge, we had to be very patient and wait overnight for the liquid jelly to turn back into a solid, ready to eat at our jelly party. Most of us thought the jelly was y-u-m!

In our maths lessons, we have been learning about composition; that numbers are made up of other numbers. To help us with this concept, we learnt to use the words PART and WHOLE within the whole/part Numberblocks song (e.g. “one is a part of me and one is a part of me and the whole of me is two”). Why not come up with your own numberblocks songs at home? We also loved playing with the Mr. Potato head family this week and this helped us to think about parts making up a whole.

On the carpet, we made a class book all about the number 4. We worked with our partners to arrange 4 squares in different ways – developing our understanding that the whole remains the same no matter the arrangement of its parts.

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