The children started off the week with a rather special and unusual experience: our very own archery lesson!  Specialist sports teachers worked with the class to teach them how to use a bow and arrow correctly.  All the children showed fantastic focus and skill and many of them talked excitedly about the lesson for the rest of the week!

Back in the classroom, we continued with our current focus on animals by reading the story of ‘Farmer Duck’.  The book tells the tale of a poor duck who has the bad luck to live with a very lazy farmer.  Can you remember who helps the duck? And what happens to the lazy farmer? What would you have done to help the duck?

Weekend Challenge: pretend to be one of the animals on the farm and write a letter to the lazy farmer – tell him what you think he should do…or…pretend to be the lazy farmer and write a letter to the duck – what do you think he should say to the duck?

We learnt two new sounds this week; the digraph ‘oi’ and the trigraph ‘ear’.  The digraph ‘oi’ can be found in words like oi-l, oi-n-k and c-oi-n.

The trigraph ‘ear’ can be found in words like ear, h-ear and f-ear.  For our action, we decided to touch one of our ears!

Occasionally, when we have a spare five minutes before lunch, we watch a clip from the CBeebies series Alphablocks.  In this clip, the Alphablocks have some fun with the ‘ear’ sound.

In our maths lessons, we continued to think about teen numbers.  This week, we used a set of balance scales to help us compare different teen numbers and support our understanding of the concepts of ‘more than’ and ‘less than’.

Can you remember what happened to the scales when we put 15 cubes in one side and 15 cubes in the other side?  Why?  Use your folded arms to show what the scales looked like.

What happened when we put 18 cubes in one side and 14 in the other side?  Why? Again, use your folded arms to show what the scales looked like.

Weekend Challenge: if we had 16 cubes on one side and 18 cubes on the other side, what would we need to do to make the scale balance?  How about this one – if we had 12 cubes on one side and 17 on the other side, what would need to do this time to make the scale balance.  Record your ideas either by drawing a picture or writing a number sentence.  Can you come up with your own number balance problem? Bring it to school and see if one of your teachers or one of your friends can solve it!

Yet again, our star of the week did a fantastic job of being a number detective at home over the weekend and filled her number bag up with all sorts of things related to the number 16.  Here’s what she brought in to show us:

Our new number of the week has been chosen as number:

It has been a particularly busy week in Reception with World Book Day on Thursday and our trip to St. Matthew’s Church on Friday.  We also managed to find time to squeeze in our usual phonics and maths lessons, as well as lots of opportunities for play, play and more play!

We started the week by reading the story of ‘The Cow who went Oink”.  This is a lovely story which encouraged the children to think about difference and how it can actually be a good thing.  The story is about a cow who only knows how to say ‘oink’ which puts him in a rather tricky situation with the others cows and with the other farm animals, who laugh at him. Luckily, he meets a pig who only knows how to say ‘moo’ and the two become firm friends.  Can you remember how the cow and the pig helped each other?  Can you remember why the cow and the pig have the last laugh?

During our maths lessons, we have been starting to think about how we can apply all our super number knowledge when we are solving tricky number problems.  This week, we wondered which creatures might be inside the Ark if we know how many legs there are in total.  For example, if there are 8 legs altogether inside the ark, which creatures might be inside? Remember, there is more than one correct answer!

Our number of the week was the number 2, so we started to think about how we can count in twos (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20).  We thought this might have been a handy way for Noah to have counted the animals as they went into the Ark!

Weekend challenge:  if there are 12 legs inside the ark, how many creatures could there be inside the ark?  how many different answers can you find?

We have also been singing a song about Noah and his Ark – you might like to sing it at home…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivDOQH1RQ0

On Thursday, I was a bit confused when I opened up the classroom door as none of the children had turned up for school!  Instead they had been replaced by two Snow Whites, Little Red Riding Hood, Elsa and Anna, a Dashing Prince, Captain Flinn from Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs, Princess Mirror Belle, The Selfish Crocodile, the Witch from Room on the Broom, Superman, Batman and Batgirl, two Spidermen, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Sugar Plum Fairy, A Handsome King, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, a Ninja Turtle, Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a Brave Knight, a Scary Vampire, a Power Ranger, Bob the Builder and Curious George!  Here they all are, in their fantastic costumes, sitting in the Reception children’s carpet spots!

In keeping with our animal topic, lots of the teachers dressed up as animals.  There was a frog, a bird, a cat and a dog!  Can you remember why they dressed up as these animals? Which characters were they pretending to be?

During our phonics lessons this week we learnt two new digraphs – ‘oo’ and ‘ar’.  The ‘oo’ digraph is a bit naughty as it sometimes makes a long sound and other times it makes a short sound.  The trouble is, you can’t tell which sound it’s making just by looking at it. You have to try both and see which one sounds best and makes sense within the word.  For example, it makes a long sound in the word m-oo-n but a short sound in the word b-oo-k. Here is the action to help us remember ‘oo’ and distinguish between the two versions:

We also decided to pull our arms apart when saying the long ‘oo’ sound and push them back together when saying the short ‘oo’ sound.

Here is the mouth shape for the long ‘oo’ sound:

And the short ‘oo’ sound:

We also learnt the digraph ‘ar’ as in c-ar and f-ar.  Here is the action and mouth shape for this digraph:

Finally, we finished off the week with a very special visit to St. Matthew’s Church.  We walked to the church with our walk and talk partners thinking very carefully about how to keep ourselves safe when walking along the pavement and when crossing the roads.

Weekend challenge: can you make a road safety poster showing other children how to keep safe when walking on the pavement and when crossing roads? can you remember the three things to remember to keep safe? what is the curb and why do we stay away from it?

When we arrived at St.Matthew’s Church we were met by Mother Helen.  She explained that she would be giving us a tour of God’s House and she encouraged us to think about the things we have in our own homes and to look for similar things in God’s House.  For example, she asked us to think about one of the first things we do when we wake up in the morning (i.e. we wash ourselves) and to look for somewhere people might be ‘washed’ in the Church.  We also looked for somewhere to sit (just like our living rooms at home), somewhere to listen to music (just like our sound systems at home), somewhere special to eat and drink (just like our kitchen tables at home), somewhere special to read (just like a special reading place at home, perhaps snuggled up in bed) and finally, somewhere to keep our clothes (just like our wardrobes at home).  She also talked to us about how important it is to look after God’s House and, before we left, the children all helped Mother Helen to do this by doing some tidying and recycling.

A huge thank you to Mother Helen for inviting us to visit the Church and for giving us such a special tour which really helped us to think about the things we find in God’s House and how important it is to look after His House, just like we look after our things in our own homes.

Another huge thank you to the mums who came on the trip with us!

Welcome back everyone!  The children all seem to have grown noticeably taller during the holiday, if that’s possible in only one week!

For the rest of this term, we will be continuing with our Out and About topic with a particular focus on animals and their life-cycles.

This week, we read an old favourite – the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar who eats his way through a week’s worth of food and gives himself a very sore tummy.  He then wraps himself up in a cocoon for two weeks before emerging as a beautiful butterfly!

Weekend Challenge: Can you remember the days of the week? Can you say them in the right order?  How many days are there in one week? How many days are there in two weeks? How do you know?

We wondered why the Hungry Caterpillar got such a sore tummy and most of us agreed it was because he ate too much food.  It was also suggested that he got a sore tummy because of the sorts of food he ate.  We thought that eating lots of sugary foods might have given him the sore tummy too.

We decided to sort the foods that he ate into those foods that are ok to eat often (the yellow circle) and those foods that should only be eaten now and again (the red circle).

Weekend Challenge: Can you remember why we decided to put the sausages in the middle, in both circles?  Can you make your own circle chart at home? Find some pictures of different foods to sort or perhaps use real foods! Remember to take a photo to show us or you could post it to our blog!

During our Maths lessons this week we started to think about the idea of taking away.   We sang the song “Five Little Men in a Flying Saucer” but we changed the words a little and started with 10 little men instead of 5, taking one little man away each time until we were left with zero.

Here are our ten little men:

Before we started singing our song, we suddenly realised there was something not quite right about the order of our little men.  Luckily we were able to sort out the problem in no time at all!

That’s better!

Here are the words to the song if you would like to sing it again at home:

There are lots of taking away songs you could sing, for example:

And…

Weekend Challenge: Can you sing a taking away song? Do you know any other taking away songs? Can you make up your own taking away song?

In our phonics lessons this week, we learnt three new sounds.  The first sound we learnt is a new sort of sound known as a trigraph.  It’s a bit like a digraph (where two sounds sit together to make one sound) but in this case three letters sit together to make one sound.

The trigraph we learnt is ‘igh’, as in ‘high’.  Although the word high is made up of 4 letters, it is only made up of 2 sounds, i.e. h-igh.  We decided that the action for ‘igh’ would be holding three fingers up high.

Next we learnt the digraph ‘oa’ as in ‘goat’ and ‘boat’.  This sound is the same as the letter name ‘o’ and the mouth shape looks like this:

We used the jolly phonics action for this sound where you put your hand in front of your mouth as if you are shocked or surprised:

Just before half term, we learnt the digraph ‘ee’ and I had promised the children that I would explain why the action for ‘ee’ was to put their hands up on their heads like donkey ears.  So, we decided to jump ahead on our sound mat a little bit and learn the digraph ‘or’ which, as you can see, goes with the ‘ee’ sound action, as in ‘ee-or’.

Finally, our Star of the Week from before half term did a fantastic job of filling the number of the week bag with things related to the number 10.  Here’s what he brought in to show us:

Our new number of the week has been chosen as number:

Don’t forget to dress up as a favourite book character for World Book Day next Thursday (2nd March) and bring a £1 donation for Book Aid International.