The highlight of our week was, of course, our trip to Godstone Farm! It was with great excitement that we boarded the coach on Thursday morning, put on our seatbelts and set off down the A3. After at least twenty “are we there yets”, we arrived at the farm and were met by Farmer Caroline who used to work at London Zoo with the red pandas! We were so lucky to have such an expert and enthusiastic host. The farm itself was absolutely full of animals; we saw peacocks, cows, goats, llamas, alpacas and even several reptiles (of which we are now experts ourselves after our visit from Tom last term).
Farmer Caroline then took us to do some pond dipping and we discovered some amazing creatures living in the depths of the pond, including bloodworms, tadpoles and dragonfly larva. Next, we met a guinea pig, a rabbit, a tortoise, a chick and a hedgehog and we were allowed to touch each of these! After lunch, we fed the pigs and piglets and then cheered the piglets on in a hogstacle race!
We had a wonderful time and were so lucky with the weather. A huge thank you must go to our parent helpers who gave up their precious time to spend the day with us and, of course, to everyone at home for supporting this trip. Thank you so much.
We are very much looking forward to our school trip to Godstone Farm next week and, to get us thinking about the sort of animals we might see, we read several stories about Mrs Wishy Washy and her farm animals. We loved these stories and were able to read much of them ourselves, as they are full of red words and sounds that we already know!
They were written by Joy Cowley and you can revisit (and perhaps even re-read) them here:
In our phonics lessons, we learnt the special friends sound ‘ee’. This sound is pronounced in the same way that you pronounce the letter name for ‘e’ and you look like you are grinning when you say it. Here is the picture prompt that goes with this sound and the children say “ee, what can you see” to help them remember this sound.
In our maths lessons, we have been thinking about how numbers can be made up of other numbers.
We also had a go at partitioning numbers into 5 and a bit; for example, 9 is made of 5 and 4, 8 is made of 5 and 3, etc. We used ‘bunny ears’ to help us understand that numbers between 5 and 10 can be broken down into two numbers – five fingers on one hand (or bunny ear) and a number of fingers on the other hand (or bunny ear)…
We hope everyone has been enjoying the long weekend – see you on Tuesday!
A very warm welcome back to school – we can hardly believe it is the Summer term already! We hope everyone had a lovely Easter break. Here are the beautiful, marbled-ink eggs we made before the holidays, along with all our different prayers of thankfulness – we hope these found their way home to you safely…
This term, our Spotlight Stories will be inspired by the topic ‘Splish, Splash, Splosh’. Please look out for the termly overview which will be posted on Seesaw shortly.
One of the many highlights will be our school trip to Godstone Farm! To get us thinking about the sort of animals we might meet at the farm, we read the story of ‘Farmer Duck’ by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury which you can revisit here:
This term, we will be learning the set 2 sounds from the ‘Read Write Inc’ phonics programme:
This week, we learnt the first of these special friends sounds: ay. This sound is pronounced in the same way that you would say the letter name for the first letter of the alphabet. To help the children remember this sound, we encourage them to associate it with the picture above (of three children playing together). When they see the picture, we prompt them to say “ay, may I play?”. Please practise this together at home and try to think of lots of different words that contain the ay sound. Can your child spell them for you to write or have a go at writing some of these words themselves?
Don’t forget to keep practising the set 1 sounds too. You can find these in your child’s word pot or in the front of your child’s red book:
In our maths lessons this week, we revisited the concepts of ‘more than’, ‘less than’ and ‘equal’. We used Stanley and Gruffy to help us understand these ideas: poor Stanley was quite upset because he had ‘less than’ Gruffy, so we helped to make things fair by making the amounts equal.
In our R.E. lessons this half term, we will be learning about how Jesus rescued people. This week, we found out that Jesus rescued some of his disciples when they were hungry. We opened up our bible and read the story of how Jesus filled their empty net with fish:
Care Bear’s Bible Stories For Kids
We wanted to see where this story actually took place so we used Google Earth to quickly pop over to a place called the Sea of Galilee which is actually not a sea but a freshwater lake in Israel. We had a go at acting out the story too to help us imagine what it might feel like to be hungry and how wonderful it must have felt when the net filled up with fish.
We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend – see you on Monday!
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:
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:
SchoolKidz TV
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:
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.
It was lovely to welcome the children back to school this week. They were full of news of their half term breaks and keen to jump straight back into their play! This half term, our learning will continue to be inspired by our ‘Out of the Egg’ topic and, with that in mind, our first Spotlight Story was ‘Eggday’ by Joyce Dunbar which you can revisit here:
This story challenged us to think about animals that hatch out of eggs as well as animals that do not. We talked about it being ok not to know something and how this is an important part of learning. We also talked about how we can check things or find things out by asking other people, especially grown-ups, who can help us to ask Google. I was amazed by the children’s knowledge: some of the animals suggested to add to our list included platypuses, sharks, salmon and, of course, dinosaurs.
This led us very nicely onto our next Spotlight Story: A Dinosaur Called Tiny by Alan Durant which you can listen to again in this youtube clip:
The children absolutely loved this story and, as you can probably imagine, many are already dinosaur experts! It therefore made perfect sense to suggest that they might like to turn our role-play area into a dinosaur museum. They thought this was a great idea and quickly set to work. First, we made a list of the things we would need to make and gather to create our dinosaur museum. Next, we set to work, writing signs, building models and displaying dinosaur eggs, teeth, claws and skin! The children really took ownership of this project and I was so impressed by their curating skills.
Our final Spotlight Story, was another dinosaur favourite: Tyrannosaurus Drip by Julia Donaldson which you can revisit here:
We used a non-fiction book about dinosaurs to help us identify the dinosaurs in both Tyrannosaurus Drip and A Dinosaur Called Tiny. We used this opportunity to remind the children about the difference between fiction books (made up stories) and non-fiction books (books with facts).
In our phonics lessons, we learnt a new red word:
To help the children remember and understand the meaning of this red word, we asked lots of questions such as; what is your name? is that your cat? is that your coat? etc.
In our maths lessons this week, we have been continuing to practise our subitising skills, taking snapshot photos of dot arrangements with our eyes and challenging ourselves to recreate them without looking at the original.
In our picture news lesson this week, we talked about who Boris Johnson is and why he said sorry recently. We agreed that it is important to say sorry when things go wrong with our friends and family but only if we really mean it! We listened to the story ‘Sorry (Really Sorry)’ by Joanna Cotler (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hLMw_0iHjc) and talked about lots of different things we can do to make sure the person we are saying sorry to feels that we really mean it.
In other news, our Very Healthy Caterpillar display is finally finished – doesn’t it look fantastic!
And, finally, here are a few of this week’s invitations to play:
Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday.
The starting point for our learning this week was this beautiful illustration by the French artist and entomologist Adolphe Philippe Millot (1857-1921):
One of these creatures is especially incredible; it has 3 hearts, 9 brains, 8 legs and over 2000 fingers! Can you guess which sea animal this might be? That’s right, it’s the highly intelligent octopus. We read the story of Inky the Octopus by Erin Guendelsberger and David Leonard which you can revisit here:
We were amazed to discover that the story is actually based on the real-life escape of an octopus called Inky from an aquarium in New Zealand in 2016. We watched a newsround clip from the time to find out more.
We discovered that octopi are molluscs, which means they are cousins of snails and slugs. Their bodies are very squishy which explains why they can fit themselves through very small gaps. We read a (sort of) non-fiction book (Could an Octopus Climb a Skyscraper) to help us find out even more about these fascinating animals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59_chy3bpLI
We discovered that octopi can change the colour and texture of their bodies to blend into the background behind them! We learnt that this is called camouflage.
We looked at some amazing photos of animals camouflaged in the wild and then we headed out onto our field to create some of our own! We chose a (toy) animal from our ‘out of the egg’ basket and looked carefully at the colours on its body. We then looked very carefully at the colours in nature to find something similar to help camouflage our animal. Next, we took our own photos on the Ipad – aren’t they amazing? It looks like we might have some budding National Geographic photographers:
In our phonics lessons, we learnt the final set 1 sound, ‘nk’. This sound is another special friends sound and the saying that goes with it is ‘I think I stink’.
In our maths lessons this week, we have been starting to think about composition and we have been learning to use the words ‘part’ and ‘whole’. First, we played the hidden object game where we had to guess what the whole object hidden behind the rectangle might be, when we could only see a part of it.
Then, we made our own hidden object game and found a friend to guess what our whole hidden animal might be when they looked at just a small part of it:
After that, we sang an old favourite; Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes which you might like to sing again at home:
We then used the sentence “My (something) is a part of me and the whole of me is (my name)” to help us think about the different parts of our body making up the whole of us.
Next, we watched this Numberblocks clip to help us connect this concept with numbers:
Why not have a go at making up your own Numberblocks (part, part, whole) song at home!
Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday.
image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg
