This week we read the story of ‘Cendrillon’ which is another version of the classic Cinderella fairytale.  I didn’t tell the children that it was a Cinderella story but it didn’t take them long to figure it out!  “It’s like Cinderella”! many of them said, and we were able to talk about the similarities and differences between the two stories.

‘Cendrillon’ is actually the French word for Cinderella and was one of the earliest European versions of the story to be published by Charles Perrault in 1697!  He is famous for having used old folktales to write the sort of stories that we now call fairytales!

Our own investigation into the mystery footprint has continued with much excitement, with several people on our list now having had their footprints measured. We will finish off collecting the remaining footprints next week and we should then be able to work out who the mystery footprint belongs to!

In our phonics lessons, we have been working hard to make sure we are confident when it comes to recognising digraphs ( when two letters sit together making just one sound).

Weekend challenge: Have a look at your sound-mat…can you spot all the digraphs?  Can you write a list of words with these digraphs in them? Ask a grown-up to think of the words and then see if you can sound them out and write them!

We learnt two new digraphs this week: ‘zz’ and ‘qu’.

We have started using picture prompts in our phonics lessons to help the children put the sounds they are learning into meaningful contexts and to support them when using the sounds in their writing.  I’ll try to remember to post the prompts here alongside the actions and mouth shapes for each new sound as you might find it useful to link the picture and sound with your child at home.

Please note the action and mouth shape for ‘zz’ are the same as those for ‘z’:

In our maths lessons we have continued to enjoy lots more estimating and measuring…

And our star of the week did a fantastic job of filling her number bag with all sorts of things to do with the number 11, including an amazing homemade numbered necklace!

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

We have also been enjoying lots of lovely messy play in our creative area – here the children were busy making numerals out of sand and glue!

And during a particularly rainy day this week, we put a rainforest scene complete with gentle waterfall sound effects up on the whiteboard – the children were delighted by this and responded by setting themselves us “like a movie-night!” with rows of chairs and clipboards!