We’ve had a fantastic week immersing ourselves in all things chickens. Everybody enjoyed holding our fluffy offspring. Big smiles all round and kind, gentle hands.
Our chicks have been at the centre of our work with us learning about how we care for them. The children have helped to replenish their chick crumb and water everyday and Mrs Mooney and I have been in charge of the cleaning of the brood hutch! The children have written a list of these important jobs when caring for chicks or other animals.
Another key piece of writing this week centred around the life cycle of a hen. From the hen laying an egg, incubating for 21 days, the chick hatching and growing into a hen or cockerel. The children used prepositions to describe the order of events in the life cycle.
We have also had a class vote on names for our chicks! We began by everyone writing a list of ten names they thought would suit our 8 female and two male chicks. From this large database of names we narrowed it down and took a class vote. We displayed the results of our voting on a bar chart.
Creative juices have been flowing courtesy of our chicks with everybody producing a beautiful pencil sketch of a chick. The children really got into the idea of drawing carefully and adding the detail they could see. They sat quietly, one pair at a time, with a clipboard and pencil and took time with their sketches. They are really rather good!
Further chicks have been created through hand printing chicks, cut and stick chicks and chick collages.
The children are enjoying their PE lessons on the field ( thank you to everyone for providing plimsoles/trainers) and thankfully even seem keen to get changed these days!
Mrs Rainey takes the children for one session a week and is teaching music: naming instruments, recognising the sounds of various instruments and of course playing instruments! She will move on to rhythm, tempo and pitch as the term proceeds.
Each week the children have a Religious Education session. We follow plans provided by the Southwark Diocesian Board. Our current theme is : What Makes People Special ? and this week we read and discussed The Parable of the Lost Sheep. The children also take part in a weekly discussion named ‘THE BIG QUESTION’. This is a topical question that we present at the children’s level to enable them to access and have a point of view to put forward. Lately the questions have included ‘ Should you repair damage, or demolish and rebuild ? ‘ (This was in response to the fire at Notre Dame.) Many of the children likened this idea to building with lego – it’s often taken some time and they are always proud of their efforts, occasionally a lego work of art will be knocked and a key feature will be broken. All the children did an excelllent job justifying their reasons to either mend or start again!
Other questions this term have included:
‘Is it ever okay to copy?’
‘ Should we aways give people a second chance?’
The questions are in response to a news item from that week and the children always have interesting takes on these questions and good reasons for their opinions.
Our weekly visit to the ICT room is also proving popular with the children learning the names of the parts of the computer and their uses, along with how to hold the mouse, which side of the mouse to click, ( Stick a piece of blutak on the left hand side of your mouse, if the children ever use a home computer – it really helps them!) and how to log on at school. They then have a go at a math’s game that matches our weekly focus.
We learn, revise and practice our sounds and tricky words every day through various games, whiteboard work and fun songs and phonic games via our smart board. All the children are in a reading group and we practice reading different types of text – fiction, non-fiction, lists, signs and so on everyday.
Reading is the most important thing you can do at home to enable your child to become a great writer, reader, have access to a wide range of vocabulary and an understanding of the world. The following impact poster sums up the statistical benefits of a daily dose of reading. Twenty minutes in one go is too much for a four and five year old but the notion is the same. Read, read and read some more. Any reading is great reading, my 4 year old son has no interest in the books he has to bring bring home from school but has taken to reading our lawn mower manual … at least it’s something! As long as your child will allow you, please read to them or with them every day.
I’m sending a tricky word wall sheet home next week, purely for the children to show you and hopefully have a go at reading or using some of the words in their writing.
Thanks for all your support – Mrs Mooney and I are very grateful that you allow us the priviledge of spending our days with your little ones. They are a source of great fun, interest and wonder!
