This week, we continued with our learning about the past and, in particular, we were inspired by our mix-up play with Nursery, who have been learning all about space! We watched an old, black and white video of a man called Neil Armstrong as he took his first steps (and the first steps of anyone) on the moon, over 50 years ago!
We talked about everything we already know about space and I was so impressed by the children’s existing knowledge (for example, we know that the moon sometimes looks like a smile, that some planets have 2 moons and that Pluto used to be a planet but is not anymore!).
Our first Spotlight Story was Q Pootle 5 by Nick Butterworth which you can revisit here:
This story led to some very interesting conversations about aliens and whether or not they are real…!
After reading the story, we noticed a visitor in the classroom who we had never seen before. No one seemed to know where he had come from, so we asked him who he was. It was very difficult to understand him, as he seemed to be speaking in a different, alien language but, we remembered our kind and friendly good manners and we knew to make him feel welcome despite our language differences. Eventually, we were able to work out that the visitor had arrived from a planet called Zog. His spaceship had broken down while travelling through space and he had crash landed at St. Matthew’s! His spaceship had broken into a million pieces and he needed our help to build a new one.
Thankfully, the children were more than happy to help and set to work building him a new spaceship and spacesuit. Well done Reception, your teamwork, problem-solving skills and creative thinking was out of this world!
Our next spotlight story was ‘The Way Back Home’ by Oliver Jeffers about a boy who gets stuck on the moon with a martian who is also lost in space. Together, they manage to help each other to find their ways back home. You can revisit the story here…
We also very much enjoyed this Planet song…
Finally, we learnt three new sounds: f (which is a stretchy sound), e (a bouncy sound) and l (also a stretchy sound). When practising these sounds, please be careful not to say ‘fuh’ and ‘luh’. If you are unsure, do rewatch this video.
images from https://www.slideshare.net/msg719/abc-pronunciary
We also practised lots of ‘Fred-talk’. This means, we practised sounding out lots of words, saying the sounds in sequence and then blending them together. We really enjoyed using this word making machine which helped us to understand how to do this. We loved pulling the different levers to change the first and final sounds. Why not have a go at using the word machine together at home!
Have a lovely weekend everyone & see you on Monday.