What a wet and rather chilly start it has been to the Summer Term at St. Matthew’s – fingers crossed for some warmer days heading our way soon!
A very warm welcome back to everyone and, especially, to the new family that has recently joined us along with two new members of staff. I hope everyone is settling in well and starting to feel part of the St. Matthew’s family.
This term, our learning will be inspired by the topic ‘Message in a Bottle’ so it made perfect sense for our first spotlight story to be ‘Message in a Bottle’ by Matt Hunt. This delightful story is about a lion who wants to escape the hustle and bustle of city life but quickly realises that life without friends can be very lonely. You can revisit the story here (please note, the story itself finishes at about 11.00):
Mrs Atkinson
We talked about what the word lonely means and decided it means being sad because you are alone and don’t want to be on your own. Sometimes, people like to be on their own for a little bit and this is fine as long as they are happy. We also talked about the sort of things we can say when we think someone might be feeling lonely, such as “come and play” or “are you ok?”.
Next, we read a story about another character who feels lonely, in this case, because no one wants to play with him; in the story of the Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, we learnt that sharing things with others is a super way to make friends:
We also enjoyed the sequel – Rainbow Fish to the Rescue:
We decided to found out more about the wise animal that the Rainbow Fish goes to for advice in the first story – that’s right, the octopus. We found out some very interesting facts about these incredible creatures:
*they have 8 arms and each arm has over 200 suckers on it!
*if an octopus is in danger, they can detach one of their arms and grow a new one!
*they do not have any bones in their bodies and the only hard part of their body is their mouth, so they can squeeze through any gap (as long as it is as large as their mouth!)
Can you find out anymore interesting facts about an octopus?
Finally, we read the true-life story of Inky the Octopus who escaped from a tank in an aquarium in New Zealand in 2016. Incredibly, it is thought Inky managed to escape when the lid to his tank was accidentally left ajar. He made it down the side of his tank and across the floor of the aquarium, using the suckers on his arms to latch and release, before squeezing his body through a drain in the floor and into a pipe which led to the ocean!
You can reread the story here:
And watch the Newsround clip from 2016 here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/av/36039273
We were all fascinated by the story of Inky’s escape and asked for several re-readings! The story also prompted some heartfelt discussions about whether or not Inky should have been kept in a tank in the first place. We took a vote and, although many of us (and more of us) felt that Inky’s rightful place was at home in the ocean, several of us felt that Inky should have been in the tank (“because he is safe there” and “the sharks can’t get him there”). Animal conservation is a complex issue and I was so impressed by the thoughtful consideration the children gave to this story – well done Reception!
In our maths lessons, we have been learning about odd and even numbers. One morning, we discovered Stanley and Gruffy arguing over a bag of sweets! There were 7 sweets in the bag and we discovered that 7 is not a good sharing number because it cannot be shared out fairly (or equally) between Stanley and Gruffy. Numbers that are not good sharing numbers are called odd numbers. We decided to give them a bag of 8 sweets instead and discovered that 8 is a good sharing number because it can be shared out fairly/equally. Numbers that are good sharing numbers are called even numbers.
We decided to give Stanley and Gruffy lots of bags of sweets to keep them going and help them with their good sharing. Working with a partner, we raced outside and filled our bags with ‘sweets’ (sticks, leaves and stones). When we got back inside, we counted the contents and checked that our bags contained only good sharing numbers. Then we wrote that number on the outside of the bags and had a go at writing a number sentence to explain how Stanley and Gruffy could share the sweets fairly. Great work Reception – Stanley and Gruffy have been quietly sharing out their sweets ever since!
Next, we learnt how to recognise odd and even numbers by their shapes. Odd numbers “have a bumpy bit on the top” and look “like a staircase” while even numbers are “flat on top”.
We worked with our partners once again, to sort odd and even numbers into teams. Here are the odd and even teams with Stanley and Gruffy as their team captains!
Finally, there has been great excitement as we have been starting to learn the set 2 sounds in phonics. So far, we have learnt ‘ay’ as in ‘ay, may I play’ and ‘ee’ as in ‘ee, what can you see’. You might like to have a look at these videos from Lorne Primary School:
Lorne Primary School
We hope everyone has a lovely bank holiday weekend – see you next week!