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):

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:

We hope everyone has a lovely bank holiday weekend – see you next week!

Last week, we continued on with our worldwide travels, visiting different landscapes around the world, inspired by the story of ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’. The next landscape on our list was a very snowy one! And many of us already knew (thanks to Santa!) where in the world we would have to go to find such a landscape – that’s right – the North Pole! We discovered that there are actually two poles – one on top of the world called The Arctic and one on the bottom of the world, called Antarctica. We also learnt that Antarctica is the only continent on earth without people living there (apart from the Scientists who travel there to learn more about our wonderful world). Although people don’t usually live there, Antarctica is famously home to eight species of penguins. You can find out more about the different penguins here: https://www.passportandpixels.com/types-of-penguins-in-antarctica-photos/

We decided to wave goodbye to the lush foliage of the Amazon rainforest and head south on our magic carpet. We remembered to put our hats, gloves, scarves and snowboots on before landing as we knew the landscape would be very different to the one we were leaving behind. There are no streets in Antarctica, but the visiting Scientists take lots of photos, so the little orange man was able to guide us safely into land using one of these. Isn’t it stunning!

Our visit to Antarctica inspired our next spotlight story – the delightful ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers which you can revisit here:

Next, we travelled north to the Arctic and learnt that, despite it being a similar landscape (at least at first glance), penguins do not live here. Instead, the Arctic is home to a much larger animal – the polar bear!

We learnt that, sadly, life is getting more and more difficult for polar bears because the ice in the Arctic is melting due to global warming. Our next spotlight story was called ‘The Journey Home’ by Frann Preston-Gannon. This is a beautiful, touching but thought-provoking story. It features a polar bear and three other animals that we have already met on our travels. Can you remember which animals they were? A black and white animal that lives in China, an orange animal that lives in the Amazon rainforest and a grey animal that lives in the savannah. We were also introduced to an animal that became extinct, because of humans, more than 300 years ago. You can revisit the story below to find out more:

As you can probably imagine, the story prompted lots of conversations about the importance of protecting all of the animals in the world and making sure we care for our wonderful world to keep it healthy and safe. We were visited by some members of the school’s Eco Warrior team who told us about the projects they work on in our school to promote eco-friendly behaviour and ideas. Mr Quinn would like to invite two children from our class to join the team – so please remember to send in your letters asap if you would like to be considered!

In our phonics lessons, we have been busy learning the final few special friends sounds within set 1: ll, ff, ss and ck. These sounds are often found at the end of words, for example, hill, puff, kiss and kick.

In our maths lessons, we have been learning how to use the terms ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ correctly; helping Stanley and Gruffy (our class pets) to sort out their squabbles!

Finally, this term, we have been enjoying some fantastic gymnastics lessons with Coach Riann. Here are some photos from the lessons:

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend – and Happy Mother’s Day!

We were delighted this week to welcome the Hobgoblin Theatre Company to St. Matthew’s to watch their production of Little Red Riding Hood. We absolutely loved the show and wanted to say a huge thank you to all of the actors (including the uncle of one of our children) who entertained us brilliantly!

Naturally, the show prompted lots of discussion about the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood, its characters and, in particular, its different versions. Some of us prefer the version where the wolf eats Grandma! Others of us would rather read a version where Grandma hid under the bed or in the wardrobe. Which version do you prefer?

The story also found it’s way into our play when our role-play area was transformed into Grandma’s Cottage! Look very carefully…who is that sleeping in Grandma’s bed?

In our phonics lessons, we have been practising our set 1 speed sounds and focusing especially on the special friends qu, ng and nk. We have also been reading our speedy green words and trying to hold a ditty (a mini sentence) in our head before having a go at writing it.

In our maths lessons, we played the hiding numberblobs game; working with a total number of six, I put some ‘numberblobs’ into the five-frames and kept some hidden in my hand. The challenge was to work out how many ‘numberblobs’ were still in my hand. This was a very tricky challenge and required us to use lots of different mathematical thinking! Why not have a go at home, start with a small number like 2 and gradually build up to bigger numbers. Can you have a go at playing the hiding numberblobs game with a total of 10? Use can you anything you like as numberblobs – spoons, socks, pieces of lego, toy cars – anything you have at home. 

Finally, we celebrated World Book Day on Friday and came to school dressed up as some of our favourite storybook characters including The Rainbow Fish, Where’s Wally and Winnie the Witch!

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!

Welcome back to the second half of the Spring term. We hope everyone had a lovely half term break. Isn’t it is hard to believe we are now half way through the year in Reception!

It was Shrove Tuesday this week so of course we had to read the story of Mr Wolf’s Pancakes by Jan Fearnley. Oh dear, what a surprising story this was! We had lots of very interesting conversations about being kind and friendly and whether or not we thought Mr Wolf’s actions were justified! You can revisit the story here:

Afterwards, we were all very keen indeed to have a go at making our own pancakes. Mr Wolf wrote a shopping list before he went to the shops. Can you remember what was on the list? That’s right: eggs, flour and milk! Luckily, Miss Cronin had remembered to pop to the shops before school and had picked up all of the ingredients we needed. We measured, mixed and poured our pancake batter into a frying pan and even had a go at flipping a pancake ourselves (with a cold pancake and pan that Mrs Fenwick had cleverly cooked for us earlier!). Photos of our pancake flipping to follow… We also spent some time talking about how important it is to keep safe in a kitchen, staying well away from the stove and listening carefully to the grown-ups’ instructions.

The best part of the day had to be when we ate the pancakes and they were delicious! Some of us tried a little sprinkle of sugar on our pancake, others of us tried one with lemon and sugar. Some of us thought we might not like the taste of lemon but wanted to try anyway – well done for being brave and trying something new!

On Wednesday, it was Ash Wednesday which marks the first day of Lent in the Christian calendar. Mother Helen and Father Alastair led our whole school worship and talked to us about the sort of things people do during Lent to prepare for Easter. Back in the classroom, we decided to turn the tree in our prayer corner into a Lent tree. We all worked so hard to write and decorate a leaf with our lenten promises. The tree is looking wonderful and I will post a photo when it is complete. Can you remember what you wrote on your promise leaf?

Next, we read another surprising story – I am a Tiger by Karl Newson and Ross Collins. You can revisit this very funny story here: https://youtu.be/VnMHfxiQBdU

And then, we read yet another surprising story – Hungry Hen by Richard Waring and Caroline Jayne Church which you can reread here: https://youtu.be/oxexImCLeWk

Can you talked about what it means if something is surprising? Which was your favourite surprising story this week? Why was it your favourite? Can you come up with your own surprising story?

We have also been practising our subitising, composition and numeral recognition skills playing games where we have to think about what numbers are made of, practise using our doubles and number bond knowledge and link quantities to numerals.

Finally, in our phonics lessons we have been practising our set 1 speed sounds and focusing especially on the special friends sh, ch and th. We have also been reading our speedy green words and having a go at working with a partner to take turns reading/listening to a ditty (a mini sentence).

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!

This week, we said goodbye to the Billabongs of Australia and headed east across the vast Pacific Ocean until we reached the shores of South America. We were looking for a lot of trees (as this is the next landscape in the ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt story) and what better place to find them than on the continent that contains the largest forest in the world; the Amazon Rainforest!

The little orange man guided us into land safely, deep in the rainforest amongst the trees and streams…

As we started to look around, Stanley (our three-toed sloth) suddenly became very excited! Apparently Stanley actually comes from the Amazon Rainforest and he recognised the place where we landed!

After this discovery, our first spotlight story simply had to be “Slowly, Slowly, Slowly”, said the Sloth by Eric Carle which you can revisit below. All of the animals in the book live in the Amazon Rainforest – can you remember the names of any of the animals? Don’t forget to pause the video on the last page so you can have a good look at all the beautiful animals alongside their names.

https://youtu.be/qV-Y29QAD74

Our next spotlight story was about one of the other animals that lives in the rainforest – in fact, there are nine different types of this animal living there. We decided to be animal detectives and played a game of Guess Who to find out which animal this might be. Using the final page from the Eric Carle book, I gave the children 4 clues:

*I have 4 legs. Lots of animals have 4 legs. Which one could it be? Do you need another clue?

*I have a long tail. This helps a bit, but it could be a crocodile or a monkey or one of the large cats…

*I have brown fur. Wait, it’s not the crocodile then!

*I live up in the trees. It must be one of the monkeys!

That’s right! I am a monkey!

Our next spotlight story was ‘Night Monkey, Day Monkey’ by Julia Donaldson and Lucy Richards. This delightful story introduces children to some of the differences between night and day as well as the idea of nocturnal animals. These ideas are presented through night monkey, and then day monkey’s, misconceptions which can be a little tricky to understand so please do revisit this story at home if you get the chance:

In our phonics lessons, we learnt another special friends sound: qu as in queen, quilt, quick and question. The sound is a bit like saying q and w together (i.e. qw) but it is written as qu.

Here is the picture prompt for this sound:

We also learnt another red word, the. As you may remember from last week, there are some words that you cannot Fred-talk and must just be learnt on sight instead.

In our maths lessons, we have been developing our understanding of numbers being composed of other numbers. We used the sentence ‘5 is made of something and something”…to talk about the different combinations of numbers that make up 5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzqrkCAR40c

Finally, our babies have been enjoying lots of lovely bathtime this week – getting a good scrub and shampoo! We will be continuing to talk about our baby photos next week.

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!

This week, we waved goodbye to the Yangtze River and the New Year celebrations in China as we set off on our magic carpet to visit the southern hemisphere of our wonderful world. We were looking for a place where we might find lots of thick, oozy mud as this is the next part of the ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ story. We are using the story as our travel guide this term as part of our ‘Out and About’ topic.

Have you ever walked through thick, oozy mud? I hope you were wearing your welly boots!

We decided to land next to a billabong in Australia. A billabong is the Australian word for an oxbow lake – in other words, a pond that is left behind when the river changes course and, at the edges, you often find lots of sticky mud! We visited the Marlgu billabong in Western Australia.

The little orange man brought us down to land safely on a boat with a roof to protect us from the hot Australian sunshine!

It was also lucky that we didn’t land in the billabong because many of us already knew what sort of animal might be lurking in the shallow water…that’s right, a crocodile!

Our first spotlight story was all about this fearsome creature! We read the story of ‘The Selfish Crocodile’ by Faustin Charles and Michael Terry and you can revisit it here:

This story helped us to remember how important it is to be kind and friendly and include everyone in our play. It also helped us to think about another way in which we can be healthy – as well as eating healthy foods – by looking after our teeth. We know that it is very important to brush our teeth twice a day, using a pea-sized amount of toothpaste. We will be learning more about looking after our teeth over the coming weeks.

Our next spotlight story was also about teeth – this time, a rather scary set of teeth! Even though Alan (the owner of the teeth) looks like a crocodile, he is actually an alligator. You can revisit the story (by Jarvis) below:

Although alligators and crocodiles are SIMILAR, they are not the same animal and you will not find alligators in Australia. We decided to do a little research to find out more about how alligators and crocodiles are different. To do our research, we used Google which, we learnt, is a search engine and can be found when we ‘go online’.

This is what we discovered:

Our final spotlight story of the week was definitely about a crocodile. At least, that’s what we thought when we started reading it…! There was a bit of a clue at the start of the story – can you remember what it was?

You can revisit ‘The Crocodile Who Didn’t Like Water’ by Gemma Merino here:

This story prompted a very interesting conversation about whether or not dragons are real animals. Some of us thought that perhaps they did exist but are now extinct like dinosaurs. Others of us were not so sure. We decided to ask Google once again and discovered that an animal called a Komodo dragon does actually exist! It is a large lizard that lives in Indonesia and it is venomous!

In our phonics lessons this week, we learnt two new sounds – both of which are special friends: th (as in Thursday, thick, thin, thunder) and ch (as in chips, chimpanzee, China, children). When saying the sound ‘th’ you need to put your tongue in between your teeth and gently blow air through your teeth. This is a tricky sound to learn and can be easily muddled up with ‘f’ so please do spend some time practising the difference between saying Thursday and Fursday. When learning ‘ch’ the children often confuse train and chrain (especially as we often tell them that trains say choo, choo). Please do spend time helping them to distinguish between these sounds if they find this confusing.

Here are the picture prompts for these sounds:

Here is a video all about ‘th’ that might be helpful:

And here is one about ‘ch’:

We also made a startling discovery in our phonics lessons this week when, while we were getting ready to practise our Fred-talk with Fred, we came across a word that cannot be Fred-talked! Poor Fred had to be put away so we could learn that there are some words that cannot be Fred-talked and simply have to be learnt as whole words. We call these words red words and we say ‘you can’t Fred a red’! The first red word that we learnt is ‘I’ as in ‘I am Miss Cronin’. We will be learning lots more red words over the coming weeks.

Finally, in our maths lessons, we have been learning to order numbers by their relative quantities, singing the Numberblocks song ‘I’m bigger than you, diddly, diddly doo’ and ‘I’m smaller than you, diddly, diddly, doo’ to help us (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC6iqEz_28w).

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!

This week, we said goodbye to the grasslands of Africa and headed east on our magic carpet. Our next stop (as inspired by the story of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’) was the Yangtze River, which is the third longest river in the world in the third largest country in the world – China! Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a safe landing spot, so instead, we looked down on the river as we flew over it (and a few of the other 1,499 rivers in the country!).

We discovered that something rather special is happening in China at the moment; this weekend, celebrations will be taking place to mark the Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival. “Lunar New Year is celebrated in many Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, the Koreas, Singapore, and Malaysia. Though some traditions are shared, others are unique to each country’s cultural identity” (https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/chinese-new-year-vs-lunar-new-year.htm)

As we were visiting the Yangtze River, we decided to learn more about the traditions that are specific to China. First, we read the story of the Chinese zodiac which explains how the 12 years of the zodiac cycle were named after the 12 different animals in a race across a large river – just like the Yangtze! The Jade Emperor decided that whichever animal won the race would have the first year named after it.  The second animal to cross the finish line would have the second year named after it, then the third, fourth, fifth and so on. We all thought the rat was not very kind and friendly and we felt sorry for the ox.  Can you remember why? There was lots of discussion about which animal we thought should have one the race!

2023 will be the year of the rabbit and you can revisit the story here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories/lets-celebrate-chinesenewyearperformance

Have a look at the zodiac picture below.  Can you use the words first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth to talk about the picture and the story of the zodiac.  Find out which year you were born in and use the zodiac picture to find out which animal year you were born in. 

Can you find out when some of the people in your family were born?  This chart will help you find out about the grown-ups in your family and which animal year they were born in:

We also felt a bit sorry for the pig and wondered why it had come last in the race. We thought it might be because pigs are not very good swimmers. We decided to ask Google about this and discovered that pigs are actually very good swimmers and that there is a place in the Bahamas called Pig Beach where you can find pigs swimming in the sea!

We read the delightful story of The Pig in the Pond which made us all laugh, especially at the end! You can re-read this story by Jill Barton and Martin Waddell here:

Next, we met a girl called Abbie who explained how she and her family prepare to celebrate Chinese New Year by cleaning their house and decorating it. Later, Abbie watched a parade on the street and saw a dragon dance! You can re-watch these clips here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/chinese-new-year?collection=chinese-lunar-new-year

Our last spotlight story of the week was another story set on a river with lots of animals and a man called Mr Gumpy! We learnt that the word ‘squabble’ is another word for ‘quarrel’ which is used in the version of the story of the Chinese zodiac that we read. We talked about these words meaning to argue or to not agree with someone you are talking to. And we agreed that everyone argues sometimes but it is kind and friendly to do good listening when you disagree with someone, listen to their ideas and try not get too cross! You can re-read the story here:

In our phonics lessons, we learnt 3 new sounds: z, x and sh.

Please note that x is quite a tricky sound to say – it might help to think of it as two sounds (k and s) said together. If you Fred-talk the word f-o-x, it might help you to isolate the final sound and hear this as ks.

The sound sh (as in ship, sheep, fish, etc.) is the first of several digraphs we will be learning. A digraph is a single sound (or phoneme) that is represented by two letters (or graphemes). In the Read, Write, Inc Phonics program that we use here at St. Matthew’s, we call digraphs ‘special friends’. Here are the picture prompts for these sounds:

And a reminder of the handwriting sayings:

In our maths lessons, we have been matching numerals to quantities and playing lots of games of ‘show me’: your partner calls out a number (or shows you a numeral) and you have to quickly show them the same quantity on your fingers (without counting your fingers!).

The reverse of this is a game we play called ‘do not count, see the amount’ – where your partner shows you a quantity of fingers and you have to say the amount without counting – by subitising instead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/numberblocks-see-the-amount

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!

Welcome back to a new term and a new year at school. And a very Happy New Year to anyone I haven’t yet seen in person. It was lovely to welcome such enthusiastic and excited children back to school last week and hear all about their Christmas holidays.

This term, our learning will be centred around the topic ‘Out & About’. We will be exploring our wonderful world through storytelling and outdoor adventures. We will also be taking a sensory journey on our magic carpet visiting places all around the world, inspired by the story of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. This wonderful classic by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury was our first spotlight story of the term and you can revisit it below with the author himself:

Our first stop on the magic carpet took us to the grasslands of Africa where we landed in the middle of the Serengeti Nature Reserve in Tanzania. We read the story of ‘We’re Going on a Lion Hunt’ to help us think about the sort of animals we might find in this vast landscape and we quickly realised that this story is SIMILAR to the original Michael Rosen book! In fact, we learnt that it is a different VERSION of the bear hunt book.

We also learnt that the Serengeti is not just home to big animals like lions, giraffes and zebras, but to very small animals as well. In fact, it is full of insects because grasslands provide a good place for them to lay their eggs. For example, this beautiful butterfly is called a Swallowtail and can be found all over East Africa:

Many of the children already knew that butterflies do not begin their lives with these beautiful patterned wings but, instead, start their lives as caterpillars. We re-read one of our favourite stories, to remind ourselves about the life-cycle of a butterfly:

This story always prompts lots of conversations about healthy and unhealthy foods and I was so impressed by the children’s already impressive knowledge of those foods that can be eaten everyday and those that should only be eaten occasionally.

We also agreed that if there is a vegetable or fruit that you don’t think you like, it is often a good idea to try it (or try it again) as you might be surprised to discover that you like it after all, just like Oliver in the story of Oliver’s Vegetables:

In our phonics lessons, we learnt 4 further sounds: j, y, v and w. Here are the picture prompts and handwriting sayings for these:

Learning the sound j gave us the perfect excuse to have a go at making some jelly and, of course, this linked in very nicely with our conversations about healthy and unhealthy foods. We all agreed jelly is only something we should eat occasionally, certainly not everyday for breakfast! We were all fascinated by the way in which the jelly cubes changed from a solid to a liquid as they melted and dissolved in the hot water. Once in the fridge, we had to be very patient and wait overnight for the liquid jelly to turn back into a solid, ready to eat at our jelly party. Most of us thought the jelly was y-u-m!

In our maths lessons, we have been learning about composition; that numbers are made up of other numbers. To help us with this concept, we learnt to use the words PART and WHOLE within the whole/part Numberblocks song (e.g. “one is a part of me and one is a part of me and the whole of me is two”). Why not come up with your own numberblocks songs at home? We also loved playing with the Mr. Potato head family this week and this helped us to think about parts making up a whole.

On the carpet, we made a class book all about the number 4. We worked with our partners to arrange 4 squares in different ways – developing our understanding that the whole remains the same no matter the arrangement of its parts.

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!

This week was all about our show – and what a wonderful show it was! Thank you to everyone for all your support and encouragement; at home, with costumes and in the audience. The children were really proud of themselves and rightly so!

Despite such a busy and exciting week, we managed to squeeze in some time for our phonics. We learnt two further sounds: h and l. Here are the picture prompts and handwriting sayings for these letter sounds. Both sounds can be quite tricky to say – be careful not to drop your jaw with either one – don’t say luh or huh, for example. For l, your tongue should touch the inside of your top teeth and stay there when saying the sound. For h, try putting your open palm in front of your mouth and feel your breath as you say the sound – very quietly. Hope that helps a bit!

Our Spotlight Story this week was the newly published ‘What the Ladybird Heard at Christmas’ by Julia Donaldson. We love these stories and, you may remember, we read the other four in the series earlier in the term. You can revisit the new one here:

We also read another version of the story of the Nativity – once again, a beautifully illustrated book – called A Christmas Story by Brian Wildsmith which you can revisit here:

We were inspired to create our own nativity scenes:

…decorate our class Christmas tree…

…and we got to work, wrapping and labelling Christmas presents to put under the tree…

In our P.E. lessons this term, we have been learning how to organise ourselves; getting changed in and out of our P.E. kits, arranging our clothes carefully on our chairs so we can find them when we need to change back into them and putting our P.E. kits away on our pegs.

We have also been learning how to find a space for ourselves in the big hall and how to move different parts of our bodies. We have loved our Friday yoga sessions and, yesterday, we were so excited to have three of our Year 6 children join us. They were very impressed with our yoga skills!

If you would like to revisit the session we followed this week, you can find it here:

Have a lovely weekend everyone, stay warm!

Many of the songs we have been learning for our Christmas show tell the story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem so, this week, we read a beautifully illustrated version of The Nativity by May Eliot and Richard Johnson which you can revisit here:

We were amazed to discover that Mary was visited by an Angel called Gabriel who told her that she would have a baby called Jesus who would be the Son of God. We thought she would have felt “surprised”, “confused” and “scared”.

We also learnt that Mary and her husband Joseph had to go on a very long journey just before baby Jesus was due to be born. They had to travel all the way from Nazareth, where they lived, to a town called Bethlehem, where Joseph himself had been born. We wondered how long it would have taken to make this journey so, we asked Google and discovered that it would have taken them about 4 days! We also wondered why they had gone on a donkey and not in a car or on an airplane. After some discussion, we concluded that cars and airplanes did not exist 2000 years ago!

Next, we discovered that when Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem there was nowhere for them to stay as all of the hotels (or inns) were full. A kind and friendly innkeeper took pity on them and let them sleep in his stable, which was lucky as baby Jesus was about to be born! We learnt that a stable is a place where farm animals are kept.

We also read a lovely, snowy story (called Charlie and Tess by Martin Hall) about the friendship between a sheep and a sheepdog. The story helped us to think about the sort of animals we might find on a farm. You can revisit it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWehaivMRkE

We learnt that Christmas is a time of year when Christians celebrate the birth of baby Jesus all those years ago in a stable in Bethlehem. And we learnt that Advent is the time of preparation before Christmas when Christians get ready for this celebration. Many of us were excited to share that we have Advent calendars at home (often filled with yummy chocolates!) that help us to count down the days until Christmas and we may also have Advent wreaths that are lit on each Sunday during the 4 weeks of Advent, just like Mr Quinn’s wreath in the school hall.

In our phonics lessons, we learnt two new sounds. Here are the picture prompts and handwriting sayings for these letter sounds:

Don’t forget, our Christmas performances take place next week and we can’t wait to sing our songs for you! On Friday, we took a trip to the local postbox to post our invitations to the show (photos to follow!). We wrote these ourselves and we are very proud of them!

We do hope everyone will receive their invitation before the show but we appreciate the postal service is a little erratic these days. When your invitation does make it through your front door – please do take a moment to show it to your child and point out that it is the very same letter that they posted last week. You might also like to talk about the journey the letter took to reach you. Thank you!