This week, we read two lovely stories to support our learning about plants and their growth within our ‘Out and About’ topic. They were Camille and the Sunflowers and Jasper’s Beanstalk. Both are worth re-reading if you happen to come across them. In Camille and the Sunflowers, a young boy meets an unknown painter named Vincent while in Jasper’s Beanstalk, Jasper plants a bean and wonders just how long it will take for it to grow into a beanstalk!
One morning, I showed the children a bowl filled with butter beans and asked: ‘What on earth could these white things be?’:
The children came up with some interesting suggestions, including stones, jellybeans and seeds! Once I had told them they were indeed seeds, and in fact bean seeds, we wondered what they might need in order to grow. We came up with soil, water and sunlight. We watched a lovely time-lapse video of beans growing to see what actually happens to the seed as it begins to grow. You can watch it again here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIUnMOGWjsA
Each child then had a go at ‘planting’ their own beans. We planted them in a plastic bag and stuck them to one of the classroom windows. Be sure to check on them during drop off or pick up next week! We wrote in the first page of our bean diaries and will be keeping track of our beans over the coming weeks.
Weekend challenge: Can you remember why we don’t need to plant the beans in soil straight away? When will we need to plant them in some soil? What else did you put in your plastic bag?
We also learnt three new digraphs this week. They are qu, ch and sh. Here are the actions and mouth shapes for these sounds:
We learnt the tricky word ‘be’ this week. We wondered what we might like to be when we grow up and I was so impressed by the children’s answers! They included ballerina, doctor, rock star, vet and even a dad! Please check your word pots this week as we have added another set of tricky words for the children to learn (she, he, we, me, be, was).
Weekend challenge: Can you write some of your tricky words? Can you use them correctly in a sentence? Say it first and then have a go at writing it – remember to listen carefully for the sounds in the words you want to write and then write them down in order.
Each week, our Star of the Week chooses our new number of the week and we then give him/her a little weekend challenge: to fill a plastic wallet with all sorts of things (e.g. objects and/or pictures) to represent that number. Here’s what our Star of the Week found last weekend for the number 9!
Our new number of the week has been chosen as number…
Weekend challenge: Can you find pictures and objects that represent the number 8? Take a photo of the things you find and post it to our blog!
Finally, we have been using our fingers this week to help us with our adding. Last week, we thought about adding the same number of fingers on both hands when we worked on our doubles. This week, we have been adding different numbers of fingers on each hand (e.g. “3 and 2 makes 5 altogether”).
Weekend challenge: have a look at these funny fingers and explore the different additions you can do, using your fingers.