On Thursday morning, when I arrived at school, I discovered a muddy footprint just outside the classroom door. It had not been there when I had left school the previous evening and I wondered who on earth it might belong to. Knowing that the Reception children are such super problem-solvers, I decided to draw the outline of the footprint onto a piece of paper to show the children. When they arrived in the classroom, I explained what I had found and they all agreed…it was a bit of a mystery!
The first thought the children had was that the footprint might have been left by a “stranger”, “a robber” or “a bad guy”. However, after much discussion, this idea was firmly ruled out as we all agreed our school is a very safe place. As one child explained; “the door is locked and you have to go to the office”. I explained to the children that strangers do not come into our school unless they have come to visit us. Visitors always wear a red lanyard around their necks (instead of the blue ones which teachers wear) which means Mrs Saunders or Mrs Morgan has said they can come in.
Since we knew the footprint must belong to someone in school, we decided to make a list of possible people. Here is our list:
- Miss Cronin
- Mr Norris (our caretaker)
- Mrs Warner (our deputy head)
- A year 1 child
- A year 6 child
- Mrs Mooney
- Mrs Rainey (our year 2 teacher)
- Miss Leutchford (our year 1 teacher)
Next, we wondered how we could find out which person on our list had left the footprint. The children quickly suggested we would need to get the footprints of the people on the list and then check to see which one matches our footprint! “If it is the same then we know it is his!”
We made a start on our footprint investigation by drawing around our very own Mrs Mooney’s foot…but discovered her footprint was actually too small! Next week, we will be taking the measurements of the other people on the list to try and solve our very own Cinderella mystery! Watch this space…
The children were very taken with idea of measuring their own feet and several set off during choosing time to do so! We also used the unifix cubes to have a go at estimating how long they thought their foot might be and then measuring it to find out if they were right.
Weekend Challenge: Measure around the feet or shoes of the people in your family. Can you put them in order from smallest to biggest? Now do some measuring; you can use anything you can find at home as long as it is the same size, e.g. bottle tops, cars, lego pieces or you could have a go at measuring with a ruler or a measuring tape. Don’t forget to estimate (make a guess) first and then find out how close you were. Write a list of the people you are going to measure, then write down your estimate for how long you think their foot will be, then write down the actual measurement.
Of course, it seemed only ‘fitting’ that we also read the story of Cinderella this week. We read a version called “Cinderella and her very bossy sisters” which can be found in Raynes Park library. It is a modern version of the classic fairytale.
Weekend Challenge: Can you remember the story of Cinderella? Can you re-tell the story to someone in your family? Don’t forget to start with “Once Upon a Time…” What happens in the end? Could you make up a different ending?
During our phonics lessons this week, we learnt the final 3 sounds of the alphabet ‘x’, ‘y’ and ‘z’. Please note, we decided not to use the jolly phonics action for ‘x’ (where you pretend to take an x-ray photo) as it can be confusing for the children that x uses it’s name at the start of words like x-ray, but uses its sound (ks) at the end of words like f-o-x. Instead, we came up with our own action which is to cross our arms to make the shape of the letter.
Our Star of the Week did a fantastic job of filling up his number bag with all things to do with the number 3:
And our new number of the week was chosen as number 11:
