Hello !
This week we have immersed ourselves in flags, their designs, what country they represent and even made our own flags. We have added an extra role play area of Jack and the Beanstalk, alongside our weather station, to help with our writing this week too.
We have watched this flag video with the sound muted and listened to Wavin’ Flag as our sound track – the children loved it and were so interested in each countries flag design. Asking some excellent questions. I’ve attached both links below in case you want to have a look with them at home. The children talked about their family affiliations from all around the world, as well as remembering countries they have visited. It has enabled some really lovely work in which everybody had a shared interest.
A line of our own flags. 
Our 10 green bottles were a source of much fun this week. Task: to order them either by number or capacity … not take the lids off and squirt the red water everywhere! Safe to say Mrs Mooney and I won’t be using this activity again!! I live and learn! On the plus side, capacity was an interesting concept for lots of the children, with many referrals to cups/ bottles being filled at bath time to play with. Talk about more/ less/ full empty/ half full and so on at home – the children love playing with water!
Calculators caused a stir and enabled the children to show me numbers / match numbers and read numbers successfully. Everyone had a go with the calculators – it was a great example of number work and even gave us evidence for technology and understanding the world as we talked about solar power as well.
More number work – this time to fill the cups with the right number of cubes in a set time. Much enjoyment, hilarity of cups falling over and lots of checking each others work to see how each other had got on. Fantastic matching and counting with extensions of higher level questioning: Which two cups do I need to make 10? If all the cups are correct how many cubes do we have altogether? and so on…
Our dice activity this week was a directed task, recorded in our Challenge Books. Each child had to roll the dice, read and record the number they had rolled. They then had to understand a range of positional language such as: ind the number on the opposite side/ underneath/ the number at the bottom – they then recorded this number followed by adding the two numbers together. If you have a dice, ask them to show you – they should be able to tell you the magic number they found each time!
Our Jack and the Beanstalk area had a beanstalk, had the giant, had a chicken and a golden egg, even a cow but not a castle… the children took it upon themselves to build their own giants castle.
Writing numbers is always tricky in Reception – its never easy to know where to start when writing a number. These number moulds help the children work out which way to write their numbers by following the route of the marble in the mould.
We talked a lot about 2D shape this week – the children enjoyed copying or designing their own flag using the shapes.
In PE we are getting adventurous and completing our forward rolls at height, with climbing, balancing, jumping and bench bunny hops too. The children really enjoy our warm ups and are all fab at squats, star jumps and burpees!
Have a great week!