Happy weekend all!
This weeks circle time, or PSHE as it’s known, caused much debate and a whole spectrum of emotions were explored. I had a large bowl of sweets and explained to the children that I would like to share them. They were all delighted at the idea of an afternoon sweet treat and waited patiently for me to share. I announced I was going to share my sweets with the 4 year olds… there are just three children aged 4 in our class. I gave them a sweet each and sat back down in the circle. Confused looks were exchanged. Whispers of ‘ That’s not fair!’ could be heard. We questioned why wasn’t it fair? There were a range of replies – some angry, some upset, some confused at my non-teacher like behaviour. One 4 year old child with a sweet broke it in half and shared it with his neighbour. Simply amazing understanding and selfless behaviour! I went on to share my sweets with the girls … this still left the boys sweet- less. We talked about how the children felt who had a sweet and how the children without a sweet felt. Of course we finished with the rest of the children having a sweet too. This simple exercise enabled the children to identify the emotion they were feeling and helped them understand how others might be feeling. Hopefully they will remember how they felt when they are next in a similar sharing situation and think of what the right thing to do would be!
This weeks text is Tiddler by Julia Donaldson and Axel Sheffler.
In the story, Tiddler, a fish, is always always late for school, so this week we have been learning about time – reading an analogue clock on the hour. The children a have been calibrating their own clocks and using a split pin to attach the hands.
The main theme of the Tiddler story is actually story telling, as Tiddler makes up lots of tales as to why he was late again. We explored the story, thinking about how stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. We are all writing about what happens in the beginning, middle and end of the Tiddler story. The children have used a clock and fish to retell the Tiddler story themselves.
The rest of our week has been wrapping up our pirate theme … however we are still waiting for a reply from Captain Red-Beard as what to do with all his treasure that we found. We wrote a reply to him on our pirate paper and put it in a bottle. Mrs Morgan said she would take it down to the beach where she found his original message in the bottle … we will wait and see!
Meanwhile we’ve been playing pirate games, taking turns and counting treasure won …
Counting Captain Red-Beards treasure…
and playing games with it… how many pieces can you find in 1 minute?!
Not forgetting the beautiful mermaids treasure. We have been matching describing words to their treasure and writing our own describing words to match the smooth, shiny, gleaming, transparent, shimmering treasure – just a few of the describing words the children came up with!
Last but not least we took part in the whole school ‘ Off by Heart’ poetry competition. We all learnt a poem – ‘ I think I Saw a Mermaid’ by Nick Sharratt. We practised in the classroom and choose 9 children to represent our class in the competition. They were extremely brave and recited their poem in front of the whole school and three important judges – namely Mother Helen from St Matthews Church, Mrs Warner the Deputy Head and Elizabeth Broad our Chair of Governors. The gave a good performance representing Oak Class and we are all extremely proud of them.
Check back next week to hear more Oak Class news!