“January brings the snow
Makes our feet and fingers glow”
The above is the opening line of a poem called ‘The Garden Year’ by Sara Coleridge and I can remember learning the poem when I was young and it has stuck with me. I thought of it on Friday evening at 4.00. I was in the classroom just tidying away after another busy day full of laughter and learning – I looked out of the window and guess what I saw…….yes snow, lots of it (but unlike my memory for The Garden Year poem – it did not stick).
Continuing with the poetry thread, we learnt a new poem in Robins this week, it is called Popcorn. Ask your child to say it with you! We talked about an author writing books, a composer writing music and a poet writing poetry.
It was wonderful to welcome everyone back this week and we quickly settled back into things, like putting on a comfy pair of slippers - it all just felt right!
We enjoyed our weekly French session with Madame Wilson – counting to 12 and saying where we live – I was hugely impressed with the children’s learning.
In RE this term we are focusing on the question ‘Is the word God special?’. Rev Miri will be visiting us later in the term to talk to us about this further but this week Mrs. Crawshaw began the topic by bringing in something special to her – her food blender. Now, I will tell you something about Mrs. Crawshaw that perhaps you don’t already know – she LOVES cooking and quite often brings in the most wonderful homemade cakes that we get to eat with our cup of tea - they are delicious!
First, Mrs. Crawshaw demonstrated to the children how to seperate eggs - the yolk and the white, next she used the belnder to whisk the whites, the children observed and described the changing of the whites from ‘clear’ and ‘dripping’ to ‘white like milk’ and more solid. The blender was quite noisy! Then, Mrs Crawshaw showed the children how to grate carrots and make breadcrumbs using the blender (new vocabulary).
All the ‘food’ learning lead to an interest during the children’s free flow / independent learning in the home corner - the children were eager to ‘follow a recipe’ either from a cooking book or one that they had looked up on line using the keyboard, they cooked a meal and made play doh cakes and pancakes.
We were subitising in Maths (instantaneously recognising the number of objects in a small group without the need to count them.) Again, ask your child about subitising – can they say the word and can they tell you what it means. One of our Robins had made a delicious playdoh pancake drizzled in maple syrup and presented it to Mrs Sayer. Mrs Sayer rearranged the ‘raisins’ and every time our Robin was able to confidently tell Mrs Sayer how many ‘raisins’ were left on top of the pancake without counting.
subitising……..
adding lots of different ingredients……
following a recipe in a book…….
Looking up a recipe on line……..
At the end of last term we were so sad to say goodbye to Mrs Wild – we knew she would not forget us and this week we received a lovely card from Mrs Wild saying that she missed us and looked forward to seeing us soon. I am sure Mrs Wild still reads our class page – so Mrs Wild, we want you to know that the children have asked for your card to be placed on the prayer table so that whenever they look at it they will think of you.
And finally…….we welcomed Mrs O’Hagan to our Robins team.
Have a lovely weekend and see you all on Monday.