Weekend wonder…..
This week we have been doing a lot of counting in Maths, therefore I would like you to find the answers to the following questions.
I wonder……How many times a day do you go up the stairs in your house and how many times a day do you come down the stairs – are they the same?
This week
As I mentioned last week, I look forward to March and all the celebrations it holds such as the start of Spring and St. David’s Day. But, did you know that March is also Women’s History Month, a time to celebrate strong, brave women who have broken down barriers and have changed the course of everyday life, trailblazers in our communities both past and present. Well, this week it was International Women’s Day, so what better time to start our learning in this theme.
Every day we share a story, two books selected by our reading champion and voted for by the Robins. We discuss the title, author, illustrator, spine, blurb etc. We don’t really think much about the author other than saying their name and wondering if we have read any other stories by the same author.
This week though, we learnt that Jane Austin, when she started to write her books, did not reveal who she really was as it was frowned upon that women had jobs as women were expected to stay home and raise a family! Well the Robins children were almost outraged when they learnt this!!! We are now looking more closely at authors and are thinking of all the wonderful stories that might never have been written had times not changed!
This week we also had a visit from the school nurse Sophia, who gave us a demonstration of how the hearing tests are carried out – each time the children heard a beep they had to clap. It did not take long for the children to want a pair of headphones in the role play area so they too could perform similar hearing tests in their own Doctor’s surgery – a great example of how real life experiences are reinforced in their play. We also welcomed back the handwashing station. Again, the children were fascinated and excited to see their hands ‘glowing green’ – I must say I was very impressed by their determination to make sure they washed their hands thoroughly and without prompting some went back to wash their hands two or three (ok, it was more like five or six) times to make sure their hands weren’t ‘glowing’ under the ultraviolet light. With all this talk of nurses and the importance of hygiene, it makes sense that next week, continuing with our Women’s History learning, we will take a look at Florence Nightingale.
In other areas of learning, we explored numbers using Rekenreks, enjoyed listening to one of our Robins read the story ‘Naughty Bus’ – a bus who goes on a very exciting adventure, we have introduced two model buses into the classroom and it is lovely to listen in to the children taking these buses on their own adventures around the classroom – through the junk modelling area, past the Lego, onto the carpet, bumping into children along the way – I thoroughly enjoy listening to the children extend their spoken vocabulary, especially when they are engrossed in their play!
Using the Rekenreks to represent numbers
One of the Robins reading the ‘Naughty Bus’
We also started our study of an Artist – this term we are learning about Kandisky. We started by looking at some of his pictures and talked about what we could see and what it made us think of. We talked about circles and triangles, curved edges, verticies, bigger and smaller. We started to create our own Kandinsky style pictures.
And finally, we finished the week in a rather wet and soggy way….in Forest School!
Next week……
We will revisit the digraph sounds (2 letters making 1 sound) introduced this week qu, ch, sh, th, ng – we have learnt the sounds and are able to recognise them, we now need to be able to use the sounds in our written work.
You will soon notice that along with your child’s reading books and reading record, they will have a pack of ‘tricky words’ that we will add to every time we learn a new word in class. Tricky words are words that cannot be decoded and broken down into sounds, they simply have to be recognised on sight so please support your child’s learning by telling them these words if they do not already know them!