Another week has flown by.
It is this time of year that I feel more able to stand back and really watch and reflect on how far the children have come in their school life so far. I think back to meeting you all during the home visits, the induction visits, the first few days of being in Robins and I look at the children now – I listen to the amazing vocabulary they use, their explanations and cooperation, their independence – even small things like when a pen runs out simply putting it in the recycling and getting another pen not waiting for someone else to do it for them – they just get on with things, so eager to just get on with learning!
Unfortunately, we were unable to get out for our Wednesday Welly walk around the village this week. We had planned to look at an aerial view of Great Shefford and discuss our route from school to the park and create a simple map that we could follow. Therefore, in readiness for our walk next Wednesday, I wonder if…..
Weekend Wonder
I wonder if you could look at an aerial image of where you live and create a map of how you get to your nearest park?
This week, we really got stuck into our challenges. We played Beetle and we all loved it – thank you for playing this at home too (I did hear that one of the Dad’s was cheating!!!!!!). If you didn’t play it last weekend, please have a go this weekend as the children have absolutely loved it and I am sure they will want you to share their joy and have fun playing with you. Rules are on last week’s page.
a tense game of Beetle
How many words can you write in 3 minutes - use the sand timer to measure the time
Can you write down your order in the cafe
We also started learning the story of the Gingerbread man off by heart with actions to help us remember the story. One of our challenges next week will be to perform the story on our stage in our outdoor learning environment. For those of you who might be looking to do something over half term The Corn Exchange in Newbury has a live performance of The Gingerbread Man.
using a ‘bend’ in junk modelling - this is a binocular watch!
Can you match the number of frogs to the number on the lillypad.
Play a dice game and ‘jump on’ the number shown on the dice
https://cornexchangenew.com/event/the-gingerbread-man
This week we also welcomed some new additions to our classroom – our caterpillars arrived. We now have stick insects called Gary and Barry, tadpoles….too many to name and my goodness they are growing fast and I am sure we will be thinking of some names for our caterpillars next week. We are hoping that over the next few weeks, these caterpillars will turn into butterflies. We have measured them and at the moment they are 1cm long. It will take about two weeks for them to form their cocoons. As they get ready to do this, they will get bigger and longer so we are going to be watching them very carefully to see how they develop.
In Phonics……
Continuing with sounds …..ow, ar, air, ear ,reinforcing letter formation and using our cursive style handwriting.
This week we have been focussing on writing sentences – it is a really challenging part of learning and it takes huge amounts of effort and concentration to remember so many things such as getting the words in the right order, the spelling of each word, the letter formation, the finger spaces, writing on the line, remembering all the words, reading it back so that it makes sense! I am worn out just thinking about it so imagine how the Robins feel. Here are our top tips of how you can support this at home.
Think of one word e.g park….we were learning the ‘ar’ digraph this week
Put it in a simple sentence (no more than 5 or 6 words – I went to the park.)
Say the sentence out loud over and over and over and over (sticky learning)
When they can say the sentence without forgetting it - write it
Don’t worry about accurate spelling just match the sounds e.g it is common to write bic for bike.
Have a great weekend and see you all on Monday.I