May brings flocks of pretty lambs
Skipping by their fleecy dams.
This verse of the Garden Year really makes me think of Spring and all the signs of new life that we see at this time of year and it fits in perfectly with our learning this week.
Our learning and discussions this week have been mainly focussed around Changes and Challenges.
We have focussed particularly on life cycles and that has given me an idea for the weekend wonder. I was thinking of the life cycle of ourselves, from babies through to adulthood, when I was younger I used to love playing Beetle with my family, even at a very young age it was a game that I could access easily and had exactly the same chance of winning as my parents did. Even now, as an adult I still enjoy playing the game (so much so that I am going to introduce it into the classroom setting next week so you might want to have a go at it at home before Monday!!!).
Weekend Wonder
I wonder if, using your dice that you have borrowed from school, you and your family can have a ‘games night’ and play Beetle. Who will win?
Good Luck.
Rules are opposite.
You will need :
Pencil or pen
Paper or white board
Dice
Faily members or friends
Change is our whole school topic and we have been learning about life cycles. Last week we looked at the life cycle from tadpole to frog. We are keeping a close eye on our tadpoles - they are certainly growing!
We also started to think about the life cycle of a bean. We discussed what a bean needs to grow and read the story of Jasper’s Beanstalk to help give us some ideas. We soaked some cotton wool in water and carefully placed the bean and cotton wool into a see through bag so that we can watch it begin to shoot. We introduced the word ‘patience’ into our bank of vocabulary –interestingly, many Robins said they had heard the words ‘be patient’ before…..I say no more (but I did smile)!!!!
Soaking the cotton wool…..
We also had the wonderful opportunity to discuss the life cycle of a chicken and were visited by the most fluffy, cute and extremely well behaved newly hatched chicks. There were lots of ooohs are aahhhhs and those that wanted to, had the opportunity to have the chick on their lap – a real wow moment.
Did you know that tadpoles LOVE cucumber, as soon as a few slices were dropped into the container, whoosh, the tadpoles came rushing up for a feed!
Making sure the bean sat snuggly on the cotton wool in the bag…..
All beans, placed in the sunlight with plenty of water and just waiting to grow!
In the classroom setting, the children fully engage with free flow learning with increasing independence, they have their own ideas and thoughts and it fills me with pride to see how they take ownership of their learning. In order to stretch them further, we set up challenges in some of the areas of learning. For example, in the junk modelling area the challenge this week was to include a link in their creation, next week it will be to include a fringe.
At the Bee Bot station, the challenge is to programme the Bee Bot to follow the path, this week it was a straight path, next week will include a turn – all this learning takes place without adult intervention – the challenges are set at the beginning of the week and they have to complete all challenges by the end of the week, collecting the coloured lollipop sticks along the way until they have completed and collected all 5 sticks.
In Phonics…..
In Phonics this week we have been focussing on the sounds oa, oi, oo (as in book and oo as in moon) and consolidating our knowledge of all the sounds we have learnt so far.
For the next 2 weeks we will be focussing on sounds…..ow, ar, air, ear and will be reinforcing letter formatioon and using our cursive style handwriting.
If you as parents have any questions regarding how to support handriting / phonics / reading, please do pop in and ask us we are only too happy to help.
Finally, if you have any old magazines or wrapping paper that you no longer require please could you bring them in for Mrs Oberholzer as she is looking forward to creating some collage work.