Animal Magic and Hibernation!

We have been busily learning about hibernating creatures. We all listened to a story about a little hedgehog who shared his home with some other animals who needed to hibernate. We have talked at length about why creatures have to hibernate and the rituals that they have to go through in order to survive the winter months. We have made hedgehog homes and decorated collage pictures with prickle shaped leaves. We are still having fun learning about bats, their habitats and requirements for survival.

We have been mathematical measuring wizards in maths as we have been using non-standard measures such as blocks and paperclips to measure pictures of hibernating animals.

Our letter sounds this week have included h, sh, r, and j. The children did well with their first digraph ‘sh’ and really enjoyed shell printing with playdough and creating shiny shoes! The letter ‘r’ lent itself well to an array of beautiful rainbows and lots of singing too! The letter ‘h’ became a little messy with painting and printing with our hands!

Celebrations and Remembrance!

 It has been an exciting week of celebrations and Remembrance activities. We started the week with learning all about the Hindu religion and Diwali festivities. The children learnt about the story of Rama and Sita and acted out the story with stick puppets. We made Diwali cards, Rangoli patterns and wrote about the story behind Diwali. We even learnt about how Diwali is celebrated across the world with festivals, delicious foods and beautiful clothes. We watched a Diwali festival and understood why it is called ‘The Festival of Lights’.

Later in the week we remembered the people who contributed to the war effort and thought about the special things that the armed forces do for us today. We also talked about other people and professions who help us. We made beautiful poppies out of fingerprints, tissue paper and Hama beads and represented them in the amazing pictures.

Bonfires and Fireworks!

We have celebrated Bonfire Night and used the ‘Funny Bones’ stories to inspire the children across all areas of the Reception curriculum.

We have been talking about the story behind Bonfire Night and family traditions associated with the celebration. We also talked about the Houses of Parliament and our current Prime Minister.

We have made collage rockets and bonfires, performed tricky fireworks maths which involved ordering numbers and acknowledging the number before and after a given number. We have made fireworks shapes in glitter and copied patterns in order to develop our fine motor skills.

We have been exploring numbers this week which has involved sorting natural materials by different criteria and placing them into sets of 1,2 and 3. We have been learning to count groups of items carefully, pointing with our fingers for accuracy and in order. Counting in 2’s was quite tricky but we are definitely getting the hang of it!

In literacy we have been revising the letters that we learned before half term and word building CVC words. We have also managed to fit in the story of 'Elmer the Elephant' to reinforce the letter ‘e’. We designed patterned elephants, made Elmers and elephant masks and formed the letter ‘e’ with plastic elephants, beads and buttons.