Spring

W/C 08/01/2024

This week in R.E. we have been learning that Mary and Joseph took Jesus to a Temple. The children were unsure about what a temple was. We have talked about how some of us have a different religion and places of worship. We learnt that Jesus was Jewish and went to a Temple also known and a Synagogue. We had a look at a map of our local area and talked about different places of worship focussing on symbols.

The children are enjoying the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and we have been focusing on what a basket was and how this is different from a bag. This developed into discussions about different materials and the children enjoyed the challenge of working together to create their own basket using different resources and materials.
We have extended this in Maths. The children used their phonic knowledge of initial sounds and aural blending to find out what was inside our basket and, using subitising skills, how many- the quantity- matching this with numerals. We then wondered which food the children preferred and the children thought it would be a good idea to taste some…We made a tally chart to find out the answer….

Outside, the children have thought about the ‘cunning’ wolf and devised a ‘plan’ to get safely past the wolf to grandma’s house.

We have also read an alternative story ‘Who is bad and who is good Little Red Riding Hood?’ which was very thought provoking as Little Red Riding Hood met a wolf and a rabbit in the wood- both of whom were strangers- Red Riding Hood talked to both. The children thought it wasn’t ok to talk to the wolf but it was fine to talk to the rabbit because he was ‘cute and fluffy’. We talked about how a stranger is someone we don’t know and that we mustn’t talk to anyone we don’t know even if they look nice. We talked about what to do if a stranger approached them and mummy or daddy weren’t with them.

In phonics we have been learning about phonemes- units of sounds we hear in words. We have continued developing this, encouraging children's annunciation and mouth movements linked to specific picture cards and the associated sounds (phonemes) and built this up by listening for these at the start of words, identifying them and aurally blending.

W/C 22/01/2024

This week in R.E. we have listened to the story of ‘Jesus loves the little children’. Jesus helped the children and was a good example. We thought about how we could help others and celebrated our examples of being a great helper.

We are reading the story- ‘Whatever next’. This is about a bear who finds some objects to make a rocket and goes to the moon. The children enjoyed using our large boxes, just like Baby Bear to make their own rocket, and we found ‘space boots’ by our door and a ‘helmet’ in the role play area…..but where is the moon? We found out that the moon is in ‘space’ and we live on ‘planet’- ‘Earth’. The children created their own countdown- sequencing numerals then….BLAST OFF!!!! and we experimented with balloons and used these to make our ‘rockets’ fly! The children used their scissor skills to create personalised rockets, using lettered squares to build their name. We  also explored what happens when asteroids (rocks) crash into the moon.

 In Phonics we have been focussing on ‘g’- the children heard about Gary the gorilla who played golf but lost his ball. He had to go and look for it and talked to Gordon the guinea-pig, Gavin the gopher, Gail the goat and Gabi the goose.