Funny Bones

This week we have welcomed a new friend into our class. Amrita has joined us and has settled into our class routines fantastically! She has had a great time exploring the farm and learning about the different things we need to do to care for the animals- feeding them, collecting eggs, brushing the donkeys and she is now becoming more confident to enter the chicken pen and collect the eggs with her friends. Amrita has also enjoyed collecting the peppers, aubergines and lemons from the garden and learning about the different ways in which we pick the vegetables.

This week we focused on the topic of ‘Halloween’. We listened to lots of songs about spiders and skeletons but our favourite one to dance and sing along to was ‘them dancing bones’. We focused on the story of ‘funny bones’ and did lots of skeleton activities. We had a great time decorating our classroom with skeleton masks, cotton wool skeletons and spooky spiders. We carefully painted the spiders and then counted out the legs to make sure that each spider had eight legs. We also began to learn the names of the bones in our skeleton by cutting up the bones and then assembling them to create a large skeleton. Our classroom looks very scary now!

As part of our topic we also visited the library dressed as scary witches and vampires. We enjoyed spending time exploring the ‘English corner’. Whilst there we found lots of Halloween books and used our library cards to take out books for us to read in our classroom. The children behaved extremely well in the library and recognised the importance of being quiet and calm when reading the books and exploring the toys in the infant’s area. After the library, we went to the park and had a special treat. Luke’s mum had made some fantastic Halloween cakes with pumpkins and witches hats. Everyone enjoyed eating the cakes at the park- they tasted delicious!

In phonics this week, Sergi, Kai, Marcel and Luke have been revising the first six sounds we have learnt- ‘s,a,t,p,i,n’. We have been using lots of objects and organising them based on the initial sounds that they start with. We have had fun remembering the actions for each sound and have had lots of opportunities to practise the formation of each of the letters. Sergi has been especially confident when forming the letters and he is now beginning to form them correctly and without any help!

Jordi and Amrita have been learning lots of new sounds this week, using the new sound- picture cards. They have had lots of fun creating different pictures which represent the shape and sound of the letters they are learning. They are both very motivated by their new sticker chart and have been keen to stick smiley faces on each of the letter sounds they now know. Jordi and Amrita have created a fantastic display of sound pictures in our phonics area.  

In maths, we have been consolidating our understanding of lots of mathematical concepts, through our Halloween topic. Sergi, Kai and Luke have been adding the funny bones characters together and have practised identifying and writing the number they need for their answer. Jordi, Amrita and Marcel have been creating skeleton puzzles by identifying and finding the two numbers they need to make the different number bonds to 10. This was quite tricky but all of the children were confident to use their fingers to work out how many more they needed to add to make a total. Jordi was particularly confident with this and could automatically identify the number bonds without the use of his fingers.  

In reading comprehension, Sara has been focusing on Halloween themed comprehensions. She explored various Halloween texts, which allowed her to practise lots of comprehension skills. When reading about werewolves, Sara had to identify the different homophones that were present in the text. She found this quite tricky but enjoyed learning about how words which sound the same can have very different meanings, dependent on how they are spelt. We will keep focusing on homophones within our grammar lessons. Sara has also had the opportunity to read Halloween stories, answer questions about the text and then try to continue the story, using focus Halloween words. She really enjoyed this and had some very imaginative ideas when creating the end of the story. Finally, Sara has completed a Halloween dictionary activity. She needed to read the Halloween story and then link focus words from the text to their correct meanings.    

This week, Judit has been focusing on letter writing. She was very motivated to read the letters in her comprehension book. She was especially moved by a letter written by the heroic Captain Robert Falcon Scott who wrote a letter to his wife whilst completing an exploration mission in Antartica. Judit was keen to find out what had happened to him on his mission and was very motivated to find pictures of him and find out more information about the experiences which he had. Judit also had the opportunity to write her own letter. She focused on both formal and informal letter writing and had to work hard to read the guidance to help her to include the correct information within the letter, depending on the subject for which she was sending it.  Judit particularly enjoyed writing a Halloween invitation to her friend in Scotland and she worked hard to include all of the necessary features of an invitation. Judit found it particularly hard to write a complaint letter and was far too polite to Goldilocks when writing to complain to her about breaking in to the three bears’ house. We will keep working on the concept of bossy words and will focus on the importance of using exclamation marks to make a point more dramatic when writing to another person.

In maths this week, Sara has been working on multiplication, particularly the concept of times tables. She has been working through times tables quizzes, timing herself to check her automatic knowledge of the different times tables. She is getting much faster but is finding the 6,7 and 12 quite difficult when working at speed. We will continue to work on these times tables next week when continuing to make times tables practise posters to display on her wall. Sara has also been learning how to use times tables squares as a way to work out the answers to different times tables. She has found the concept of the grids quite difficult to understand. We will continue to work on these next week, as Sara enjoyed trying to complete the grids and is keen to learn how to do this correctly.

This week, Judit has been working on the concept of square numbers. She is extremely confident to work out the square numbers and is now able to use her knowledge of square numbers to work out the area of a square. Judit now understands how to find the area of both squares and rectangles and can clearly explain how she adds the measurements of the sides to work out the answer. Judit has also become confident to calculate the perimeter of different shapes. She now knows that she needs to multiply the numbers given to work out the perimeter of the shape. However, she found it difficult to multiply two 2 digit numbers and this made it hard for her to correctly work out the answers. We will focus on the concept of multiplication next week, as this will allow her to transfer her multiplication knowledge when working on perimeter in the future.