Reindeer crafts

This week we have welcomed another new friend into our class. Aran has been so confident when learning the new routines and has been independently using English when answering my questions.  She has settled into the class fantastically and has particularly enjoyed singing and dancing to our Christmas songs, as we have practised for our Christmas performance. The girls in the class are very happy to welcome another girl into our class and it has been lovely to watch them playing and helping Aran to settle.

This week we have started our topic of ‘Christmas’. For the upcoming weeks leading up to Christmas we are going to focus on one element of Christmas each week, linked to the songs we are learning for our Christmas performance. This week we have been learning about reindeer and we have had lots of fun creating different reindeer crafts. The children have had a great time creating their own reindeer hats; sticking googly eyes, pom poms and pipe cleaners on to create a cute reindeer face on their hats. The children also created individual antlers for their reindeer by painting their hands with brown paint and creating handprints to stick on to their hats. The reindeer look fantastic! The children have also worked really hard to create a reindeer, using a wooden spoon. They started by painting their spoon brown. They then added googly eyes and a pom pom nose. Finally we worked with. The children drew mouth, antler and ear shapes on to felt and then had to work hard to carefully use the sewing scissors to cut out their face parts. We had to work very hard and be perseverant as cutting through felt was very tricky. It was also very fiddly to stick the parts on to the spoon and all of the children had the opportunity to learn how to use the glue gun. We had to be super careful as the glue gun could get hot. The children did a fantastic job creating reindeer and they became confident to identify different reindeer. The children even began to recognise the word reindeer and they were very focused when completing the handwriting sheets; practising writing the word reindeer correctly. Finally, the children constructed their own reindeer puzzles. The children  decided how many pieces they wanted to cut their reindeer picture into. Noa did a fantastic job of cutting the puzzle into many pieces. She was then very concentrated when looking at the reindeer picture and reconstructing the puzzle; sticking all of the pieces in the correct place to create her own reindeer picture.

In maths this week we have been learning about the concept of subtraction,  using Christmas themed worksheets.  The children have had the opportunity to learn the skill of taking away mince pies, presents, crackers and Robins. The children learnt to recognise the take away symbol and they became very confident to count the objects , using one to one correspondence. We worked a lot on number formation and focused on making sure that we write our numbers the right way around. The children then had to carefully cross out the correct number of objects to help them work out the answer to the subtraction sum. Marcel and Amrita were extremely confident and independent when crossing out the objects and writing the number that is left over. Jordi really impressed me with the ability he had to take away, without needing to cross out any objects.  He was able to work out the answers by looking at the objects and then mentally subtracting the amount shown in the sum.

In phonics this week, we have continued to focus on the letter ‘d’. We have continued to learn about the letter, using the animals we have in the farm. We created donkey pictures , using collage materials, painted dog pictures and used sponges to create duck pictures. We also had lots of opportunities to practise forming the letter ‘d’ on our animal handwriting practise sheets. I am really impressed with how much the children’s letter letter formation is improving. Finally,  at the end of the week we created a dinosaur picture by turning the letter ‘d’ into a dinosaur. The children had a great time using green materials,  googly eyes and pom poms to create very cute dinosaurs.

In reading comprehension this week Judit and Sara have been working on fictional stories. Sara has really impressed me with the progress she is making in developing her inferential understanding of what she is reading. She was especially confident to answer questions and explain her understanding of what was happening within a story about a bus crash. She showed her understanding of how the people would feel in this situation and she understood what was meant by the different phrases used to explain the fear the people felt. Judit really enjoyed reading the fictional stories and we enjoyed discussing the meaning of the Christmas tale. Judit found it difficult to undertake because of the language used in the past but it was fantastic to see the motivation Judit developed to read more of the stories she was focusing on. Next week,  we are going to search for the full stories as Judit is keen to read more of the traditional English fictional stories.

In maths this week we have focused on number, place value and number ordering. Initially, both on the girls found it difficult to order the hundred,  thousand and million numbers and to understand the value of each number. However, after focusing on place value and identifying the value of each digit within the number, the children began to understand the importance of ensuring that they wrote the numbers correctly and included the correct number of zeros within the number. Sara became very confident at identifying the value of each number and she became very confident to write the number as digits correctly when reading the five and six digit numbers as words. Judit worked very hard on adding and subtracting whole and minus numbers and she is now confident to order the numbers correctly and identify the value of each number when filling in the missing numbers on a number line.

In science this week,  we have been working on volume,  vibration  and pitch.  We have been focusing on the vocabulary of tempo,  pitch and volume and the girls had a great time exploring the BBC interactive activities to help them further understand the concepts of volume and pitch. The girls particularly enjoyed organising flutes and guitars into the correct place in the table,  depending on the pitch and volume of the sound which the instrument was creating. The girls had lots of fun testing the instrument and they became very confident to identify the different levels of pitch and volume which are present within the different sounds they hear.