This week the children have continued their topic of growing and life cycles. On Monday the children talked about their weekend and then they were challenged to write their weekend news during independent learning time. Before lunch the children engaged in a maths activity to support and develop their mathematical understanding, some of the activities included: recognising numbers 11-20; finding one less than a group of 5 and then 10 objects; and using quantities to subtract two single-digit numbers and count back to find the answer. This week’s handwriting focused on correctly forming the letters q, s, f and e. The children have been learning a tricky word song and are starting to read/ write them. Monday’s adult-led activity involved the children making amounts using 1p and 2p coins to buy items, some children were given a group of coins and asked to calculate how much money was in the piggy bank.
On Tuesday the children learnt about the frog life cycle and were challenged to complete a frog life cycle cut and stick activity. During the afternoon the children talked about how their caterpillars have changed since they arrived last Friday. They ended the day by looking at the class ‘knock, knock book’ and children were chosen to talk about their family or something they like to do at home. During this week’s PE the children participated in a cosmic kids yoga session based on the story of The Hungry Caterpillar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhWDiQRrC1Y) Tuesday’s adult-led activity involved some children unscrambling and writing a sentence and some children using their phonic knowledge to write CVC words to label a picture.
On Wednesday the children received a surprise of some real tadpoles and frogspawn which a child had collected during the Easter holidays. The children were shown how to make a frog using different media and materials, which they were then challenged to make during their independent leanring. During this week’s PSHE the children discussed the jobs which the adults in their families do (e.g hoovering, cooking, washing the dishes) it was excellent to see the children role-playing these experiences in the home corner. Wednesday’s adult-led activities focused on doubling ladybirds, finding one more or one less than a number up to 6, or doubling and halving groups of objects.
On Thursday the children learnt about the lifecycle of a chicken and were then encouraged to complete the chick lifecycle learning challenge where they had to write simple sentences about what happens first, next, then and last. Before lunch the children worked in their key groups to complete a maths activity about doubling, halving or sharing. At the end of the day the children talked about what they had been learning during their child-initiated activity time. During this week’s ICT the children played a caterpillar counting game on the ICT games website (www.ictgames.co.uk) where they had to order the numbered leaves and then click on the caterpillar when they had finished. If they were right the caterpillar turned into a butterfly.
On Friday the children talked about what plants need to grow. They set up a cress investigation by putting seeds in different conditions (in the dark no water/ in the dark with water/ in the light no water/ in the light with water) and the children made predictions about what they thought would happen to the seeds. During Friday’s adult-led activity the children made their own cress head and they are excited to see how much their cress will have grown during the weekend. I wonder who’s cress head will grow the tallest hair? The children were given the learning challenge of doubling ladybirds, where they had to count how many spots were on one side of the ladybird and then they had to add the same amount of spots to the other side of the ladybird, lastly the children were asked to write the addition number sentence to show their double. At the end of the day the children attended their first celebration assembly with the rest of the school.
In addition to this the children have been accessing a variety of activities in the different areas of learning. Some of these activities included: Frog thought bubble writing frames; pegs and peg boards to make patterns; hungry caterpillar number sequencing; hungry caterpillar cut and stick ordering 11-20; Making blossom on twigs using tissue paper or by finger printing on a tree outline; using magnifying glasses to look at spring flowers; and making folding butterflies using paint. It has been fantastic to see the children’s enthusiasm to complete the various learning challenges this week.
