Happy New Year! We hope you all had a fantastic break. Thank you so much for sending in some past Christmas photos. We’ve really enjoyed listening to the children’s memories.
This half-term’s topic is called Fire and Ice. January’s typical frosty weather is a stimulus for our learning. As scientists we’ll investigate ice: making and melting it. We’ll use our senses to describe how the weather has changed and the effects on our environment. Linking to geography, we’ll find out interesting facts about Antarctica and learn about animals which live there and its climate.
Through our focus on fire, we’ll learn about the emergency services. We’ll develop our drama skills by taking on the roles of doctors, paramedics and police officers. Finally, we’ll learn about the Chinese New Year and learn about Chinese traditions.
Literacy
Our focus story for the first two weeks is Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. Before reading the story, we made some predictions.
Arthur – I think they’re going to get lost.
Edie – I think they’re going on holiday.
Jasmine – The umbrella might sink.
Gurjeevan – I think they’re going to get found.
Zara – I think they’re going to fall into the water.
We’ve also been learning about Antarctica! We located England and Antarctica on a map, we watched a clip from Frozen Plant and we also used pictures to identify the differences between the climate in England and Antarctica.
Sam – Leopard seals look a bit like mermaids.
Niam – Penguins swim like dolphins.
Edie – Penguins are really good swimmers.
Harry – It’s looking for food.
Our word of the week was iceberg. We looked at some pictures of icebergs and talked about an iceberg is.
Help at home: Ask your child if they can remember what an iceberg is.
For our writing activity, we looked at a picture from the book and wrote an ‘I can see…’ sentence. We used our phoneme fingers when segmenting the words. We also made sure we checked our writing before showing it to Mrs Wood!
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem was called Let’s put on our mittens. We hope you enjoy watching it.
Maths
This week, we’ve been using our ‘fast eyes’ to subitise (seeing the quantity without counting) more complex arrangements of dots. We took a picture of the arrangements with our eyes, closed our eyes and then explained what we saw. We used spatial language to describe the arrangements. For example, ‘There are 3 dots on the top and 2 dots on the bottom.’
Help at home: Draw some linear and paired arrangements of 3, 4, 5 and 6. Ask your child to take a picture with their eyes and close them. Can they explain the arrangement with their eyes closed? They could draw it in the air.
Take a look at some of this week’s winter learning…
Reminders
- PE is every Tuesday.
- Funky Phonics Phase 3 Stay & Learn – Tuesday 16 January
9am-9.30am – phase 3 phonics lesson.
9.30am-10am – phase 3 phonics presentation
Due to limited space, only one adult per child can attend this session.
Home-Link Challenge
