We are continuing to learn about creating and continuing different patterns.  This early skills will help us develop our skills in recognising number patterns and sequences later.

Today we used different shapes to create shape patterns.  It was a bit trickier and we had to do lots of tricky problem solving.  We used a new shape that we are learning about – the hexagon.  Some of us combined different shapes and colours to make very complex patterns for our hats and gloves.

This afternoon we had a very special golden time. We turned P1S and P1D into cinemas. This was a reward for our hard work at the shows this week.  We voted for our favourite films and could choose to watch ‘Minions’ or ‘Cinderella.’  We had popcorn, fruit and milk too. It was great and just what we all needed after a very busy week!

We enjoyed our first ever school Christmas lunch. We especially liked the Christmas crackers and wearing our Santa hats! The turkey filled our tummies full of energy for a busy afternoon rehearsing.

The most important piece of homework this week is to get lots of sleep!  We will need all of our energy for our 3 performances this week.  

1.   Please keep trying to learn your song words.

2.  Ensure you have a clean gym kit in school by Tuesday at the latest.  This is for the school show.

3.  Try replying to this post with a comment telling everyone about:

• your favourite thing this term
• what you have tried really hard at
• what you would like to do/learn next term

I really enjoyed reading all of your comments at the end of last term.  I look forward to reading your new comments.  Parents:  please do not write your child’s full name in the comment.  Thanks.

We will be watching a Christmas DVD in between performances on Thursday.  Please bring in any DVDs that you think the class might like.  They must have a ‘U’ rating.  Thank you.

We have been learning about patterns.  We made different shape, body or colour patterns with our friends.  Then we made our own coloured patterned candy canes.  Some of them were very complicated!

We have started our Christmas mini topic! The children are VERY excited!

We have been writing our own letters to Santa using a range of writing and drawing materials during free-play.  It is fantastic that so many of us are choosing to write in our free-play time.  We have laminated key words, envelopes and stencils to help us develop our ideas.  We will be doing a writing lesson based on these next week.

We are hoping to locate some toy or clothes catalogues e.g. Argos, Next, Toys R us etc. for our drawing table. We will cut them up and use them to develop our skills in sequencing a letter. Please send in any spare catalogues that we could use or you could collect some next time you are shopping. Many thanks!

We enjoyed exploring the gingerbread scented playdough today too!

We also created a range of collage Christmas pictures using a variety of materials.

We have been learning about ordinal numbers e.g. 1st, 2nd etc. We are going to use this newly found knowledge to open our advent calendar each day. We sequenced (and made) a giant paper chain with ordinal numbers. Each day we will cut the part of the paper chain that matches the date of our calendar. The name contained in each cut section will be the person that opens the advent calendar that day.  The chocolates are definitely encouraging us to focus when learning about ordinal numbers! 🙂

Pandas and tigers – please revise all sounds and words.

Elephants: new sounds and new words.  These will be issued on Tuesday.  Update: I have not issued the new sounds or words to the elephants yet as we have not had adequate time to learn the sounds.  We will leave it until after the holidays.

Reading

We will try to get reading done twice this week but this is dependent on our very important Christmas rehearsals.

Songs

Please learn the songs of the words for the show.  These were sent home today.  You might wish to focus on ‘Precious baby,’ and ‘On the first Christmas night.’

We were the best class at lining up this week so we got five minutes extra at playtime.  We were all desperate to show Mrs Duncan what we could do in the playground. 🙂

In the afternoon we had a Superhero competition. We worked in teams to design a giant superhero.  Look at the wonderful spelling of ‘Wundr Woomin!’

We also visited the nursery so that the afternoon nursery friends could see our costumes.

We have had a great fun being Superheroes today. We went on a parade through the school to show them our fantastic costumes. We especially liked visiting nursery.

We also decorated gingerbread superheroes for golden time. We had them for our snacks. They were delicious!

We also used the construction to extend our superhero play.  Some children even made a band.  It started with just one lonely batman drummer but developed into a full band complete with guitarists, dancers and even screaming girls!