This week in the art area, inspired by our story of the week ‘The tiger who came to tea’ we painted beautiful tiger pictures! The children used various brushstrokes and their fingertips to create the tiger’s stripes. We looked at the initial sound of Tiger and discussed other words that begin with ‘T’. There has also been a big focus on writing our name on our picture before we start painting and creating, so the children can easily identify their picture at the end of the day.  

In the water tray, the children have really enjoyed exploring gelli bath and slime. “Wow this is so sticky” AS. “It smells like sweeties” – SC. “I cant get it off my hands its so sticky and slippery” – LJ 

This week in discovery we have been exploring the atlas and learning about keys and symbols. We have been developing our decoding and observation skills as we explore different ways of representing features and landscapes to create our own maps.

The children have been displaying both fine and gross motor skills as they created models in the outdoor classroom woodwork area. Some children tried designing their models before hand.

The children have also been exploring law enforcement as they have became police officers making sure everyone including Mr McIntosh followed the rules outside.

We have begun our planting in the garden, beginning with sweetcorn. We have also taken the seeds out of the peppers to reuse and have started to use our new composter. ES helped set up the composter by collecting sticks, cardboard, leaves and leftover fruit from snack, stating “it will be smelly”.

SC, RM, CC, ES and VY helped plant the sweetcorn. They filled the plant pots up half way with soil and placed the seed in, putting more soil in then water.

RM “we get soil and it gets big big big”

SC “ you put seeds and they grow up”

CC “the seeds go in the mud”

ES “ we need water and sun”

SC and ES helped take out the seeds in the pepper cores that were going in the composter. They both knew that they would grow peppers SC” plants will grow from these”.

Inspired by the story “Dear Zoo” the children have been writing their own letters to the zoo to ask them to send us some of our favourite animals.We have been looking at the structure  of letters (to and from) and where we put the address and stamp. The children were keen to write the animals name and draw their pictures. We used technology to find out more about our chosen animals to make sure we can care from them properly when they arrive!

AC “i’ve just been to the zoo in London, i saw monkeys and lions”

RB “ Pandas eat bamboo”

In addition to this , inspired by our book of the week, the children have been creating their own shopping    lists. We talked about the purpose of lists and healthy and unhealthy choice.

RB “I’m putting on tomato soup because its my favourite”

RB “My mum used to do it on paper and i did cross when we put it in the trolly but now she does it on her phone”

MM “mummy goes shopping and puts it in the basket”

NG”i had chocolate brioche in Italy”

The children used the story of “The Disgusting Sandwich” as a stimulus for their play this week recreating some very disgusting sandwiches of their very own.

The children have been exploring length using non standard units and have been able to recognise items in the room that are longer than and shorter than a specific length. They had great fun measuring each other using the blocks and thought carefully about the length of the blocks to make a prediction.

We were very lucky to welcome the P7 digital leaders up to the family centre this week to help us explore some digital technology. Today they taught us how to use the sphero cars and helped to encourage positional language and direction through our play.

We have been working hard to develop our numbers specifically counting backwards from a given number. It has been a little tricky but the number line has helped to keep us right.

Have a lovely weekend! See you all next week!