This week in P2/1 we’ve been working around the weather to get the garden ready for our planting. We’ve been weeding, talking about what plants need to grow and have discussed what we might plant. We’re continuing to look after the wormery and the compost bin and are looking forward to getting some compost to help our plants.

In our greenhouses on the classroom window we’ve been excited to see that many of our mange tout seeds have now germinated! We will now plant these in the garden where (we hope) some might be ready before the end of term.

We’ve had lots of play in the classroom this week. The children turned the building blocks into our very own cinema. They made tickets and designed posters and were very excited when Mrs Ward joined us to watch a short film we had made.

In literacy this week we learned the ‘th’ sound. We linked this to stories with three in them, in particular the three little pigs, or our class favourite The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. In our writing on Thursday we re-wrote the story in our own words, first describing the big bad pig and then writing about how he tried to blow the houses down. The houses were a little different to the traditional tale, being made of bricks, concrete and metal bars and chains, and the big bad pig needed the help of a sledgehammer, a pneumatic drill and some dynamite! We then had great fun working together to make a collage of each house and then retelling the story to make into a film for our class cinema. The children negotiated the roles and supported each other to remember their lines.

We’re continuing with our problem solving each week – this time the challenge was to make the longest marble run they could with just ten pieces. The children did a brilliant job of taking turns, listening to everyone’s ideas and working together to find the best way forward.

We’ve had a lovely sunny week back.  We’ve been looking at the ‘oa’ sound this week. On Monday we made plasticine boats and then tested to see whether they would float. Only three boats floated and we looked at what they had in common – thin walls, sides to hold air in and water out, no holes and a large surface area or a big bottom! We then tried again on Tuesday when many more boats floated.

Also for the ‘oa’ sound we’re writing a three part story about a goat with a new coat. We’re making up the story together. First the goat is walking through the forest in his new coat. Then he meets a pheasant with a twisted ankle! We’ll finish the final instalment next week. Today we made plasticine coats for goats, using tools to help us.

For the next part of our RSPB Wild Challenge we’ve started planting and composting. We’ve been saving our fruit peels and collecting the vegetable peels for the kitchen to feed to the worms in our compost bins. For our planting, first we are germinating seeds in the classroom in our makeshift green houses. We’re hoping the shoots will start sprouting soon. Next week we will start planting seeds in our school garden.

In numeracy this block we’ve moved on to money – looking at the different coins and adding them up. We’ve set up a book shop in the classroom to practise addition and subtraction when we’re paying for books and getting the correct change.

Some of the children’s highlight’s this week have been:

‘Writing the goat in the coat story.’

‘Reading the story about the fox who fixes things.’

‘Watching the assembly.’

‘Making the boats.’

We’ve had a lovely day celebrating Mrs Wilson’s retirement. This morning we watched the assembly and loved the singing, the story and some famous faces!

This afternoon we had a special ice cream treat from followed by an egg hunt and some Easter crafts.

The last couple of weeks Mrs Ryalls has been teaching us the signs to an Easter song, we hope you enjoy it!

Have a lovely Easter break and we look forward to seeing you back on 19th April.

We’ve had great fun in P2/1 learning the signs for our daily routine with Mrs Ryalls.

We’ve had another busy week in P2/1. We’re spending a lot of time thinking about how to work together, share and take turns and playing games to practise these skills. We’re also continuing to think about how we’re similar and unique – this week in circle time realising how much we all have in common.

We had fun reflecting on the week at the end of today and looking at some of our photos. Here are some of the children’s highlights:

‘Making wiggly worms’ Isla

‘Playing Snakes and Ladders’ Amber

‘Playing games’ Noah

‘Making new friends’ Eva B

‘Making the alphabet’ Daniel

‘Building with the cuisenaire rods’  Finlay B

‘Making snails for the ‘ai’ sound’ Leah

‘Playing games in PE’ Charlotte

The highlight of our busy week was starting the next part of our Wild Challenge with P1 and finding out all about worms and setting up our own Wormeries. On Wednesday afternoon we learned some worm facts – like worms have five hearts and are covered in tiny hairs – and then looked at some worms through our magnifying glasses to identify the different parts of their body. We then went outside on a worm hunt, using warm water and stamping on the ground to encourage them to come to the surface as well as looking under logs and stones. We found lots of worms in our outdoor classroom! We had a chat about being respectful to the worms, handling them as little as possible and returning them to where we found them.

In P1 this week we’ve also learned two double sounds – ee and or. The action for these sounds is to pretend we have donkey ears, and one of our activities was to make our own plasticine donkeys. The children did a great job of listening and following instructions and we were all very impressed with the finished result! We also made bees for the ‘ee’ sound and designed some shorts for ‘or’.

Also this week we’re continuing our subtraction work and have also been starting to think about numbers to 100. We’ve also been enjoying our play in the classroom – one group making a chain of 250 cubes!

We’re continuing our signing with Mrs Ryalls and are learning to sign along to an Easter song – check back again next week to see how we’re doing! 

We’ve made a good start with our Wild Challenge in P1 and P2/1. We’re regularly spotting chaffinches, great tits and blackbirds among many others on our bird table and in the playground.

On Tuesday afternoon we learned about what birds and other animals need – Shelter, Water, Air and Food (SWAF). We talked about where the birds could find each of these things and then made our own fat balls and kebabs for the children to take home for the birds where they live. The children have said the birds are eating the kebabs but they’re not too sure about the fat balls!

We had great fun with the fat balls in particular – squidgy, slimy and absolutely disgusting were just some of the words used to the describe the texture!

Also this week in phonics we’ve learned the long ‘oo’ (as in pool) and short ‘oo’ (as in book). We worked together to create a plasticine zoo, sharing our ideas with our friends and listening to other’s suggestions to all make a different animal. We’ve also been doing lots of reading and practising our key words.

In numeracy we’re continuing with subtraction and linking subtraction and addition facts.

The highlight of this week has been World Book Day on Thursday. The bell rang at 10 o’clock and everyone in school stopped to read. We have been reading lots of books this week including some silly stories from The Stinky Cheese Man including Chicken Licken, the Princess and the Bowling Ball and Little Red Running Shorts. We then spent some time talking about our favourite stories.

After break we did some descriptive writing about the Stinky Cheese Man (an alternative of the Gingerbread Man story). In the afternoon we read another version of the Princess and the Pea and drew some fantastic pictures using oil pastels. We then painted them using watercolours before adding a little glitter for the crown. We learned lots about using these different materials, including how the pastels resist the paint.

At breaktime we did a book trail around the school, looking for characters from some well known picturebooks. We had lots of fun and found all the clues.

This week the children helped to write the blog. Here are some of their highlights of the week:

‘The book trail was exciting and everybody loved it!’ Isabella

‘I liked reading The Princess and the Pea’ Kyle

‘I liked reading The Stinky Cheese Man’ Leah

‘I loved subtracting’ Rowan

‘I liked painting’ Finlay B

‘I enjoyed reading A Child of Books’ Finlay D

It’s great to be back together in the classroom and see everybody again. We’ve had a lovely but tiring week.

We’ve been getting used to being back in the classroom and remembering our routines.  We’ve been talking lots about good listening skills and have been doing lots of activities to encourage us to work together.

In phonics we started the week learning the ‘sh’ sound, reading Julia Donaldson’s Sharing a Shell. We then used our plasticine to make our own friends sharing a shell.

Our second sound was ‘ar’ and a shark theme emerged. We have read lots of shark stories, learned lots of shark facts and even have a shark in our classroom! We  started an underwater shark scene and did some lovely black pen shark pictures which we labelled to help with our descriptive writing. We’ve also been doing lots of reading and word building each day.

In numeracy we’ve been focusing on subtraction, initially looking at the concept of subtraction and using concrete materials like skittles to help us. We’ve also set up a shop in the classroom to help us with our numeracy – we have to add up the cost of different items and then work out how much change we need!

We were delighted this week to have a bird table very kindly donated to us by local tradesman Mr Lee Darker. This fits in very well with our RSPB Wild Challenge.
We all gathered around the bird table this morning and Mrs Collins put a selection of treats out for the birds and explained all about the Wild Challenge. We’re very excited to get started.

We’re setting up bird hides in the classroom windows to see which birds we can spot – we’ve already seen a curious chaffinch!