In our literacy lessons this week, we enjoyed reading Penguin Huddle by Ross Montgomery. In the story, the penguins huddled together during an icy storm but it was so cold that they got stuck together and couldn’t break free!
Our word of the week is: huddle. Ask your child to tell you what it means. Can they use it in a sentence?
Here is some of our super writing from this week.
We also watched a short clip from an episode of BBC Frozen planet to find out more about where penguins live. We located the UK and the Antarctic on a map and found their locations on a globe.
How is the Antarctic environment different to the United Kingdom? After watching the clip, we looked at some photographs of the Antarctic and compared them to the United Kingdom to find similarities and differences.
Focus Artist: Monet
This week, children loved exploring the art of Claude Monet. We found out about his life and his amazing pictures of the natural world! On Thursday afternoon, we visited a special ‘pop-up’ Art Gallery in the Hub.
When looking at the artwork, we used sentence stems to talk about our opinions.
I like it because…
I don’t like it because…
Children’s examples of speech.
“I like it because it’s looks the same as outside, look outside the window, it’s the same.”
“I like the colours, the pink and the blue.”
“I don’t like it because it’s a bit grey and it looks cold”
After looking at the gallery, we took inspiration from some of the pictures to create our own Monet inspired artwork. We’ve also been exploring colour mixing to find out what happens when you mix two of the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) together.
Maths -composition
This week, children consolidated their understanding of the composition of 5 using the familiar rhyme ‘5 Little Ducks’ By singing the rhyme and moving the ducks during each verse, children investigated part–part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 5 can be made of 3 and 2.
There are five ducks in the pond but when one duck swims away, we can see that there are four ducks in the pond and one on the hill. 5 can be made of 4 and 1. When another duck swims away, there are 3 ducks and 2 on the hill. 5 can be made of 3 and 2.
We also used our fingers to show this, first holding up 5 fingers and then putting one down each time.
Poetry Picnic
Our poetry sessions this week have been a little different as we learnt and recited a traditional nursery rhyme.
The children used gestures and expression to recite ‘Jack and Jill’.
Phonics
Spring 1 week 3 has focused on the digraphs ur, ow, oi and the trigraph ear.
We’ve learnt the tricky words; my, by, all. Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.
Help at home:
Each week, we’d like to give you an idea of a game you could play at home to make reading even more exciting.
This week’s game is: Tricky Word Splat
- Write a selection of tricky words on paper/sticky notes.
- Place around the room/floor.
- Say a tricky word for your child to splat. You might jump on the words, splat with a masher or create your own ideas.
