Handa's Surprise

Hello Everyone,

We have read Handa's Surprise this week and have been learning about different cultures.  Handa lives in Africa and we noticed lots of differences between where Handa lives and where we live.  The children had summer clothes on in the story because the weather was hot and dry.  Their houses looked very different from ours.  The little girl in the story takes lots of different fruits to her friend as a gift.  On the way lots of different animals sneak up and steal Handa's fruit.  The animals were very different from the animals that live in this country - there was an ostrich, a zebra, an elephant, a giraffe, an antelope, a monkey and a parrot.

Ebony, Courtney and Taloola act out Handa's Surprise

We have also looked at the different fruits she carried to her friends.  Some of the fruits were very unusual - there was a passion fruit and a pineapple, a mango and a guava, a banana and an orange.  There was also an avocado pear - Abigail knew the names of all the fruits !  On Monday we did some observational paintings of the different fruits, and on Tuesday we made our own fruit baskets. On Thursday Mrs Young cut open a passion fruit for us to see what was inside - we didn't like the look of it !

Jona looks carefully at the fruit as she is painting

 

 

Abigail paints carefully

We also made our own fruit salads with Miss Cannell.  We carefully used the knives to cut up all the fruit and then we chose which fruit we would like in our fruit salad.  When we had finished - we tasted our fruit salad and discussed which fruit we preferred.

Making our fruit salads

 

Oniaka has told us all about her holiday to Africa.  She told us about how hot it was and that her daddy comes from Africa from a country called Kenya.  She told us that she had to go on a plane to get to Africa and we found Africa and Kenya on the globe.  We also used an atlas to find the different countries.

We have been busy doing lots of number problems this week too - on Monday Alfie (our dog) had his birthday party and we worked out how many sandwiches and biscuits we needed.  We were lucky that he had some biscuits left and we could all have one !

On Tuesday we did some number problems with our basket of fruit and Mrs Young was really impressed that some of us were working out the answer to the problems by counting on in our heads.  We have also been making repeating patterns with lots of different things.  Abigail made a necklace with 5 repeating colours and so did Indianna - wow! We even made African necklaces with repeating patterns with Miss Ball.

 

 

 

What fantastic African necklaces !

 

This week Eimantas is taking home Diggory because he has made such fantastic progress with his phonics - well done Eimantas ! 

 

Well that's all for this week.

 

 

Grasshopper Class

 

 

Birthdays

Hello everyone,

This week we have been thinking about growing up and birthdays.  On Monday we had a visit from baby Archie who is 18 months old.  He is Mrs Young's grandson and we asked lots of questions about what he could do.  He could do much more than we thought he could: he could walk and dance, he could join in with singing, he tried to count (but he missed lots of numbers out) and he was trying to say lots of words. 

Archie shows us his dancing

 

Archie played outside with us

 

Can you read this one please Oniaka?

 

He liked it in Grasshopper Class so much that when he had visited all the other classes he came back to our class and had fun playing outside with the children.  Oniaka was very good at reading him stories !

We have been talking all week about parties that we have been to.  We were lucky that lots of children have just been to Abigail's birthday party so we had lots to talk about.  Next Monday it is Alfie's birthday.  Alfie is our class dog and he will be 5.  We have been busy all week getting ready for his party celebrations.  We have written invitations, made party hats, written lists of party food and made birthday cards.  We have also designed our own party T shirts - some were so good Mrs Young wanted to buy them for the next disco !

 

Jessica fills the party bags trying to make sure all the bags had the same amount

 

Chloe played a game of musical statues in the party role play area

 

 

Jona makes a fabulous birthday bear - look at that good cutting!

 

Mrs Young is really pleased that so many children are now learning their tricky words.  Taloola has made super progress and could read every single tricky word in Phase 3 !  Well done Taloola.  If you learn all your tricky words and phase 3 sounds it makes reading and writing so much easier.  Sophie has been working hard on her sounds and her reading is amazing now.  Lennon has been working on his phase 3 sounds too and he can now write a sentence all on his own!

In maths we have been trying to work out 1 more and 1 less to 20 in our heads.  We need to be able to answer really quickly so keep practising.  We have also been doing lots of problem solving around the theme of parties and working out how many of each thing we will need.  We have found that counting in 5's and 2's is a really good idea to speed things up.  We have also been making sure we know all the days of the week and we have talked about what month our birthday is in.

Sharing the beans out

This week we opened our mud kitchen (I'm sure you might have noticed)!  We have had great fun pretending to make mud birthday cakes and chocolates in there.

Custard anyone?

 

 

One lump or two?

On Thursday Miss Ball, Mrs Ball's daughter comes in to help us with lots of things.  She helped us to make a gigantic collaged birthday cake to put on our wall this week.  It's going to look great so thank you Miss Ball.

We worked together on this huge cake

On Friday in PE we all had a go on the gym equipment we are borrowing - it was really good fun.  Have a look at our great photos.  Oniaka was brilliant on the treadmill !

                                                                   Jona on the stepper

Mackenzie on the skiing machine

 

Daniel on the exercise bike

 

Austeja on the rowing machine

 

Ebony on the treadmill

 

Phew this is hard work !

Sophie will be taking Diggory home this week because she has made such good progress with her reading.  Have fun Sophie!

See you next week.

Grasshopper Class

Haven't we grown !

Hello Everyone,

This week we have been thinking about how much we have grown since we were babies.  We have looked at our baby photos and compared how we were then and what we can do now.  We had great fun looking at all the photos - Mrs Young's knees were very fat when she was a toddler! Miss Cannell had black hair and Mrs Ball had fair hair! 

Reece and Jessica May bath the baby

We have got a great display up in the classroom with copies of our baby photos - why not have a look next time you are in class?  We have read lots of non fiction books about how we grow and about our bodies.  We've talked about our bones and done lots of good labelling.  On Monday we made self portraits of ourselves with pencil crayons and they look fabulous.

Playing babies was fun !

 

We have made some great people aswell by putting the body together - we had to work with our friends because it was quite a tricky job !

On Monday we had a visit from baby James.  He is 4 months old and he cried a lot.  I think he was a bit tired as he had been around all the other classes first.  He couldn't really do anything on his own because he was too little.  On Thursday we had a visit from baby Ted.  He is 9 months old and can do much more than baby James.  He is much bigger too !  We thought up lots of good questions to ask during the visit. Ted could crawl really fast and he could feed himself with his bottle.  He was even trying to walk.

A visit from baby James who is 4 months old

 

Baby Ted shows us how he can sit up

 

Baby Ted is learning to walk

 

We have been doing lots of measuring in maths this week.  We have compared length, width and height and measured things using cubes and tape measures.  We have tried hard to use the right words when we are describing things eg tall, short, wide, narrow and long.  We have also been counting in 2's, 5's and 10's and are getting quite good at it now.

Jordan could talk about which of his lines was shortest and longest

We have made a new mud kitchen outside in our playground and we are looking forward to making the most of this lovely weather by getting outside and making some mud pies.  We will be doing lots of measuring and writing as we play and it will be really good for developing our motor control and imaginations.  So please don't get too cross if we come home a little mucky!

Chocolate custard anyone?

 

One lump or two?

 

This week Oniaka will be taking Diggory home for the weekend because she has been trying hard to listen and join in on the carpet.  Well done Oniaka - have fun with Diggory !

Well that's all for now.

Grasshopper Class

A busy week !

Hello Everyone,

What a busy week we have had this week.  We are still learning about plants and growing and this week we have planted a bean altogether.  We are going to watch it grow and write a bean diary about what happens each week.  Hopefully we will have some beans from it in the summer?  We have been working together to make garden pictures and our own flowers to decorate the classroom.

Lexi gets some soil for our bean to grow in

 

 

 

Courtney gives our bean some water

 

Working together to make a flower

All this week it is Careers Week so we are thinking about what job we would like to do when we get older.  On Monday some firefighters came into our assembly to talk about their job fighting fires.  It was really interesting and we even got to go in their fire engine and hear the sirens !  When you grow up you might like to be a firefighter?

 

The firefighter tells us all about the equipment on the engine

 

 

Taloola and Oniaka have a sit in the fire engine

On Tuesday some actors came to school and we watched a play called The Little Princess.  It was really good fun and we were a very good audience!  We all talked about our favourite part of the play afterwards.  When you grow up you might like to be an actor?

 

Watching The Little Princess Show

Also on Tuesday it was Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day.  We learnt about why we celebrate Pancake Day and about the Christian custom of Lent where some people decide to give something up that they really like until Easter.  We had the most fantastic pancake races too !  When you grow up you might like to be a chef?

 

Abigail and Jona race each other

 

On Thursday it was World Book Day and we read lots of books by Mrs Young's favourite author - Nick Sharratt.  He likes to write funny rhyming books and we really enjoyed reading lots of stories.  We found out all about Nick Sharratt from his website - if you click on this link you could have a look at the website at home?

Nick Sharratt website

 

We listened to lots of Nick Sharrat's stories - they are really funny !

We made our own number books just like 'One to Ten and Back Again' and we made our own pictures of 'The Foggy Foggy Forest'.  Lennon wrote his own new page for the book !  We even had a go at decorating our own octopus to go with the story Octopus Socktopus and  made our own pants !  Perhaps when you grow up you would like to be an author or illustrator like Nick Sharratt?

 

 

Daniel's Socktopus

 

 

 

Jordan's fantastic shiny pants !

 

On Friday we all dressed up as what we want to be when we grow up - look at these photos.  Can you guess what each child wants to be?

Indianna wants to be a ballerina rock star !

 

 

Sophie wants to be a horse rider

 

 

Lennon wants to be a police officer

 

 

Abigail wants to be a doctor

 

 

Jamie-Lea is taking Diggory home this week because she has been so kind and thoughtful to her friends.  Remember to bring him back on Monday !  Have fun !

Well that's all for now.  See you next week.

 

Grasshopper Class