In Maths we have been learning that 1 add 1 add 1 add 1 makes 3.

We have been noticing the changes in the weather and trees outside. On Wednesday we visited the horse chestnut and oak tree to collect their seeds.

We have been reading a new story 'Farmer Duck' about a lazy farmer who stays in bed all day eating chocolates while the poor duck does all the work. This has made us think about ways we can get the farmer healthy and we have been cutting out healthy food to stick in his fridge. We have also been making areas for the farm animals in small world.

We have been at school just over a week now so take a look at what we've been doing. We have been busy learning how to play in the different areas of our classroom, learning sounds to read, teaching bunny to count objects and learning to mix brown and paint owls (because we have been reading a book called 'Owl Babies.') 
​I have to say a huge thank-you to all parents and grandparents because the children have been wonderful!

We have been reading The Girl and the Dinosaur - a girl finds skeleton bones on the beach and dreams of going on an amazing bedtime journey on the back of a dinosaur.
Children have been making dinosaur skeletons using loose parts, writing dinosaur books, discovering dinosaur bones in the sand and creating dinosaur islands in different media. We have also been thinking about writing letters from the girl, Marianne, to her mum explaining where she's gone in the night because we don't want her mum worrying...

On Thursday, we had good fun den building with the help of some older children. We had to work as a team to build a strong frame for us to be able to attach tarpaulin to it. We had to build it big enough for us all to get inside too. We used lots of fiddly physical skills to attach rods, sticks and tie wraps together. At the end there was a test to check our tent was waterproof and we would be safe and dry inside... we were successful!!!!!!

We have been reading 'The Tale of the Whale' a story about a whale who takes a boy on an adventure to see the wonderful things out to sea, but the whale gulps in the ocean water and the boy sees that it's a nasty soup of plastic waste. It's a sad tale and we have been talking about what we can do to help. We have been collecting rubbish from the school grounds and reusing it (once clean) to make art. It has been lovely to hear how children have been talking about this issue at home and have been litter picking in the park.

Over the last two weeks we have been learning about the King's coronation as it's such an important event in our history.
We have learnt who a King is and what a coronation is. We decorated the classroom, painted portraits and made our own crowns for a tea party. We also wrote letters to the King to wish him good luck in his new job.

We have been looking for signs of Spring this week - believe it or not we did find some! On our walk we found blossom, flowers, nests, bees and birds. We made collages using the things we collected.
We also painted blossom pictures and some children spent hours adding lots of detail with tissue paper and other resources - the pictures were beautiful!!!
We also learnt what seeds need to grow and we planted our own bean seed - we will watch it change and grow over the next few weeks.
We also returned the tadpoles to the pond - we decided they would be happier there in their natural home and they would grow healthier and stronger. 

We are busy learning the parts of 5. We have used Numicon and other resources to find them out.

Our core story this week has been 'Monkey Puzzle' - butterfly helps baby monkey find his mum, but butterfly keeps getting muddled up because she doesn't know monkey's mum will look like him because her baby caterpillars don't look like her! This has got us thinking about other animals that are different to their parents at birth, for example, frogs. We enjoyed visiting the school pond to see tadpoles and we collected many to have a good look at them back in class. Some of our creative work has involved printing to make caterpillars, but best of all are the books children have made independently.

We have found that many animals do look similar to their parents when they are small and we have enjoyed playing with mum and baby animals in the small world area.

We have been reading the story 'The tiger who came to tea' which has got us thinking about tigers. Some children have been making tiger masks to scare their friends. We have also been learning about an artist called Steven Brown who paints animals in multicolours so we have been painting in a similar technique. Imagine a tiger coming to tea looking like these!!!