This week our focus story has been 'The tale of the whale.' A humpback whale takes a girl for a ride in the ocean but things turn sad when the whale swallows a load of plastic rubbish. We have been learning that lots of plastic rubbish gets into the oceans and makes sea creatures poorly or they even die.
In small world, children have been protecting the ocean by building a wall around it to keep out the rubbish. In class, we looked what happened when we stuffed plastic in a fish tank of a pretend whale and turtle - they looked like they couldn't breathe! We made posters to tell everyone to pick up rubbish when they visit the beach.

We have been reading another story about a cat who needs to go to the vet 'Mog and the V.E.T.' We have been learning how to look after pets properly so they can live a happy and healthy life. 
In Maths, we have been learning how 7 is made up of 6 and 1, 5 and 2 and 4 and 3. We've used cubes to help with this.

We have continued to read our focus story 'Six Dinner Sid' but this week we have been thinking about houses and neighbours seen as Sid lived in a row of terraced houses where neighbours didn't speak to one another.
We have been talking about the types of houses we live in: terraced, semi-detached, detached, flats and we've been painting them. 
We have been making big, beautiful patterns - some with repeating patterns. They just make us feel so happy! We've also been learning which numbers are bigger and smaller than others using numberblocks and we've started to learn how to make 7 and 8 eg. 6 and 1 or 6 and 2.

This week we have been reading 'Six Dinner Sid' - Sid is a cat who has to go to the vets with a nasty cough. We have made a Vets in provision and the children are learning lots of new vocabulary:
"Good morning, do you have an appointment?"
"Go to the waiting room and the vet will see you soon."
"I'll just check his temperature."
"I'm afraid it's infected."
"I'll put a bandage around it."
"I'm using my stethoscope to check his heartbeat."
If you have pets at home please talk about any experiences at the vet.

For the last couple of weeks our focus text has been 'The Treasure of Pirate Frank' so we've been getting ship-shape here in Bear Cubs! Look at our range of activities connected to our story.

This afternoon we have had some excellent buildings. Look at all the detail in each one - children showing patience and resilience to keep trying and readjusting.

We have started 'drawing club' - every day the teacher models a picture and the children learn how to draw it. We build the picture over the week. Our first week was a massive success and as you can see from our chinese inspired pictures the results were amazing - so much detail.

Last week we learnt about Chinese New Year. We learnt it is an important celebration for Chinese people around the world. We learnt that red is a lucky colour in their culture and we made lanterns (we remembered how to manipulate paper into a cylinder from when we made rockets). We also tried prawn crackers and fortune cookies. There were lots of delicious stir-fry in the home corner and some children mastered chop sticks!

We have been learning about the moon and answering questions such as, can you live on the moon? Is it made of cheese? We learnt about astronauts and that some live in space on the International Space Station - going to the toilet didn't look fun...

This week our story focus has been 'Whatever Next' the story of a bear who goes to the moon. This has inspired our rocket making! In DT children have been creating rockets using different shaped blocks and we have learnt how to manipulate card and paper into cylinder and cone shapes.
We watched a shuttle launch too and heard the engines ROAR!!!!!