We hope you had a fantastic half term holiday and enjoyed spending time with your families, celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. If you have any photos that you would like to share please upload these to your child's learning journal. 

This term our topic is `All around the world` and the children will be learning about different countries and cultures and discussing similarities and differences. We will be starting our learning this week by exploring the continent of Africa and reading Handa's Surprise and the sequel Handa's Hen. Throughout the term, the children will continue to read stories in their phonics lessons by applying their sounds and writing sentences using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. In our Maths learning, our focus will continue to be on numbers to 20 but also exploring doubles, halves and sharing. 

PE lessons will take place every Wednesday afternoon so please can all children have the correct PE kit in school. This term the children will be practising their athletic skills and taking part in team games. This will prepare the children for Sports day but also continue to support them with working collaboratively with others. 

With the weather improving, please can I ask children come into school with plenty of water and a sun hat to protect them when playing outside.

Handa's Surprise and Handa's Hen 

The children have enjoyed learning about the continent Africa and comparing the environment, animals, weather and culture to the UK. They were fascinated to explore the different environments across Africa such as grasslands, mountains and deserts but also the animals that they could come across. During the story of Handa's Surprise, the children had the opportunity to taste different fruits. Some of the fruit they had eaten before but others they were not too sure about at first, such as the sweet smelling guava. On Thursday, Stephen from Asda Champions came to provide a sensory experience for the children to taste different fruits and generate different vocabulary. They children enjoyed this task and could articulate which fruit they liked and which they did not. A lot of the children did not enjoy the sour passion fruit. 

Tinga Tinga Artwork

In their Art learning, the children have been exploring the artist Edward TingaTinga and have created their own representations of this style of art. The children loved exploring the different animals that he has painted and identifying the different patterns and bright colours he has used. 

Sharing, grouping and doubling

In Maths, the children have moved onto sharing, grouping and doubling. The children demonstrated a good understanding of sharing amounts equally into groups. They quickly spotted that some amounts cannot be shared equally into groups even though they shared amounts out one to one. We then looked at how one group can be split in different ways for example 5 can be split into 4 and 1, 3 and 2, 2 and 2 and 1 and 4 1's. After sharing and grouping we looked at how a number can be doubled. The children explored this using butterfly painting and ladybirds.

Butterfly release

We have been growing butterflies in the classroom and the time came to release them. we gathered outside sang our caterpillar song and watched as they flew away. We think they may come back and visit.

Gymnastic Trip 

The children showed resilience and determination during their visit to TJ gymnastics. They all had the opportunity to develop and practice their balancing, rolling and jumping skills. Throughout the morning, the children listening carefully but also followed the rules in place to keep them safe.