All around the world 

We hope you had a fantastic half term holiday and enjoyed spending time with your families. 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. 

Our Beautiful Butterflies

Last term, we took good care of our caterpillars in our classroom. We really enjoyed watching them chrysalis and create cocoons. The caterpillars hatched into beautiful butterflies this term. 

We went outside into the outdoor area and released them into our garden. 

They were very happy fluttering around and landing on the pretty flowers in our garden beds.

Handa's Surprise 

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. 

Sharing 

In Maths, the children have moved onto sharing. 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. 

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.

Djembe Drumming

This week we have been learning to play the Djembe Drums. Djembe Drumming originates from the continent Africa, which we have been learning about over the last couple of weeks.

The children have been working hard to create their own drumming sequence, using the different parts of their hands.

Our RE Learning

This term we are exploring the big question: Why is the word ‘God’ so important to Christians?

The children have been exploring the stories of Tom and Tessa. Tom and Tessa learn about God from the Bible at church and at home. No one has ever seen God, but Christians believe he is behind all there is in the world; he is the Creator and giver of life. Christians believe his ways and thoughts are infinitely greater than ours.

This week we have talked about the Creation story, and that we know that Christians believe that God made the world.

During our carpet time discussions, we talked about how wonderful our world is and how we should take care of it.