Welcome to week 4 of term 2! In week 3 we had some fantastic activities around ‘friendship’ week, we thought a lot about being a good friend and how we can be kind to others. We even spotted when our friends did something kind for us. We are very excited to show you our wonderful cat portraits and thank-you to those who sent in pictures of your own pet cat. The children were very enthusiastic to share them with the class. We have been very curious learners this week like the cat, asking lots of interesting questions.
Our amazing ‘Curious Cat’ display based on our story ‘Nothing’ by Mike Inkpen.
This week we are moving on to look at a new ELLI animal, the bee. We will be using the picture book ‘Bee and Me’ by Alison Jay to talk and discuss what is happening in the story, exploring lots of new vocabulary. The ELLI animal Bee helps us learn through team-work, can you ask your children at home when they might work as a team in school and also at home. We will be making some busy bees this week using lots of fingerprints to create a swarm of wonderful busy bees.
This week’s learning
The full plans can be found here for anyone quarantining at home:
We will continue our learning about being different and belonging by looking at what is the same and different about people in families. We will also continue our daily wellbeing activities.
Communication and Language
You can support your child’s development in this area by talking to them about what they are doing, encouraging them to listen and to take turns in conversation. When they watch something or you read them stories ask them questions to check that they are actively listening and understand what is happening in the program or story.
Play games like I Spy, silly sentences ( where all the words begin with the same sound) and robot talking t( breaking the words down into individual phonemes eg r…e…d… instead of red ) to encourage your child to listen to the phonemes in words.
This week we will be exploring different ways of moving and using vocabulary to describe what we are doing.
Our Elli animal this week is the bee who helps us to think about how we can develop our team working skills to help us to learn from each other.
We will be using the story ‘Bee and Me’ by Alison Jay. You can watch the story here
This week we will be recapping all the phonemes that we learnt so far and learning the new phonemes j, v, w
We will use these phonemes to blend (read) and segment (spell) CVC words
We will also be learning the ‘Tricky’ words we, me and be, that cannot be blended but need to be learnt by sight.
This week we will continue to read in small groups and 1:1 and continue to allocate them a home reading book from our online reading scheme. Please continue to talk to your children about their reading book, what do you think will happen in this story? Talk about the characters e.g. who do you think Tim is? How do you think Tim feels about that?
This week we are having a daily focus on numbers 6 – 10.
We will learn what the numeral looks like and how we can represent it in different ways, writing, mark making and physically with our fingers. Looking for the number in the environment and ways it is relevant to our lives. Eg house numbers, ages, we have 1 nose, etc. The children will have the opportunity to record some of these numbers in their own way – mathematical graphics.
We will continue to look for solid shapes in the environment. and use junk, bricks, lego and other construction sets, to encourage the children to build models and talk about the shapes that they have used.
Our observation challenge this week is to send a photo and observation of a model that the children have made using 3D shapes. Please ask the children to tell you about the shapes that they have used and record it in the notes using their own words.
Understanding the World
This week we will be learning some facts about bees. Finding out about how they play a vital role in our world.
This week we will be learning about the teamwork Bee and how it helps us learn through team-work. We will be making swarms of busy bees using our fingerprints. We will also be learning our Nativity songs from ‘Shine Star Shine.’