08.03.24 Monkey Puzzle
08.03.24
This week our ‘Super Six’ story was ‘Monkey Puzzle’ by Julia Donaldson. Can butterfly help little monkey find his mum? Yes, finally, but only after a lot of trial and error as butterfly misunderstands monkey’s descriptions and leads him to all sorts of unsuitable animals.
Our ‘Drawing Club’ focus was the traditional tale ‘The 3 Billy Goats Gruff’. With a greedy troll guarding the bridge, will the three billy-goats ever make it across the river to the lush meadow on the other side?
This week our rainbow challenges have been:
Maths – Match the numerals to the picture
Fine motor – Use the coloured dabbers to complete a safari picture
Literacy – ‘I like ………….because ………… ’
Funky fingers – Peg the different skin patterns to match the animal from the zoo/jungle
Creative – Can you use the LEGO to build a cage big enough to transport the safari/jungle animal
Phonics – Complete x10 CVCC word cards
ICT – read as many words as you can in 90 seconds https://ictgames.com/mobilePage/helpAHedgehog/index.html
In maths this week Reception have been starting to look at numbers to 20. We have been talking about 1 ten and how many more to make different numbers. We have been looking at how larger numbers can be represented and looking at patterns when ordering them.
Nursery have been recognising the number 6 and been using counters to represent 6 on 10’s frames. We have been doing lots of counting to 10 and talked about sequencing numbers.
This weeks nursery rhyme has been ‘I’m a Little Bean’ which can be found at the following link; I'm a Little Bean (youtube.com)
In Read Write Inc phonics this week Reception have been working in 2 different groups. Mrs Whaley’s group have been reading a short story every day and have been learning some ‘red words’ which need to be recognised and not sounded out. They have been focusing on becoming more confident in identifying ‘special friends’ within words and sounding them out using the flashcards. In Miss Campbell’s group the children have been revisiting all of ‘Set 2’ sounds so they are able to recognise these with confidence and also use them within their independent writing. Handwriting and letter formation is a big focus for us for this half term moving towards our transition to year 1 so the children have been practising this daily focusing on the same letter family groups. Nursery have been doing lots of listening activities based around different jungle animals.
On Wednesday we joined St Patrick class and had a day out to Northumberland Zoo. We listened to the zoo keeper’s talk about the different animals habitats and why these are different depending on the type of animal. We also enjoyed exploring the zoo seeing lots of different animals including snow leopards, tapir’s, highland cows and meercats. The bats were great fun but they were really smelly! We also looked at lots of different farm machinery in the tractor barn and even had time to play in ‘The Barn’ soft play. It was a great educational visit and everyone enjoyed their day out.
On Thursday it was World Book Day and we all came into school dressed as a favourite book character or a specific word. We all went into the hall and had a parade to show the rest of school our costumers. During the week we designed and decorated book marks and also wrote why we love reading on hearts to hang in the trees outside school to celebrate our love of reading. We read lots of different stories from our ‘books we have read before’ basket and it was great to hear all the children chatting about the stories they enjoy with some of the Year 3 and 4 children when they came to join us in our classroom.
Next week our ‘Super Six’ book is ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ by Giles Andrae and our ‘Drawing Club’ animation is ‘Mr Benn the Zoo Keeper’.