Year 1 enjoyed a treat today when Mrs Wojcik brought in a spinach cake she had made. Most of us had never had a green cake before and were surprised by how delicious it was!
Thank you Mrs Wojcik, weâd love it if you could share the recipe with us.
This week we are enjoying music from Ella Fitzgerald.
This week Nursery have become Scientists by observing the changes that happen in animals as part of our first case study, through our key text The Very Hungry Caterpillar for a second week. The children have closely examined the pictures within our story to work out what the physical changes in the caterpillar are. An egg, a tiny caterpillar, a cocoon or chrysalis and then a butterfly. Some of the words used to describe the above were as follows;
Egg – âCircleâ, âTinyâ, âBubbleâ, âWhiteâ, âSpotâ and âDotâ.
Caterpillar – âTinyâ, âBig, fat caterpillarâ, âWrigglyâ, âGreenâ and âBumpyâ.
Cocoon – âLike a sleeping bagâ, âshellâ, âlike a stickâ, âWoodâ and âeggâ.
Butterfly – âRainbowâ, âBeautifulâ, âWingsâ and âFlappyâ.
Nursery read another text which focused more on the life cycle and explained how the changes take place called Little Caterpillar by Autumn Publishing. I then modelled to the children how to draw a life cycle to help embed the cycle in their minds and demonstrate it was a loop (cycle) that started over and over again.
In our provision the children had the opportunity to explore and examine toys representing the life cycle.
We consolidated the events that helped make the life cycle process possible by playing the fruit game. The caterpillar ate lots of fruit to be able to make him grow. The children had to listen and run to a fruit called out by their grown up as part of activating our brains, it was lots of fun!
The children also revisited their previous learning from the week before when they painted beautiful pictures of the fruit. They each looked closely at their pictures and chose at least one piece of fruit and (with support and modelling) began to write the first letter sound for that item using their phonetic knowledge. Eg; Banana – b, Apple – a or Strawberry – s.
In provision the children independently used collage to create beautiful pictures of fruit and the caterpillar at various stages. They also created beautiful butterflies in the play dough and on the painting easel.
As the week progressed the children each worked with an adult and explained the process of the butterfly life cycle using the toys as physical props to help organise and consolidate their understanding of the life cycle. They were each recorded and were able to recall key vocabulary and other significant events within the story. Such beautiful work!
This week in Reception we have continued to be storytellers using âThe Very Hungry Caterpillarâ story to inspire our learning. We have continued to put actions to the story so that we can act it out from beginning to end. We are getting very good at remembering all of the key vocabulary and using our words in the correct order.
We have also enjoyed taking part in lots of activities in our provision areas. We have used finger paints to create our own caterpillars, making sure we added the correct amount of parts to the body. We have been scientists by finding out about life cycles and have also used our phonic knowledge to write simple sentences about The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Class 3 have been on a fact finding mission this afternoon, finding and reading interesting facts about carrots to add to our anchor charts. It was lovely to see how confidently they applied their phonics skills to the challenge.
They also learnt a new skill and got to grips with a new piece of equipment whilst peeling the carrots.
In art we looked carefully at the detail on the carrots when completing our line drawings. We critiqued our first drafts thinking about how we could improve them.
Weâre looking forward to completing our carrotfact files
Crew Chadwick and Crew Inman have been impressing us with their drawing skills in crew! We have been looking carefully at the characters from the story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ written by Eric Carle. Take a look at some of our beautiful work…
This week in P.E we have enjoyed practicing our zoo animal yoga poses. We thought about our breathing and took slow deep breaths when holding our poses. We are getting better at holding our balance…
This week it is composer – John Williams!
We started our morning with a rose and a thorn check in followed by a talk about why World Religion Day is important. We decided to test our knowledge with a game of dominoes made up with lots of religious symbols. Our check out was what skills we needed to be successful this morning at our game.
It was a lovely crew start to our week,
Mrs Parsons xx
This week Nursery have been storytellers, learning to retell the classic story of âThe Very Hungry Caterpillarâ by Eric Carle. The children became active learners by using physical literacy actions to embed key vocabulary and events from the story. They used the prompts to help them recall and retell the story.
The children have examined the key character, the Very Hungry Caterpillar and have looked at how he develops and changes throughout the story. The children have used models to paint and sculpt their own caterpillars. They have used loose parts to represent the variations of the character as both a caterpillar and a butterfly.
During their Tranquil Tuesday Crew, Nursery sequenced the story events and talked about the kinds and amounts of food the caterpillar was eating. They thought about the emotions the caterpillar experienced in the story looking a picture cues and their own experiences. They modelled these faces to each other.
After gaining a good understanding of the key character the children followed an online tutorial to help them draw the Very Hungry Caterpillar.
In provision we have also painted fruits from the story using toy fruits as inspiration.
During our Maths inputs the children have been learning to count using âcareful countingâ. This is touching and using number names for each object they are counting. The children became problem solvers as they began to investigate how they could find out; âHow many of each fruit were in a basket?â
First it was demonstrated to the children how to carefully count using touch and number names for each piece of fruit and then they modelled to their peers, leading their own learning.
In our Thoughtful Thursday Crew the children thought about the cocoon that the caterpillar wrapped himself in and we likened it to being inside a sleeping bag or wrapping ourselves in our coats. The children practised the life skill of zipping their own coats using their fine motor skills.
Finally the children finished the week by thinking about the Very Hungry Caterpillar at the beginning of the story and comparing him to the end of the story. They used some of the physical literacy prompts to help them recall the stages of the caterpillar and key sentences from the text. They drew the caterpillar at the start of the story as either an âegg on a leafâ or a âTeeny, tiny caterpillarâ and then as he appeared at the end of the story as âA big, fat caterpillarâ or a âBeautiful, colourful butterflyâ as they began to further understand the changes which the caterpillar goes through in preparation for when they become Scientists next week.
