Good morning everybody, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break in one way or another.  It is such a shame we cannot be together this term but hopefully we can still all have a lot of fun and learn a lot from the comfort of our own homes. 

 

Each day, I will suggest a few activities you could try in relation to reading and writing, maths and "other stuff"!  It is up to your family how you organise your day as these first few days are very much about seeing what does and does not work for your family.  You might want to stick to a timetable for each day if that fits in well with family time, or you might just want to give things a go as they fit in with what else is happening in the household.   It may be that you are very busy learning and playing through something you have discovered yourself so if that is working well, leave my suggestions until you're in a good place to consider them.  I am planning to send an email to everyone later today with more information about how you can help at home.

 

Yesterday, I was teaching in school which was very different from having all of you in Class 1.   I spent the day in Class 2 with Miss Newton and a mix of children from Class 1 and Class 2 and the whole school was so much quieter than usual.  And it was so cold!!!!! 

Have a good day everyone and do wrap up warm and get outside at some point if you can.

Letters and Sounds

We will spend the next 2 days recapping the sounds qu, y and z which were introduced in a very busy last week of term before we move on to brand new graphemes next week which will consist predominantly of digraphs - 2 letters which make one sound.

Remind yourselves of the sounds we have learnt so far by joining in with the Jolly Phonics songs.

 

Click on the link below to take part in a phonics lesson on the phoneme y.  I've actually put on the 2 parts of the lesson which are roughly 10 minutes each - the first lesson concentrates on recognising sounds and the second part recaps sounds and then has some blending and writing activities.  It will probably be too much to sit through in one session for many of the children so come back to the second clip some time later in the day to give the second part a go.  It will really help you to see how well your child can concentrate and how much they understand about letter recognition and blending letters for reading.  

Number Time

We are continuing to look closely at numbers up to 5, seeing if we can recognise groups of small numbers instantly and investigating how 5 can be made by 2 smaller amounts.  Before we start, have  a go at writing the numbers 2 and/or 3 using the sheets attached (I would just print off those 2 sheets for today).  Remember, all of the numbers have to start at the top where the black dot is.  Make sure you are holding your pencil with a comfortable pincer grip between your thumb and fingers and that you are holding the pencil near the nib, not halfway up.  I've attached some number rhymes in the "Helpful Resources" section of our class page to help you to form the numbers correctly.

Now let's sing 5 currant buns in a baker's shop.  Can you work out how many currant buns there will be each time one is bought?  You could hold up your 5 fingers to be the currant buns during the song and fold down a finger each time a bun is taken away - click on the link below to join in with the song.

We are continuing  to investigate how the number 5 can be made up of two different numbers.  Today you can watch different animals play a hoop and beanbag game and then you can have a go at playing the beanbag game yourself.  You could play it with your family or could even play it with some of your teddies and throw all their beanbags for them and keep their scores.  Click on the link below to watch a short video which will show and tell you what to do.  We are watching session 3.

Winter

Last term we learnt about the season of Autumn and how the weather began to get colder and leaves began to change colour and fall from trees.  If you look at trees now, you will notice that many of the trees are bare and don't have their leaves any more.  We are now in a different part of the year which we call Winter.  What do you know about Winter already?  Tell your adult everything you know about Winter.  Then watch the powerpoint below to see what other things you can find out about the season of Winter. 

To activate the powerpoint presentation on a computer/laptop, make sure you press the 'run slide show' at the bottom right hand corner of the screen as shown below.  Ipads just go straight into the presentation.

Have a look at this clip from Abney and Teal about a very cold day.  What things can you see in the clip that tell you it is Winter?

One of the things that we notice about Winter is how much colder it starts to get.  It has been quite chilly over the last few days and you might have noticed either frost or ice on the ground in the mornings, or even some snow falling in amongst some rain a few days ago.  So the cold winter weather affects what clothes we wear during the day.  If we are just staying indoors for the entire day then we would probably choose different clothes to wear than if we were spending a lot of time outside during the day.  You all bring a coat with you when you come to school now and many of them are very thick because they keep you warmer.  Also, there are quite a few of you who bring a hat or gloves too.   Have a look at what clothes you and your family are wearing at the moment.  Are you wearing clothes that would keep you nice and warm if you were to go outside, such as a jumper, trousers or warm socks or tights, or maybe a vest, t-shirt and a sweatshirt?  Or are you not planning on going out today and so maybe have thinner clothes on such as shirts/long sleeved tops or t-shirts because you are in a warm house?  

Have a go at choosing winter clothes to dress up the little boy or girl attached below.  Remember, you want to choose things that will really keep them nice and warm if they went outside in cold weather.  You might want them to wear more than one thing on the top half of their bodies.  Remember when cutting out to keep your thumb at the top - keep an eye out adults as sometimes this is hard for them to do.  Don't give up with the cutting everyone, we can all do it if we set our mind to it, and the more we practise, the better we will get.  Once you've cut out the clothes, stick them on your little boy or girl.

As it is meant to be another cold night again tonight, we could see if we could make some ice.  Why not try leaving some water outside in a container overnight and see if it has frozen at all in the morning.  You could even have a go at making some ice pictures or pendants using leaves or flowers in shallow trays/lids of water - see the explanation below and pictures from previous freezing adventures in Class 1.

 

2: Make ice pendants

A magical activity for a truly freezing night! Pour water into shallow vessels such as plastic food boxes, egg poachers, saucers, ice-cube trays and sweet-tin lids. Collect lots of natural materials – leaves, tiny cones, pebbles, flower petals, feathers, shells and so on. Place one or two in each vessel of water – or arrange to make an attractive picture in one of the larger lids. Loop a short length of string and place the ends into the water. Leave outdoors to freeze overnight – the string will freeze into the water so that your beautiful pendant can be hung from a tree the next morning. Add sparkle or colour with glitter, liquid paint or food colouring.