Term 4 Highlights 2023

In Personal Social and Emotional Development, we have been thinking about how to look after others and our environment. We thought about how we feel when our environment is untidy and organised and decided we would become Environmental Warriors! We went on a walk around the school and found things to tidy up so our school can stay a happy and organised place!

In Physical Development we have been exploring rolling and dribbling a ball, throwing and catching to a partner and a target with balls and bean bags. We learnt that it was more accurate to throw at a target using an underarm throw and that we more proficient at catching when we got into the ready position!

In Literacy this term we have been consolidating our digraphs and beginning to read and spell words containing different sounds. We can now read many tricky words and are starting to use these to write our own simple sentences.

We have also been trying really hard to show off our writing in ID time too and have really enjoyed labelling, and writing sentences about the animals we have been learning about.

We have also celebrated book week and had some amazing costumes…. including the teachers!

In Maths we have been looking at the composition of numbers to 8! We have been using part-part whole models and tens frames to help us. We have also used counters, Unifix and Numicon to explore doubling quantities to 10. With this knowledge we have begun to odd and even numbers using the Numberblock characters to help us!

In Expressive Arts and Design we have been exploring and changing the shape of clay by twisting, rolling, pinching, stretching, bending and squashing. We then used the skills that we had learnt to roll a piece of clay into a ball, push our thumb into the centre and then pinch and smooth the sides to make our own clay thumb pot. We then waited for our pots to dry and painted them. These made fabulous presents for Mother’s Day which the children were very excited to hide for the big day!

In Understanding the World, we have been learning all about animals and plants. We have planted our own seeds and thought carefully what we need to make them grow into healthy sunflowers. We were able to name the parts of a plant and also talk about its life cycle.

We have also looked at a variety of animals from dinosaurs, where we explored the past and how animals have become extinct, as well as zoo animals, polar animals and farm animals. We were extremely lucky to have a visit from some very special visitors from The West Family Farm too, who brought not only a huge tractor for us to explore but also some very cute sheep and baby lambs for us to stroke and feed. This was an amazing experience and one I am sure our little ones will not forget.

In Religious Education we have been looking at belonging. We discussed the different groups we all belong to including our class groups, the school group, football, swimming, dancing etc. We then thought about how children are welcomed into the Christian and Muslim religion and the similarities and differences between each.