In a sharp contrast to the weather outside – this week’s Amazing Animals topic has taken us to the hot dry desert climates that are home to such animals as meerkats, camels and scorpions. We have spent time visiting different deserts via Google Earth to see how the landscape differs from our own in the Sahara and Kalahari deserts of Africa; the Thar desert in India and Pakistan and the Australian Outback. The children have been fascinated to learn about different creatures that call these deserts home. The creative area of our classroom saw children painting beautiful pink desert sunsets; making small model camels; and painting furry meerkats using a fork instead of a paintbrush. We have even had some fabulous wild animals put together out of wood in our DT are this week, with children choosing to build elephants, tigers and giraffes.
Our phonics sessions this week have introduced the children to three digraph (two-letters that together make one sound) phonemes: ‘qu’ (queen) ‘sh’ (sheep) and ‘ch’ (chick). The children have been quick to take up these sounds and spot them in words when reading and then also start applying these sounds when spelling words in their own writing books. On fun activity tested the children’s listening skills and they were asked to chop and change spaces when they heard a work read aloud with the ‘ch’ sound at the beginning. One group even took to chanting out a dinner order of “chicken and cheesy chips with chocolate chip cheesecake”!
Maths sessions have seen us exploring the terms ‘odd’ and ‘even’ and how these are used in the number system. Children were shown the pattern of odds and even and we looked at visual ways that odd and even numbers can be represented using Numicon tiles and the Numberblocks TV characters. Children were even challenged to draw their own odd or even monsters – an “odd monster” could have 7 legs, 3 eyes, 1 horn and 5 teeth!
Despite an awful lot of wet weather this week, we have still got out and enjoyed our outdoor areas. The children loved getting to grips with a big obstacle course on Friday which challenged their abilities to climb, balance, hop and jump through, over and across all manner of obstacles.
Thank you to those who have managed to fill in the form for our upcoming trip to Tropical World. If you have not yet done so please complete the form to give us permission to take your children out of school.
https://www.cookridgeprimary.co.uk/forms/reception-trip-to-tropical-world-2/
Have a lovely weekend!
The Reception Team
Tinshill Drive
Cookridge
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS16 7DH
0113 386 2500
