What awful weather we’ve been having again all week! So it’s kind of fitting that we’ve carried on our Amazing Animals topic by looking at the hardy animals that live in mountainous terrain. On Monday we took a look at some of these animals such as bharal sheep, bald eagles and snow leopards and learned a little about how they have adapted to live in such challenging environments. We saw together how there are mountainous regions all over the world and how inhospitable they are for humans and most animals. The children have loved doing some art activities this week around these animals, including making some fantastic goat masks.
As each day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we had a group out at Tropical World, the children who remained in school took the opportunity to refine their drawing skills with some of our ever-popular drawing tutorial videos. As they carefully followed along the step-by-step instructions, Reception have managed to produce some fabulous snowy owl, cougar, and bald eagle drawings – as you can see below!
Phonics sessions this week have introduced the long vowel phonemes ‘ai’ (as in snail) ‘ee’ (as in cheese) and igh (as in knight). The children have all taken part in activities to rehearse recognising these sounds when segmenting to spell and in blending these sounds when reading words and phrases. Particularly enjoyable was a word hunt game that required the children to seek out picture cards around school and write labels for those they found.
In Maths this week, we have continued exploring the concepts of measuring and talked about how we measure time. This included a discussion around units of time and how we talk about time with words such as today, tomorrow and yesterday. One activity found the children getting to grips with how long a second really is by challenging the children to complete star-jumps, draw circles or touch their toes in ten, twenty or thirty seconds. This helps the children to get a more solid grasp of the meaning of a second or a minute by how much (or little) can be accomplished in these periods. Whilst in the other activity this week, we heard the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and used this as a way to help us learn the order of the seven days of the week.
Have a lovely weekend!
The Reception Team
DATES FOR THE DIARY:
Friday 13th February: Last day of Spring 1 Term
Monday 23rd February: First day of Spring 2 Term
Tinshill Drive
Cookridge
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS16 7DH
0113 386 2500
