Children in Need

What a mix of weather we have had this week, from the wild wind on Monday to the torrential rain on Tuesday and sunshine on Friday! We managed to enjoy some time outside creating a fantastic balancing beam all the way around our outdoor area as some of us whizzed around on the bikes!

“Watch out, we’re coming” they cried as they whizzed past on the bikes!

They problem solved as they reached the corners and realised they couldn’t quite make the gap, so they searched around for what they could use and worked together to complete their balancing beam obstacle course, great work Robins. 

In Jigsaw (PSHE) this week we continued talking about the different things that we like, recognising that everyone of us will like different things and that we can celebrate these differences. We carefully drew a picture of our favourite thing onto our jigsaw piece and have proudly displayed it in our classroom alongside our self-portraits. From Christmas, to helping others, panda’s to hugging our family we had such a lovely variety of favourite things!

Lately, we have enjoyed retelling some of our favourite well known stories and have used our story baskets to support our learning. Last week we were retelling the story of the Little Red Hen who had to do all the jobs by herself! This week we were retelling The Gingerbread Man, as we put on our masks we were transported into the story and suddenly took on the roles of the different characters “Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread man!” It was lovely to see the children using language from the story to retell it in such detail and it is safe to say that the Gingerbread man definitely didn’t get eaten in our story!

In Maths this week we have been exploring composition of numbers and have been introduced to the concept of ‘wholes’ and ‘parts’. On Monday the children began by splitting up a number block and discussing what ‘parts’ the number block had been split into, remembering that the ‘whole’ had remained the same, e.g 2 can be split into 1 + 1 (with 1 being a part of 2). You may wish to watch the Numberblock episode to support this learning at home.

 Later in the week, we dicussed parts of ourselves that make the whole of us, e.g arms are a part of us, legs are a part of us etc, we even looked at animals and compared their 'parts' to our 'parts', we all agreed that none of us have long tails or tusks!

We also related this concept to toys and puzzles that could be split into different ‘parts’ and then put back together to make a ‘whole’ and even had a go at the ‘Fix the Owl’ activity where we had to put the ‘parts’ of the Owl back together again to make a ‘whole’.

On Tuesday afternoon we began making our Diva lamps as we have been learning about the Hindu celebration Diwali - festival of lights. We read books about Diwali to help our understanding, we read all about Rama and Sita and the Demon King Ravana who had "20 arms, 10 heads and eyes as red as the brightest fire."

We made our lamps using salt dough, we carefully mixed 2 cups of flour with 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of water. First, we used a spoon to mix all the ingredients together and then used our hands to knead it into a dough, “I’m using my super muscles today Mrs Brown!” and they most certainly were! As the dough came together, it was time for us to mold it using our hands into the shape of our Diva lamp, carefully creating a crater in the middle and then squeezing the ends together to create a tear effect on either end. Even if we didn’t quite form it the first time we used our resilience and courage to keep trying and soon we had all made our very own salt dough Diva lamps, they were now ready to dry out but, just like our clay poppies, they will take a little time to dry and harden. Next week we will paint and decorate them.

Wow, wow, wow.......we are talking about reading - we think that all of you have been reading in your sleep because the progress you have all made with your reading is fantastic, you are reading all the time and we can tell! But it's not only reading, we have also started our cursive letter formation this week, and again, the Robin's children are just throwing themselves into every challenge and simply soaking up the learning. In Robin’s we love practicing segmenting and blending CVC words, look at us finding the correct sounds to put on our our sound buttons to spell out the different words! We’ve been trying really hard this week to make sure that when we are blending the sounds we are saying all the sounds that we have segmented, ensuring that we don’t drop any of them. Look at us go!

Another 'wow' moment this week (we have a feeling this will be happening every Thursday) was during our Show and Tell session, the children are absolutely loving it and so are we. This week we had some very special cuddly toys and some very special golf clubs, Rory Mcllroy even got a mention....I don't think he reads our class page but if he does, he may be interested to know that we have a superfan of his in our class!

.....and we all took part in our second House meeting lead by our House Captains.

.....and finally, as we said last week, we headed up to Chaddleworth to place our hand decorated poppies on the War Memorial and spend a little time reflecting. It was quite a moving experience. Please feel free to take a moment over the weekend to pop up to Chaddleworth with your child and let them show you and talk about their poppy. 

What a way to end our week.....and of course it was Children in Need day too. Our weeks are certainly full as we are living our lives in all their fullness.

Have a wonderful weekend and hopefully see many of you tomorrow at school for the Winter Fair.