6th October 2023

October has arrived and with it some lovely weather - it's great isn't it. 

As mentioned previously, every morning we check the weather forecast using the BBC weather page. First, we discuss the countries that make up the United Kingdom, we ask "who can tell me what this is a map of ?" we then locate Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Next, we type Great Shefford into the search bar, (we are telling you this in case you want to try this at home with your child using the same language and vocabulary), the children then describe the weather, talking about sun/ rain, hot / cold / windy, they even attempt to read the temperature using the vocabulary of degrees e.g it's going to be 22° tomorrow (that really is what it is predicted for tomorrow!!!!).

As we entered October, the children started the month by meeting a very special new addition to our school, he was extremely well behaved, listened intently as we learnt about him in Worship and even came to visit us in Robins! Of course this new member of our school is Rascal who we are delighted to welcome. The children were all super excited when he explored our outdoor area with such enthusiasm and couldn’t believe it when he joined us for our photo in the Newbury Weekly News!

This week we have loved exploring and developing our mark making skills. We have been mark making on whiteboards, we have been mark making by drawing around stencils developing our control over our chosen writing tool, we have been mark making in our tuff trays outside using the chalk pens to draw roadmaps (I always feel a bit daunted when tackling the roundabouts in Swindon however having seen the roadmaps the Robins have created Swindon is a breeze!!!), we have even begun to mark make accurately when copy writing words, using all our phonic knowledge to see it say it and write it! Just take a look at all of this in action below. 

 

 

This week in Maths the children were introduced to the numberness of 2, 3 and 4 but what do we mean by the numberness of a number, for example - what is 2? what is 3? what is 4....well 4 can be made up of 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, or 1 + 2 + 1 or 3 + 1 or 4 + 0 etc. 

On Monday, they enjoyed going on a hunt to help find 2 of everything (number 2 was very upset as I had only found 1 and we all know that 1 and another 1 makes 2!). Then on Tuesday we moved onto number 3 and enjoyed helping the 3 bears count 3 objects, they needed 3 bowls, 3 spoons, 3 cups, can you remember what else they needed? On Wednesday and Thursday we explored 4 , representing the number using our fingers, we tried using all different combinations of fingers, some were easier than others!

During cooking this week, we all went bananas and made vegan banana muffins! We needed all our muscles to mash, stir and fold the mixture together and couldn’t believe our eyes when the muffins came out of the oven and had risen so high, some of us enjoyed eating them as a snack during our phonics workshop!

The other exciting event that happened this week was that everyone brought home their first reading book - wow, we were impressed, books were sent home on Tuesday and Wednesday and by Friday nearly everyone had read to an adult both at home and at school, we have some real bookworms in Robins! Please keep up the reading support at home and if you have any questions please ask away - we are always here to help and support!

....and then it was Friday and our week was coming to an end. This week we did not welly walk, instead we used our time to rehearse our song ready for the Harvest Celebration - we are really hoping to see many of you at the celebration next Tuesday at 9.00.

Have a great weekend, enjoy the weather - it might be a while before we see such sunshine again, and see you all on Monday.