Hello Squirrels children and parents alike. I hope this blog finds you well and you're back into the rhythm of the new term. As the blog pages worked so well during lockdown, Miss Nash and I have decided to continue our respective pages to share our class learning with you each week.
The first few weeks of school were spent getting back into school mode and assessing the children's learning across all areas. Happily, we are now back into learning full swing and we've plenty of interesting things to share with you.
Billy and the Minpins by Roald Dahl - Mantle
A big chunk of our time has been spent reading, exploring and enjoying this wonderful book. Our activities have included:
- Making our own Minpins out of clay
- Making Minpin furniture using paper and very clever folding techniques. We had teeny tiny beds, bathtubs, book cases, tables, chairs, TVs and so much more. Who knew so much could be achieved by folding or concertinaing plain paper!
- Sketching with a 'small' focus outside on the school field, to give us a Minpin perspective.
- Sketching and making oil pastel images of what the fearsome beast might look like.
- Learning all about the birds that the Minpins fly on. We were particularly ambitious to see if we could learn to fly, but soon realised we didn't have feathers or hollow bones. As a result, we designed, made and evaluated flying machines instead.
- Walking around Whaddon, exploring the different habitats in our local area and mapping out features. We have also considered the food chains in these habitats.
This work lead us to uniting under the team name 'Forest Rescuers', as Billy and his swan flew to us for help. The Minpins are being threatened by a new beast and we have agreed to do all we can to help them. We think this company may be involved...
Already we have begun to appreciate what incredible habitats forests are and how many different plants, trees and creatures depend on them for survival. This will continue to be our focus next week.
At home: You could spend some time exploring different habitats around you and identifying which plants and creatures live there. Try and explore some simple food chains, such as plant > rabbit > fox. You could also apply the design, make and evaluate process to something different at home. Remember, when you evaluate you need to decide if your designs works and meets the reasons it was made for.
Writing
Our new favourite activity in Squirrels class is 'super sentences'. Every day the children are writing creative sentences based on an image chosen from Once Upon a Picture. We have begun to challenge the children's focus, looking closely at different sentence types and the punctuation that comes with it.
Separate to 'super sentences' we have written Minpin messages, diary entries, letters and a fiction story imagining Billy on another adventure.
Please continue to write for different purposes at home and check work independently. Remember Squirrels, reading your work aloud helps you to spot missed full stops and check the sounds in your words.
Maths
We've been tackling place value for the past few weeks. Year 2 have been looking closely at 2-digit numbers whilst Year 3 have been focussing on 3-digits. How do you know if the seven in 72 is worth ten or one?
Try comparing numbers using the greater than, less than and equal to symbols <, >, =. Remember, the crocodile always wants to eat the greater number!
We have also been practising skip counting, or counting in jumps of something. Year 2 have focused on jumps of 2, 5 and 10 whilst Year 3 accepted the challenge of jumps of 3, 4, 8 and 50! Skip jumping is an incredibly important skill, so please practise this both verbally and written as much as you possibly can at home.
I hope you have a great weekend/week and enjoy bringing some school back home with you through this blog. Miss Cartwright 😄
