Blog 29th November

Rain has certainly not stopped play in Plum Class!  Even if that meant the play had to take place indoors!

It’s been a cheerful week as we have begun to think about forthcoming celebrations.  We talked about aspects of Christmas that we are looking forward to celebrating and I was impressed with children’s varied answers.  It wasn’t all about looking forward to the presents!  Children in Reception went on to write letters to Santa Claus and we’ll be taking these to the post office on Monday.  We’re hoping to get a reply from the Big Man before the end of term!  The children worked hard to hear and write the dominant sounds as they identified gifts to politely request.  I can happily report that letter formation is coming on really well.  Thank you for your continued support with this at home.

As well as discovering that we all have slightly different ways to celebrate Christmas, we found out that some people have different celebrations that are important to them.  We enjoyed watching videos about Jessica who is a Hindu and enjoys celebrating Diwali with her family.  If you’d like to watch these videos you can find them at:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/lets-celebrate-diwali

The children were all really engaged and involved in this exploration of a different festival.  You can ask your child about the way that Hindus celebrate, the special food they enjoy and the story that this festival is based upon.  The children demonstrated their new knowledge by making diva lamps, engaging in small world play to re-tell the Diwali story, creating rangoli patterns and designing their own henna mehndi patterns.  Maybe you could Google and make some rangoli patterns this weekend.  They are great fun! We’ve also learnt a song about Diwali and we played instruments to accompany our singing. Maybe you could ask for a rendition of this song at home.  We’re hoping to carry on our exploration of Diwali next week.

In our number work, we’ve begun to think about subtraction as taking away.  The children quickly acquired the understanding that when we subtract we end up with less than we started with.  Rather than diving straight into written calculations, we’ve taken the time to verbalise practical subtractions that we’ve made.  We did this by playing a game with owls in a tree.  The children had to speak the story:

“There are 6 owls in the tree.

4 owls go hunting.

There are 2 owls left!

Maybe you could have a go at setting up practical subtraction at home and encouraging your child to speak the story that takes place.  In their independent mathematical work the children have enjoyed playing subtraction squish, making Numicon cities, making shape trees, making models with 9 lego bricks and much more! We will build upon this skill next week by introducing the subtraction sign as we record the calculations that we make.

Of course, we’ve begun practising for our Sleepy Shepherd nativity and I can assure you that you’re in for a real treat!