Commotion in the Ocean! 26.4.19

Commotion in the Ocean! 26.4.19

Welcome back to the Summer term! I hope you all had a restful Easter holiday and enjoyed the sunshine! I have heard lots of great stories from the children about your Easter break, it sounds like you all had lots of fun.

We have had a very exciting start to the new term welcoming our new Ducklings! It has been so exciting meeting all our new children and showing them around our classroom. We have loved learning and playing together! We hope all our Ducklings feel very happy and have been enjoying learning with the other children in Giant and Duckling class.

This week we have started our new topic for the term, ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ based on a book written by Giles Andreae. Before we even read the story we thought about all the things we know about the ocean and underwater creatures; and listed the questions we have and what we would like to find out. The children were particularly curious about big underwater creatures including sharks, gulper eels, penguins, swordfish and octopuses. We had questions about stingrays, alligators and the waves in the sea. It was fantastic to see the children so excited and eager to find out more. We have already started our research, answering some of our questions!

Our Ducklings have been getting used to their new classroom, playing and exploring with their Giant friends. They have been enjoying ‘choosing time’- playing with construction, play dough, painting, cars, sand tray, mud kitchen and more! We have also enjoyed circle times together and have started learning some of the pictures linked to our phonics cards. They have met Fred our frog- who is very special because he only talks in sounds! We play games with Fred together!

Our reception children have been starting to learn about the different coins we use when paying for things. They have been using the context of shopping to solve practical addition problems, using the number track to count on to find the answer. We have been looking closely at the different coins and pretending to buy things in our role-play garden center. Maybe next time you’re paying with cash at the shops you could look at the coins together and see if your Giant can help you spot different coins and help work out what is needed to pay!

We will be learning more about equivalent values next week, exploring giving change.

We finished the week with a Welly Walk along the river and into the woods. We looked in the river for signs of underwater animals. We thought about whether we would see crabs or dolphins in the river! We decided these animals live in water but only in the sea or the ocean. We read our story, ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ again in the woods and thought about our favourite underwater animals.

It has been a busy but exciting week in Giant and Duckling class! I hope you all have a restful weekend; I am looking forward to seeing you for more fun and learning next week!

Miss Stephens