Week beginning 17th April 2023

What a lovely start to the week after our Easter break. The children have completed some brilliant independent writing about their holidays and things that they have done at home, or places and people they may have visited. 
 
Our wider curriculum theme for this half term is ‘Growing’. We are looking forward to the exciting experiences and activities that we have planned. 
 
This week, we listened to the story of Brenda’s Boring Egg, about a duck who had laid a plain egg and decorated our own paper eggs using cotton buds to create patterns. We have learnt about the life cycle of a duck and watched videos of ducklings hatching which were fascinating. We also listened to a short radio clip about some children who keep ducks as pets. 
 
During our DT/Science element this week, the children have created eggs using paper mache. I demonstrated how this was done and they listened to the instructions carefully before having a go completely independently. The results are great and we will be decorating our duck eggs next week.
 
Continuing with our learning theme around growing, the children enjoyed learning about metamorphosis through the exploration of the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We watched a time-lapse clip of a caterpillar hatching and transforming into a butterfly. The children have enjoyed learning new vocabulary and using it in their play and learning activities. We have labelled life cycle pictures, sequenced photos, and retold the story using stick puppets.
 
In maths this week, we have begun to explore numbers beyond 10 and how to represent this when using tens frames. We took our maths learning outdoors and used natural objects to represent numbers on extra large chalk tens frames. We have had lots of opportunities to practise subitising, recognising smaller quantities by using dominos, dice, and natural objects.