Week ending Friday 17th November 2023

This week we have been learning about the celebration of Diwali. 

On Monday, the children heard the story of Rama and Sita and how this links to the festival of lights that is celebrated by lots of people around the world.  The children helped to create a class Rangoli pattern with coloured sand, rice and lentils and also coloured and cut out their own Rangoli patterns.  In P.E on Monday afternoon, we warmed up with a Bhangra style dance before practising our jumping and landing skills which included jumping and rotating.

On Tuesday, we continued to learn about Diwali and made Diyas which are the lamps that are used in the celebration of lights.  The lights are used traditionally to welcome the Goddess Lakshmi to people's homes and to celebrate light over darkness and good over evil.

On Wednesday we continued with our learning and we painted our own Rangoli patterns, we drew around our hands and then decorated them with mehndi patterns. We watched a short clip about a young girl who celebrated Diwali with her family and spotted similarities and differences with other festivals we know about. We also took part in some Diwali yoga, where each pose was linked to an aspect of Diwali. 

On Thursday we continued with our Diwali theme by reading a story and listening to some Diwali music. We learnt about the 'sitar' and discussed what it sounded like and where it originated from. We made patterns in rice, had a day of construction and made Rama and Sita stick puppets. We also shared photographs of Diwali decorations, buildings, foods and dress and again discussed similarities and differences. All the children seemed to have a great understanding of Diwali!

On Friday, it was our non school uniform day and Children in need. We had a day of Pudsey themed activities including a dance-a-thon that we participated in and also Pudsey face paints. We learnt about why we fundraise money every year for 'Children in Need' and had fun raising money with the rest of the school. We took part in P.E. where we played games and practised our team work. Our favourite game was pop up pirate!

We have been so impressed with the progress children are making in phonics.  Most children now know all the set one sounds and are showing that they can blend these sounds too. We are also now using these skills to spell - wow!  The practice that they are doing at home is so beneficial and we hope you enjoy sharing this with them as well as continuing to share some lovely story time too.

​Have a lovely weekend everybody.