Headteacher: Anna Moss

0121 445 1622

9th February 2024

Forest School Activity

Homes

We continued our Special places topic this week as we have been sharing our home photos and talking about our home.  On Thursday, we went on a wet “house hunt” walk to find some friends’ houses on St Catherine’s Road.  In Forest School Mrs Allen has been teaching you how to hammer nails into a wooden block ready for some DIY in your own homes.

Write Dance

(Gross Motor)

The Grand Old Duke of York

Making marks with felt tips pens is always fun but making marks to the song with one in each hand, hurt our brains.  Give it a try this half term with mark making tools in each hand.  Can you make your hands move together and in opposite directions?

Rhyme Time

The Grand Old Duke of York

Hearing when two words sound the same is one of our favourite morning games.  We use photos from the rhyme e.g. down, crown, hill and take it in turns to say which words rhyme.  Say it silly was popular as we talked through the rhyme and changed the sound e.g. me mand mold muke mof mork.  We are starting to have fun with our own names too!

Phonics

The octopus sound /o/

Poor Oscar, he was trapped in the box with a grumpy ox and four octopi who kept arguing about being friends.  We settled them all down with some Octanauts on the TV and some orange juice to drink and an orange to eat.  Can you spot some /o/ objects in your home?

Listening

Simon Says

Our blue listening rule is “Good Listening is listening to all of the words”.  We always leave this one until last to practise as it can be the least obvious one to do.  You had to listen to the instruction and only follow when Simon told you to.  Listening to the whole sentence was the challenge e.g. put your hands on your head, Simon says.

Maths

Number 5

As we settled in from Forest School, we enjoyed playing our numeral game of “numbers numbers all around”.  We chose a number, crept it to our eyes and showed our friends on our hands (clapping).  Once we were all in, we were introduced to our new number – number 5.  We looked and matched numeral 5, fingers 5, red numicon 5 and 5 in a row.

Communication and Language

In every house, on every street, Jess Hitchman

Mrs Allen has been talking about all the rooms in a house and matching to their purpose.  She shared a new song with you about it too.  You have enjoyed building your homes in the quiet area with wooden blocks and creating a floor plan with wooden sticks as part of your story time activity.

Dough Disco

(Fine Motor)

I’m still standing, Elton John

Always a favourite every year, this disco song had us moving our arms as we ran through the song, sausaged the dough and punched the air with a “yeah yeah yeah”.  Thank you Oscar and thank you Elton – another artist from our country with our flag!

A message for parents – happy half term everyone, we hope you enjoy some family time together.  If in the car out and about, keep encouraging the children to clap/count syllables of new words, hear/say the first sound and see if they can hear any words that “sound the same” in general conversation.  So many of the children are so close to these literacy skills!

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen and Mrs Franklin X