Autumn 1

Phonics

We began the year by playing lots of listening games, and hearing initial sounds in words. 

We have started learning the letter sounds and are learning to put these together to read words.

Maths

Talk about measure and patterns

We have been comparing the size of objects from in and out of the classroom. 

We made copied and continued some simple repeating ABAB patterns. 

It's me 1,2,3

We have practised counting with amounts to 3. We have looked at different representations of 3 including numerals and subitising. 

Circles and Triangles

We discussed the different properties of circles and triangles. We enjoyed shape hunts inside and outside, looking for objects that had circles or triangles on them!

Literacy

This half term all our books focus on helping us settle into our new school and helping us to live through our school values of love, courage and joy. We enjoyed learning about persevering through 'Mabel and the Mountain', about sharing in 'The Squirrels who Squabbled', and about courage and friendship in 'The Lion Inside'.

Wider Curriculum

We began the year with an Art project and drew a self portrait, which you can find in the Link!

We went on a local walk and talked about things we could see around us and the changing seasons. 

In D.T, we learnt about junk modelling and explored making different models with boxes. 

Other Exciting Events!

We went on our Local walk around Idle. We passed Church, Wiggles, allotments and we even saw the back of our school! 

We went to church for Harvest Festival. We sang 4 songs and donated some food to the food bank. Our favourite song was 'Big Red Combine Harvester!

Autumn 2

Phonics

This half term we have continued to learn more new sounds, as well as learning some digraphs!  A digraph is when 2 letters make one sound. We have been starting to read short sentences together and you will have been practising this at home with your reading books! 

We are beginning to model segmenting CVC words using our robot arms!

Maths

1,2,3,4,5

We have practised counting with amounts to 5. We have found 1 more and 1 less. We have practised our subitising and recognising amounts when represented differently. We looked at the different ways to make each number, e.g. 3 and 1 or 2 and 2 to make 4. 

Squares and Rectangles

Again, we really enjoyed shapes hunts inside and out. We talked about shapes as we were building in the construction area and even made squares and rectangles with lolly sticks. 

Length and Height

We have been comparing the legnth and height of objects using the words long/longer and short/shorter, and tall/taller and short/shorter. We have found lots of objects around the classroom to compare. 

We have made length christmas trees, starting from the longest to the shortest. 

Literacy

Our first book was The Leaf Thief. We really, really enjoyed this book, especially when Miss Shaw did different voices for each character! We noticed lots of different autumn things and labelled pictures about Autumn objects.

After that we read the 'Lost at the toy museum'.  We drew pictures of our favourite toys from the book and from our houses. We researched about toys and wrote a letter back to Bunting, answering his questions. 

Wider Curriculum

Our focus this half term has been on history and we have been learning lots about old toys.  We found a box of toys and recieved a letter from Bunting at the toy museum. He asked us to find out how to use them, how old they were and which were our favourites!

We really liked the tiny tear doll and the ball and cup. 

We also sorted toys between old and new and made a timeline of which toys would have belonged to our grandparents, our parents and us!

Other exciting Events!

This half term we really enjoyed our walk to Buck Woods. 

We talked about the seasons and made lots of observations. We explored the woods finding different sticks and leaves as well as climbing some trees!

We had a very special suprise and we were able to watch a pantomime! We watched Beauty and the Beast and really enjoyed joining in with some of the songs and found all the jokes and silliness very funny!