Welcome back Hedgehogs! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break!

We have kickstarted our week back with a lot of interactive fun learning. Look below to find out what we have been doing! I have also included some interactive online activities to do at home if your child needs a break from playing in the snow!

Maths

In our Maths learning, we have started our unit on Place Value: Numbers up to 20. This week the children learned how to count and recognise numbers up to 20. We talked about how the numbers 11-19 all have a 'ten' in the number. We learned the importance of 10 and recognised pictures and objects that showed and did not show 10. On Friday, we also used 'dienes' for the first time. We used dienes to build the numbers 11, 12 and 13.

Here are some games to consolidate our Maths learning this week

Number Identification - https://wordwall.net/resource/2835180/number-identification-1-20

Number Sequencing - https://wordwall.net/resource/6742815/number-sequence-1-20

Match the Number to the Picture - https://wordwall.net/resource/53523690/counting-10-20-match-the-picture-with-the-number

English

In our English learning, we are learning a new story called Zahra. This is about a girl who lives in an African village and she is desperately trying to water a dying tree. It is a lovely story, and the children have enjoyed watching it. You can watch it here as well if you like - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OR12uZewOU. 

The children acted out Zahra in groups to help retell the story. They did this by doing some freeze-frames.

We also learned some vocabulary to describe Zahra. We looked at a target board and we glued words that were about Zahra in the middle of the target board, and words that we wouldn't choose about Zahra on the outside of a target board. Look at the words below. What words would you use to describe Zahra? 

Geography

This term, we are doing a block of Geography to really engage the children in their knowledge and understanding of the world. In Year 1, our country of focus is Kenya, but we also look a lot at the UK and our surrounding village and town as well to make comparisons between our countries.

Before we look at Kenya, we need to understand our country, and where our country is situated within the world. 

We started to look at the UK and what the UK looks like by using an atlas.

We learned a very catchy song to help us remember the different countries that make up the United Kingdom which you are welcome to watch the video here.

Can you tell your grown-ups what countries make up the United Kingdom?

We also learned about the continents of the world as well to get an understanding of where we are in the world, and where Kenya is in the world. We learned a very catchy song to help us remember the continents. If you want to listen to this, click here for the Youtube link. We also went on Google Earth to look at all the continents from space. You can click here to find out more: https://earth.google.com/web/

Can you tell your grown-up all the 7 continents?

Which continent do we live in?

Which continent is Kenya in?

Here are some photos of us putting the continents back together below!

Phonics and Spellings

In our Phonics this week, we have learned the new digraphs ue (as in blue), ue (as in statue), and ew (as in flew). These are tricky digraphs, so please use the Monster Phonics Booklets to practise these digraphs from this week. 

Here are some games that you can also play to practise these digraphs:

https://wordwall.net/resource/22712748/phonics-matching-pairs-ue

https://wordwall.net/resource/22714037/ue-matching-pairs

https://wordwall.net/resource/86737603/ew

You could also try practising some of the words that we have read this week as well by reading the words on the PowerPoint below;

Have a good weekend! Any snow-related activities that you do today, email me any pictures and we can share and talk about them on Monday! Enjoy the snow!

Mr Armishaw