This week we have been learning all about Antarctica! The children learned where on the globe it is and lots of facts about it, such as it is the coldest place on Earth.  It is covered in snow and has just 2 seasons – summer and winter.  When it’s winter it is almost always dark and in summer almost always light!  They know that no people live on Antarctica, but scientists stay there for a few weeks at a time.  It is too cold to live there and there are no houses or roads.  They also know that penguins live there – but no polar bears.  Ask your child why!

We all worked together to begin our project to make a large 3D model of Antarctica.  We used boxes to model the shape of glaciers, ice sheets and icebergs.  We covered it in newspaper (papier mache) and left it to dry.  Next week we will paint it white and add white glitter to make it look like ice glistening in the sunlight.  We will also painted the sea blue and add penguins and whales onto the model. We'll then use this to play with in our provision.

We enjoyed investigating ice and tried to free the penguin and whale from the ice!  They had been frozen inside and we tried to melt the ice in different ways.  We used pipettes to suck up water to drip onto the ice to help to melt it.  We realised that warm water melted it quicker than cold and holding the ice with warm hands also helped.  When it was melted, we added blue colouring and practised our fine motor skills and finger strength and co ordination to suck up the water with the pipettes and squirt it into small pots.

In English, we wrote a new story based on Rosie’s Walk, called 'Rosie's Run'.  The children wrote their version of the story, writing sentences to say where Rosie ran, such as 'She ran past the tree.  She ran up the hill'.  They also added the connective 'then' to join 2 sentences together. They did really well to write a few sentences and used a word bank for tricky words in the story.

In maths we explored measures: mass and capacity.  We used non standard measures to find out the mass of different objects using a balance scale.  We investigated how many cubes were equal to the mass of the objects and recorded the results in a table.  Through our continuous provision, the children played with containers in the water tray and sand, scooping and filling and pouring with different sized scoops, spoons and cups and bowels.

We had a fantastic session in PSHE about keeping our bodies and minds healthy. We thought of different wants to keep fit through many exercises and activities to make our breathing fast and our hearts beat hard. We went outside to perform lots of activities to do this too, such as jumping off the balance beam and performing a move on the mat at the end, such as stat jumps. We also practised what to do when we were feeling worried, angry or anxious. We said we could hug someone or take deep breaths; in through our nose and out through our mouths. We practised this too. 
 

In Monster Phonics this week, we have learned Green Froggy's phoneme ‘ee’.  We read and wrote many words containing this sound, went on an ee word hunt around the classroom, read an interactive story - Sleeping Beauty and completed activities on this too.  Please see the Monster Phonics section, as usual, to practise the sounds learned so far. 

Have a lovely weekend!