We are continuing our Growing and Changing topic by learning about snails this week, by searching on the internet, using books and watching information videos and powerpoints.  We learned many facts about snails (please ask your children to tell you what they know!).

We were so excited to see that our caterpillars have changed into chrysalides. We carefully put them into the butterfly nets and can’t wait to see them emerge as butterflies! In other minibeast news - our tadpoles have all turned into little frogs! The teachers took them to the brook in Repton and set them free! They will have a lovely free life now and be able to catch lots of bugs to eat! Our chicken eggs are still in the incubator and we are counting down the days until they hatch. There are 2 weeks left.

We learned about the painter ‘Henri Matisse’ this week and enjoyed looking at his paintings, one of which was called The Snail. We looked at the spiral pattern and made our own spiral pictures in his style, using torn pieces of paper.  They look great!

In English we wrote a short story about Superworm. This time Superworm used a magic leaf to turn the creatures in the story into different things. For example, "He turned the bee red." or "He put legs on the snail."!

In maths we described position. We made a simple model using blocks, sticks, corks and 3D shapes and had to describe our models to another friend, behind a screen, to make the same. We used language such as ‘the red cuboid in on top of a green cube’ or ‘the green cone is behind the blue cylinder’.

Our Monster Phonics this week, we have been practising reading and writing cvc words and polysyllabic words (words with more than one syllable).  We also learned 3 new tricky words: I’m, very, old. We talked about the need for the apostrophe in ‘I’m’.  Please continue to read with your child regularly.  It really makes a difference to their confidence and fluency. Please also continue to use spelling shed.  Again, this really helps the children to develop confidence and fluency with their segmenting and spelling skills.

Have a wonderful weekend.