We have had another fabulous week in Robins class!  

In our topic, we discussed the question "What makes me special?"  We read the story of Elmer the colourful elephant and talked about how everybody looks different to each other on the outside and that's what makes us special and unique. We also talked about we can be a kind person on the inside.  We discussed how we can be kind and caring to our friends.  We then all painted an elephant in bright colours to join in with Elmer's parade at the end of the story.  The children enjoyed creating colourful patterns and designs.  

We also learnt a little more about elephants this week.  The children remembered some interesting facts about them and we learnt that elephants are native to Africa and India.  We then looked at some real elephants in India that are decorated in bright colours, just like in our story.  The Indian elephants are decorated to celebrate the Holi festival.  

In English this week we read the story "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what can you see?"  The children enjoyed joining in with the repetitive nature of the story. They then chose a character to describe and draw.  The children also practised listening for and saying the initial sounds in words.  E.g. "c" - cat, "d" - duck, "f" fish. 

We have continued our daily phonics session and have learned the sounds i, n, m, d this week.  Each letter has it's own action and sound. We hope the children are showing you these at home!  Now we know some sounds, we have started to blend sounds in words, to read them e.g. s-i-t, p-a-t, m-a-n etc.  

The children all received their first reading book this week.  Please read with your child regularly as we cannot stress enough how much this has a positive impact on their reading and learning. Please send your child's reading book and diary to school every day in a reading folder that they can keep in their drawer.  Next week we will send home their first set of "tricky" words to learn.  Tricky words are words that occur regularly in books but cannot always be sounded out. (Some of these words, you will discover can be sounded out, particularly the early sets). 

In Maths this week, we compared length and height using the terms, longer, shorter, taller, shorter.  The children took part in practical tasks to practise this such as building a tower taller or shorter than a given tower and ordering different lengths of ribbon.  

We enjoyed our music session where we took turns to play the instruments and we also continued to develop our finger skills and pre-writing skills with dough disco and squiggle while you wiggle.  

What a busy week!!

Next week we will have our first Forest School session which will be very exciting for the children.  If you haven't already, please ensure your child has a pair of wellies and an all in one waterproof suit in school.  

Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing all of the children on Monday.