We’ve had another super week learning all about Antarctica  It’s also been Mental Health Week and NSPCC Number Day!  The children are full of facts about Antarctica and are really enjoying this topic.  We investigated what animals lived in Antarctica and learned all about penguins.  We also loved playing with our giant model of Antarctica, that we made from junk, papier mache and paint over the last couple of weeks.  It looks so effective.

Can you tell your grown-up which animals live in Antarctica and which don’t?

This week in maths we explored odd and even numbers.  We got ourselves into twos and noticed that when all 24 of us were here, there was no one left out.  When one person is away, one person is left out, with no partner.  Odd numbers always have one number left out and even numbers have twos.  We explored different numbers to find out if they were odd or even.  We also learned how to double a number.  Some children made the connection, that doubling a number always makes an even number.  We played with a magic doubling pot, where we put in n number of jewels, waved the wand and double came out! We all tried to work out how many jewels would come out by using our own jewels on a 10 frame to practically explore this.

In English, we read a story called ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers.  It was about a penguin who was lost and a little boy found him, researched that he came from Antarctica and look him home.  He then missed him and went back for him.  It is a lovely story about friendship.  The children made a Lost poster to help to find him, by writing sentences to describe him, such as ‘He has big feet, he is sad’ etc 

In Monster Phonics this week we learned the ‘ai’ sound (as in rain).  We met Angry Red A and know that he makes this ‘ai’ sound. 

This week is Children Mental Health Week.  We took the time to enjoy lots of activities to acknowledge this.  The theme this year is ‘Know Yourself, Grow Yourself.  We learned how it is important to look after our minds as well as our bodies, in order to be healthy. We talked about ways to feel calm (doing nice things) and who we can talk to if we are anxious or worried.

Friday was the NSPCC's Number Day!  We all dressed up as Numbers or in a way to express ourselves and had a fabulous number filled, fun day!  We learned about number through all aspects of our play and activities both inside and out.  Please see the photos below to see what we got up to.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!