Today we have PE - with a difference. The children will not be changing into PE kits yet as many are continuing to find putting shoes on and off quite tricky as well as being able to identify their own pair. Due to this we are working on building self-help skills and independence by playing some games / challenges in the classroom involving locating shoes, putting these and plimsolls on and off and putting socks on. Each group will be taking part in a rotation of activities, one group will do an action song on the IWB, another will be challenged to find their plimsolls and put them on before the music finishes, the third group will need to take off their shoes and socks and swap for their plimsolls. We will repeat this using the children’s favourite action songs throughout. Once all challenges are completed we will take the children to the hall for a few minutes for music and movements games.

We will also create Christmas card designs using finger paints. We will revisit how we used paint brushes last week to paint diggers and didn’t mix the colours - reminding the children that they could use the same technique today with their fingers.

Bertie suggested that we should explore outside and Ivy said that we could look for scary owls and wolves. Today we are going to follow their ideas and explore the school environment. We will show the children pictures of the owls and wolves that we are looking for (these won’t be too scary!) and explain that they need to listen to instructions all the time so that they are ‘safe’! Each child will be given a magnifying glass to aid their exploration. Once outside we will encourage them to look for pictures of the creatures, when they have spotted them we will ask them to describe where they are using language such as - under, on top, next to, behind, in front … We will encourage them to listen to each others' descriptions and come to an agreement.

Eliza suggested that we could explore and look for squirrels, Arthur is also excited when he spots a squirrel. Today we will begin by talking about where the children have spotted squirrels and what they were doing. Then we will highlight how squirrels scurry up trees, and leap between branches, we will show videos to reinforce this. Then we will introduce the small whiteboards and pens, explaining the rules for using them. We will revisit using the pinch and flick technique. Then adults will model creating handwriting patterns that imitate a squirrel’s movements. The children will then be asked to imitate these movements, developing grip and control as they make marks. We will repeat these with the children imitating the adult modelled patterns / movements each time.

Tilly said that we could explore and look for scary bears, so today we are going to focus on the story - We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (this links with Talk for Writing) where a family go exploring together. We will remind or introduce the children to the story, we will read it together, we will develop actions for each page / segment of the story. Next we will work with each group to create a simple story map linked to the first part of the story (swishy swashy grass), we will retell this together to ensure that children are familiar with it. Adults will then introduce ’innovation of or recycling the plot’ to model to the children how they can alter the story building on the structure that they know well. We will use post-its and images over the story map so the children can still ‘read’ the story together when it has been altered. Finally we will tell our innovated stories to the other groups.

Friday

Today we will be focusing on exploring and finding out about birds as Wilf suggested. Otto suggested that we look in the air to find out more and Reo suggested finding some eggs. We will talk to the children about their hunts for feathers for show and tell this week - did they look in the air, did they spot any eggs? We will show the children some feathers and encourage them to handle them and look closely at them, commenting on what they see and describing what they notice. Do they think these feathers are from pigeons (Million is interested in them) or seagulls (linked to Ivy’s interest) or to another bird. We will encourage the children to listen to each other’s ideas. Then we will explain that we need to cut some feathers to create bird pictures, we will remind them of how the feathers that they handled looked - they need to make the paper feathers look the same. Adults will model the appropriate grip for scissors and how to snip along the paper feather edge. We will also explain to the children that they need to act as Danger Detectives and make sure everyone is using the scissors safely.