The children had lots of suggestions for the equipment that they could use to ‘look closely’ at objects or pictures - Ivy suggested using binoculars, Bella suggested a camera, Wilf suggested a window, Marley said that we could use fingers as binoculars and Bertie suggested a telescope. We will explain that the children are going to use this equipment to look closely at pictures of groups of objects. When they look at the pictures they will need to decide which group has more or fewer items. We will then distribute the equipment before going outside. We will encourage all the children in a group to look at each pair of groups of objects before one child talks about which group has more and which fewer - we will ask the remainder of the children if they agree, how they know and how many are in each group. We will then repeat this with other cards. The children will also have the opportunity to share and take turns with the equipment during the session.

Ernie suggested that we could look really closely at a bear and made links with the We’re Going on a Bear Hunt story. So, today we will be talking about all the interesting words in the story before mark making linked to these words. We will read the story and emphasise words encouraging the children to join in with reciting them. Then each child will collect a whiteboard and pen. We will ask them to remind us of the ‘rules’ for using the whiteboards and about using the pinch and flick technique. Adults will then reread the story and model marks for ‘swishy swashy’ for example - the children will need to imitate these on their boards. We will remind them to work on keeping marks a similar size and retracing lines if adults have done so. We will repeat this for other phrases in the story. Then we will talk about the word ‘mud’ - we will encourage the children to segment the word before adults model recording it letter by letter - children will be asked to imitate this as well.

Today we are excited to have a Forest school session with Mrs Wells. Please ensure that children are dressed appropriately for the session.

PE will continue to be on a Thursday for this half term. We are excited that we have the Balanceability team coming in to work with us. Today the children will have their second Balanceability session. They will be building on, developing and practising balance bike skills. Bikes and helmets are provided.

Friday

As you know we are visiting the Berkhamsted Art Society Exhibition next week and in preparation for that we are going to be creating our own artwork. The Art Society has asked us to create portraits so we will begin by looking at a series of portraits by famous artists for inspiration. Then we will encourage the children to look closely at each other and talk about similarities and differences, these may relate to eye colour, hair colour, height, long hair, short hair etc. Then we will talk about creating our self portraits and choosing appropriate colours to do this, firstly we will look at skin tone - again thinking about similarities and differences.  The children will then be able to mix paints to try and create one that matches their skin tone as they see it. Once the colour is created they will paint the outline and of their face. Later when the paint is dry they will add features - again selecting colours as needed.