Kai asked about cockroaches “Would the legs be sharp on your hand?” We will talk about this before listening to a story about a cockroach! We will watch the video again, modelling and asking the children to use positional language to describe where the cockroach is - we will encourage them to listen to each other throughout. Next we will explain that cockroaches live in dirty places but actually like cleaning up. We will go to our tables and the children will find some ‘small world’ scenarios set up. We will model how a cockroach travels around the resources (including food items), also modelling language such as behind, under, next to, over, through, on top as the cockroach travels. Each child will then have a cockroach and will need to find a route to travel, describing the route to friends as they move their cockroach along.

Today is online safety day. We will begin by watching and listening to a story about an ‘unusual creature’ - this is a Voice Assistant. When we have finished the story we will talk through the children’s experiences of using a Voice Assistant (for example, Google, Siri, Alexa). We will remind them that it is not a real person, we will talk through some of the things a Voice Assistant can and can’t do. We will highlight that, because it is not a person it might tell you to do some things that are not safe or kind (link to our school rules). Adults will act as a Voice Assistant and a person and we will compare the responses that a child might get. Finally we will ask children, in their groups, to design a Voice Assistant (adults will draw their ideas), we will ask questions such as ‘what does it look like?’ ‘how does it help people?’ ‘is there anything it cannot do?’ ‘how does it respond if someone asks it to do something unsafe?’

Today we have our sixth Balanceability session. The children will be exploring balancing and moving carefully as well as riding the bikes.

We also have a Forest School session today later in the morning.

Fiadh asked “How do ants make homes?” We will begin by looking at ant homes online (including how they make them) and also at the book Find Anthony Ant. We will look closely at all the trails and tunnels that the ants create. We will explain that they are now going to create a picture of an ants home. First they will need to select some paper that they feel reflects the right colours for an ants home. Then we will practise the pinch and flick technique and the grip that they will need to use when drawing the tunnels and trails. Adults will model taking a pen for a walk … travelling around the paper creating a complex ‘home’ for the ants. Children will then have a go at doing this themselves - they need to remember not to lift their pen from the paper but keep moving just like an ant would. Finally they will use a fine black pen to add some ants to their ant home.

Friday

 Ellie asked “What books are there about octopuses?” Today we will visit the school library (to see if there are books about octopuses, and the children will be able to take home a book from there rather than from the class library as they usually do. In the library we will draw the children’s attention to a wide range of examples of print with different functions, for example, instructions, safety signs and book titles. When the children have chosen books we will ask them to show us parts of the book, for example, the cover, the page number. We will also show them where the author is recorded. We will ask the children to explain to each other how to handle books, turning one page at a time. We will ask the children to show us where the text is, we will remind them that in English print is read left to right and top to bottom. We will show children how sentences start with capital letters and end with full stops. We will ask them to find a capital letter that is the same as the one in their name. Finally we will revisit the idea of a ‘word’,  pointing out how some words are longer than others and how there is always a space before and after a word.