Holly Class w/b 9th January 2022

We have had a wonderful start to the year in Holly Class! The children have come back full of energy and eager to learn, it is lovely to see. 

We had a very exciting arrival in our classroom early last week in the form of a small penguin visitor named Pog (according to the label he was wearing...). Mrs Ward found him just outside school and thought we could help! Luckily, he arrived with a basket of clues that helped us work out who he was and where he had come from, including a book called 'Poles Apart' which told us all about his adventures with his family. Pog seems to be enjoying life in our classroom for now but we have made it our mission to learn all about where he came from and find a way to get him home soon. We have become very interested in maps and the continents, and the Year 1 children have been learning about the 7 continents in their Geography lessons, we also have an aeroplane role play that is helping us explore the world and hopefully gather lots of information that will help Pog. 

In our literacy lessons we have been working on non-fiction writing and reading a book called 'The Emperor's Egg' which has helped us learn specifically about Emperor penguins. The children in Reception have been using their phonics skills to draw and label penguins whilst the Year 1 children have been generating and writing questions and some of the facts they have learnt. 

In maths this week, the Year 1 children have been have a place value focus, working on the teen numbers and finding different ways of representing the tens and ones. The Reception children have been working hard on their number formation and learning different rhymes for each of the numbers to help them remember how to write them. 

We have all been doing some recap in phonics lessons this week. The Year 1 children have been busy spotting sneaky split digraphs (a_e, e_e, i_e and u_e) in words and becoming confident using these graphemes when spelling words. The Reception children have recapped the phonemes d, g and f u, working specifically on their blending skills and letter formation.

We have had two brilliant forest school sessions since we came back to school. Last Friday we went litter picking in the park and collected lots of rubbish that had been left behind. The children were very responsible using the litter pickers and we left the park looking much tidier! This week we went on a habitat hunt linked to the Y1 science learning. Because of the very soggy weather we went on an imaginary journey through the village (actually in our school grounds!) and then looked for different plant and animal habitats. We made lots of exciting discoveries with our magnifying glasses including some mushrooms growing on a log and a birds nest that had been left in a tree! 

Have a lovely weekend everyone!