It is Winter

Frrrrrrrreeeeeezzzzzing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This half term we are learning about Winter. Luckily we have had some wintery weather this week and a little dusting of snow!

We have been very busy in art and craft producing lots of icy pieces of art work to display in our classroom.  Our first job was to transform our Autumn tree into a Winter tree. We looked at photographs and went outside to observe how the trees have changed since Autumn. We then selected from a range of collage materials to create frosty leaves and developed our fine motor and cutting skills to make snowflakes.

We really enjoyed mixing paints to create different shades. We found out that adding white paint made the blue lighter and adding black paint made the blue darker. 

If you have paints at home why not try mixing lots of different shades of the same colour.

We have been reading the story of

The Old Man's Mitten

This is the story of an old man who loses his mitten when taking his dog for a walk.  His mitten is visited by six woodland animals who need a warm, snuggly place to keep warm in the snow.

We have been re telling the story and joining in with the repeated parts and putting pictures in order to make a story map.

Look at the pictures below and ask your child to tell you the story. 

We thought of which animals we would like to sleep in our mittens. We wrote lists of our favourite animals and painted them.

Writing a list is a good way to practise listening to sounds in words and trying to spell them. At home you could write shopping lists, holiday lists, register lists or lists of people in your family!

Our Frozen Writing Area

We have now finished learning the phase two letter sounds. In our writing area we are supporting the children to correctly form each letter. You can help at home by re visiting each of the letter homework sheets. Practise forming each letter and remember if your child does not enjoy holding a pencil make it fun by using foam, sand or even a stick in the mud outdoors! Our Phonics Curriculum page has a handy power point to show how each letter is formed. If you have an I Pad the 'Magic Letters' APP is also very useful.

We have been learning to read and write simple sentences and are beginning to use finger spaces in our writing. Our 'Investigation Station' focused on clothing for Winter. We have been learning the sentence

 I put on my ......................................

  and adding our ideas at the end. 

Why not try writing and completing this sentence at home and adding an item of warm, winter clothing at the end such as a hat or a scarf.

Addition

In maths we have been learning about addition. We have played lots of games that have involved adding together two sets to find a total. The children have been developing understanding of the words  

                          more     add    equals    altogether