w/e 10.02.23
We started our week’s learning with a visit from Dr Paul Hammerton who came to talk to the children about his recent visit to Antarctica. We learned about his journey by air and boat, the special clothes he had to wear to stay warm, the safety suit he would have to wear if the boat capsized, the penguins he saw on land, on snow and fur seals and the whale which swam under his boat. We learned about King, Chinstrap, Adelie, Magellanic and Gentoo penguins. We used this vocabulary to add a type of penguin to our Antarctic collages. We learned that the penguin chicks have fluffy feathers, that look like brown fur, to keep them warm. They molt and adult feathers which are good for swimming replace the fluffy feathers. The children asked lots of questions. It helped us to understand Blue Penguin better because he told us about seeing one different type of penguin among a large group of King penguins. We wrote a letter to show support for Blue Penguin when he was all alone. The children loved one of the illustrations in the book and this inspired a self directed painting activity. We learned that an Emperor penguin is about a metre tall. We read a series of 3 books about Penguin Pete by Marcus Pfister, the author of The Rainbow Fish, which the children really enjoyed. We made our own height chart to compare our heights with an Emperor penguin. In maths we have been learning about height and length and comparing heights and lengths. We have been learning to use the words longer and shorter to describe length, taller and shorter to describe height and wider, narrower to describe breadth. We made towers of bricks and compared their height. There was a 1 minute challenge to make the tallest tower. We made snakes out of play dough and compared their lengths and check this using bricks. We had fun working in pairs to measure our dragon and spider plants. We also learned about time and sang the days of the week song to help us remember the sequence of days. We learned a number rhyme called 5 Little Penguins.
In our phonics we have been reading and writing words with vowel, consonant, consonant patterns (vcc) words eg and, ant, elf and consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant patterns (cvcc) eg help, desk, must.
We have been learning about the health effects of moving our bodies and also the importance of a good sleep routine to help us get a good night’s sleep. We talked about our favourite exercises and how they make us feel. We practised repetitive movements outside. In our PE lesson we explored different ways of travelling using equipment to the theme Into the Woods. We practised bending our knees when jumping, crawling on hands and knees, marching and sliding.
On Safer Internet Day we learned to tell a trusted adult if we see something which upsets us when using a device. On Friday we had lots of fun in Platinum time trying out different activities in different classes across the school.
Safer internet day.
