Caterpillar update... they have been very busy this week and are all now in their cocoons. This afternoon we moved them in to their new home (the net!) and so now we will wait some more. We've been talking about what will happen next and what we will see once they hatch from the cocoons and taking guesses on which day we think they first butterfly might make an appearance. Later next week seemed to be the most popular guess. Let's hope it's on a school day...

This week we read the story of ‘Jasper’s Beanstalk’ by Nick Butterworth. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jemrWJX7xJo

Just like Jasper we have decided to plant some beans in class. We took it in turns to plant our own bean. Now just like Jasper we need to wait for our beans to grow. We thought about all the things that they will need to grow and how we look after plants. This also linked in nicely to our strawberry plants. We learnt about the lifecycle of the strawberry plant at the stages and changes that we will see. Of course this all meant there were plenty of writing opportunities to grab. The children have begun to record the stages in a ‘bean diary’ and we made some labels to put up outside with our strawberry plants. Next week we're going to plant some sunflowers! Let's hope they encourage the sun to make a reappearance for us...

In Phonics we have been doing a big push on recapping the sounds that we learnt especially the trigraphs ‘ear’, ‘air’ and ‘ure’. These sounds can be hard for the children to remember and spot in words so please keep practising them at home with your child.

In maths this week we looked at fives frames and tens frames and how we can represent numbers on these. We then used a tens frame and a fives frame to talk about numbers that are bigger than ten. We use the language ‘I have ten and ___ more’. Using this language is very important when helping the children understand that these 2-digit numbers are made up of tens and ones. We thought about the language of 'digit' and 'teen'. Children often know their numbers beyond 10 but they don't often have a deep, solid understanding of what these numbers actually mean. We were very impressed with how well the children were picking up these trickier ideas and the language too.

We also had a move around in class. Our investigation table with our Spring learning on it moved, our writing station moved and became bigger and we no longer have a traditional book corner. No need to panic though! Instead, we have placed baskets and racks of books around the room, with a theme in each place. We have been really enjoying stories by Eric Carle, so there is a whole rack of just those. All books linked to growing, Spring and minibeasts (fiction and non-fiction) are near a Spring table. And a whole selection of texts about vehicles appeared with our train track. It has been really lovely to see the children exploring books and reading in a different way this week - there's definitely been lots of 'reading for fun' happening in class!

Stay dry this weekend everyone!! See you all on Monday! 

PS - Check your emails for an update about PE for next week.