Today, we were lucky enough to get a visit from Father Christmas and one of his elves!  He read us the story of 'The Night Before Christmas' and treated us to a special sweet treat each! We were very excited and very polite!

 In Science, we completed our topic of 'Animals including humans', by looking at our sense of smell.  We were able to use our past learning on our other four senses, to understand how we smell.   We covered our eyes and Mrs Brown gave us different things to smell.  We came up with some amazing new vocabulary to describe the smells such as, 'calm', 'strong', 'peaceful', 'pleasant' and 'unpleasant'.

 Understanding composition We used the rekenreks to complete the stem sentences: ______ needs ______ to make ______ We had to say the sentences to a partner and prove our thinking using the rekenreks.

 Today in maths, the children were sorting 3D shapes.  They were sorting the shapes by their size, colour and properties. It was great to see the children thinking about what 2D shapes they could see on the 3D shapes. 

 Today we explored 3D shapes.  We used our knowledge of 2D shapes to talk about edges and faces and the shape of them.  We compared them to each other and discussed whether they could stack or roll.

 Today we explored 2D shapes and spoke about their properties.  We sorted the shapes into our chosen criteria.  We chose colour, sides, corners, whether the shapes could be joined to make them bigger and we were challenged to talk about our ideas.

 Today in maths, the children were learning to sort shapes.  They were sorting the shapes by their: colour, size or properties. 

 Yesterday, the children had a visit from the SCARF workshop.  Katie who was from SCARF was teaching the children all about resilience. 

 The children explored resilience - persevering even if something is tricky and not allowing the negative thoughts to take over.  It was really lovely as we have the mantra in class of 'I can't do it...yet!'  and Harold introduced this to the children too! The children had to help Harold learn to catch a ball and they were so supportive of him, giving him ideas and sharing their own experiences! We especially enjoyed the 'I can't do it...yet!' party at the end!!

 We have been learning all about subtraction and realising how tricky it can be! Today, using our knowledge of the part-whole model and last weeks' learning where we used a number line to 'jump back', today we thought about the 'fact families' associated with different part-whole models and number bonds! For instance:  We know that if... '5 is a part and 2 is a part, the whole is 7' The fact families for this part-whole model would be: 7-5 =2 7-2= 5 2= 7-5 5= 7-2 We noticed that when we start our number sentences with a part, we have to make sure that we subtract the second part from the whole.

In school we use stem sentences to remember how to form our letters.

In English, we are working on ensuring that our sentences make sense.  This has meant that we have sometimes shortened our sentences, making sure that our words are in the correct order and that we have all the words we need in order for the sentence to make sense.  Lots for us to think about! We have also been thinking carefully about our letter formation, writing on the line, capital letters, full stops and finger spaces! With the story above, we completed dictated sentences for the first three pictures (with a focus on spelling and sentence order) and then became authors, finishing the story with our own idea and completing the story with a final sentence. What would happen next in this story?  Do you know this story? Can you retell it?  If you were the author, what would happen next?  What sentences would you write? An example sentence could be: The lady baked a gingerbread man and she felt very happy.