Autumn 2 - Super Powers

In between celebrating Bonfire Night, Diwali and Christmas our topic this half-term is ‘Super Powers!’ We will be sharing stories such as ‘Supertato’ and ‘Super Daisy’. We will talk about people who are our personal super heroes and learn about the importance of keeping healthy to keep our super powers fully charged. Each week, we will be discussing a "Superhero of the Week" - starting with Marcus Rashford. We will decide what makes them a superhero and see if we can be superheroes too. We will also have a "Superhero of the Day" who will be chosen to sit on our special superstar chair! Towards the end of term we will have a Super Hero day; we will send more details nearer the time. The children will be able to come to school dressed as a super hero, this could be a known character or one they have created. Please don’t feel you have to buy a special costume for this, a tea towel or pillow case can make an instant super hero cape!

Friday 4th December

What a week we've had in RZ! Whilst there haven't been many picture updates, we have enjoyed our learning! We've learned all about everyday superheroes such as doctors, firefighers, vets etc. In our Maths, we have been learning about addition! Today, we had a fantastic time celebrating our Superhero Day! Thank You to all parents for getting involved and helping your child to get into the role of their superhero characters - we had such a great day! We made Superhero wristbands, Superhero stick figures and enjoyed some Superhero dancing!

Friday 27th November

After 2 weeks of Evil Pea troubles, we think we may have finally found our solution! Earlier in the week, we all created our own Super Veg Heroes! Then, we created a comic strip to explain how our Super Veggie was going to trap the Evil Pea. Today, we set our Super Veggies out on their mission - we have placed them throughout the Outdoor Classroom ready to fly away, find the Evil Peas and make sure they never bring trouble to our classroom again! Fantastic Job RZ - it has been so great to see so much enthusiasm, enjoyment and wonderful ideas all around the Evil Peas!

Thursday 26th November

In Maths, we have been learning how to use Tens Frames. We were given different amounts of counters and asked how many different ways we could arrange them on the Tens Frame, remembering that no matter how we moved them around, the amount stays the same. We then were each given 8 counters, and had to arrange our counters differently to our partners. We also spotted groups we had made on our Tens Frame i.e. 4 on the top row, 4 along the bottom. 

Tuesday 24th November

Those Evil Peas are STILL causing trouble in our classroom. This calls for a superhero...

Friday 20th November

The Evil Pea has trapped the broccoli in the ice. How can we rescue the broccoli for Mr Govender's tea without squashing it?

We thought of different ideas and tested them . We used a microwave, an oven and put the ice in hot water. Hot water was brilliant at melting the ice. Who is that we found lurking in the ice with the broccoli?!

We made a picture graph to show our favourite vegetables. Which vegetable is the most popular in RZ?

Friday 20th November

In our Moon group phonics, we had a selection of pictures with our newest learned sounds. We had a go at writing captions for these pictures. 

Thursday 19th November

HELP! The Evil Peas crept into our classroom during playtime and tied up Miss Zak! Those mischievous, evil peas! Our traps are brilliant, but we haven't quite captured the Evil Peas just yet! It looks like we need to make some Wanted posters. We've made a great start!

Wednesday 18th November

Today, we were each given our own Evil Peas to look after for our Maths activity. We have been learning how to subtract! We organised the peas into a row, rolled a dice and took that number of Evil Peas away

Tuesday 17th November

Our classroom has been taken over by the Evil Peas! Vegetables had been trapped all over the classroom, and even tied to the window! We spent our time enjoying lots of different Evil Pea activities! We even made traps to see if we can capture them overnight. Fingers Crossed!

Monday 16th November

Today has been a PSHE Theme Day - "Valuing Differences." We listened to the story, "We're all Wonders" and discussed that we are all unique, but all full of wonders. We then each wrote what makes us wonderful. After that, we listened to a Cbeebies song about friendship and discussed what makes a good friend. During Learning Choice time, we made friendship bracelets; read stories to our friends, played with people we haven't spent much time with before and coloured jigsaw pieces to recognise that we are all different, but we all come together as friends and as a class. During PE, we played parachute games and then did some mindfulness Yoga to remind ourselves to keep our minds and bodies healthy. We ended our day by watching some videos from the Greatest Showman and again reminded ourselves that no matter our differences or how we look, it is our kind hearts and words that are important. (Additional photos to follow)

Friday 13th November

We've enjoyed completing challenges related to this year's Children in Need theme, "Five to Thrive." We spoke about how each challenge is good for our bodies and minds to stay healthy. I have been blown away by the kindness of the children in our class; making special gifts for their friends and working at the RZ "Welly Wash" to help wash their friends’ wellies! We've also spoke about our feelings by finger painting, which was a great way for us adults to listen to the children open up about different emotions they experience! Everybody took part and we were all very pleased with our fully completed certificates!

Wednesday 11th November 

We have been learning about the celebration of Diwali. We have listened to the story of Rama and Sita, and spoke about what happened in the story. If you want to re-watch the videos at home, follow the link (https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/lets-celebrate-diwali). We have had various activities around the classroom, like Rangoli patterns and Mehndi hand art. 

Tuesday 10th November

This week, we have been learning about Remembrance Day. We talked about why people wear poppies and what they help us to remember - "Soldiers were in a war." "Our country, England and another country were fighting." Lots of us recognised the war memorial which is at Clitheroe castle too! We watched a video about Captain Tom, and looked at all his badges for his bravery. We then had a circle time activity to discuss when we are brave, what we do to be brave and discussed people who we think are brave - "I am brave when I look after my little brother." "My Mum is brave because she is a teacher."

Friday 6th November

We have been talking about ways to keep healthy. We know we have to wash to keep clean. We used pepper as pretend germs and watched what happened when we put our finger in the dish without soap and then repeated it with soap on our finger. 'The germs swim away when you put the soap on.'

We then used red glitter as pretend germs and noticed how they can pass onto an object and to other people. 'If you pass something around and we've got germs on our hands they spread.' 'Soap gets rid of germs.'

Wednesday 4th November

In celebration of Bonfire Night, we have made some edible sparklers! Earlier in the week, we spoke lots about how we keep safe on Bonfire Night and around fires in general. We spoke about how with real sparklers, we must wear gloves but our sparklers were made from breadsticks, chocolate and sprinkles! Stay tuned for a recipe video made by RZ to tell you how you can create them at home too!

Tuesday 3rd November

This week, in Maths, we are learning about the number 6 and focussing on recognising numbers by subitising.  We read the story "Ten Black Dots" which showed us all the different pictures dots can create. We made our own dot pictures - either by sticking them on a piece of paper or outdoors. Then, we spent time learning about different ways to show 6 in the part-part whole model, using dots. (Subitising is when you look at a small number of objects and instantly recognise how many objects there are without needing to count – for example a dice where we often recognise the number due to the layout, rather than counting them out).

Monday 2nd November

We've had a spooky start back to school, and have enjoyed plenty of different Halloween-themed activities. We've been looking closely at our pumpkins, which were kindly donated by Newlands Nursery! Inside, we have been drawing chalk skeletons; enjoying some spider maths games and using our Phonics to make some spooky soup for Fred! In Phonics, we read different words using the 'o' sound which were written on skeleton bones, and then brought all the words together to make a huge skeleton! It's been lovely to see all the children back and happy to be in the classroom.