This half term our focus book is 'Oliver's Vegetables' by Vivian French.                                   

We have been thinking about the different types of fruit and vegetables and we looked at the vegetables which grew in Oliver's vegetables.  We thought about the vegetables which grow above and below the ground and we chose our favourites.

Week One

This week we have been thinking about gardens and we have helped to make out new reading corner into Oliver's vegetable garden. We made our own garden pictures with ladybirds,trees, flowers and ants. Our children who are getting ready for big school have also been practising writing their names.

Week Two

This week we planted our own cress seeds with Mrs Bettridge. We thought about what the seeds need to grow. We gave them plenty of water and put them in a sunny spot on the window sill.

We have been learning the sounds a and p this week in phonics. We used chalks outside to practise writing the letters. We also went on a name hunt on the playground. We are learning to recognise our names as we get ready for school! After we had found our names we wrote them using chalks.

This week also saw the return of our amazing story tent. Our tent has lots of lovely cushions in and is a peaceful area to read and share stories with our friends. We can retell our favourite storylines or predict what might happen in new stories using the pictures a guild.

Week Three

This week we have been making our own salt dough. Here is the recipe if you want to make it at home.

1 cup of salt

2 cups of plain flour

Warm water

We took it in turns to add the ingredients and then kneaded the mixture into dough. Once it was ready we used wooden letters to print our names. Next we baked the letters in the oven until they hardened. Come back later in the week to see what we did next!

The children really enjoyed fruit tasting this week.  We  tried lots of different fruits such as Mangos, Pineapple, Melon and Raspberries.  We thought about what they tasted like, thinking about if they were sweet or sour, crunchy or juicy, hard or soft . After tasting them all we thought about which was our favourite and why. 

Once everyone had tried the fruits we had ago at completing a simple tally chart by conducting our own fruit surveys asking our friends which was their favourite fruit and logging their replies. We then counted to see which fruit came out as favourite.

Week Four

This week the children have enjoyed practising the sounds we have learnt in the sand.  They told their friends which sounds they could see and then had a go at forming the letter in the sand with different utensils like a paint brush, cotton bud and a fork.

The children also enjoyed reordering the letters from their name using the salt dough which they made last week.  They loved showing their friends the letters they had made and matching the letters with each others. They then used their name card to help to arrange the letters in the right order for their name.

Outside the children practised their gross motor skills by throwing the beanbags into the different sized hoops. They then counted how many beanbags they were able to throw into the hoop and matched the numeral to the number on the number line.

The children have been practising the sounds they have learnt in phonics this week. They enjoyed creating a dot picture on the d sound.  They then created another dot to dot on the g sound.  They told me the sound and enjoyed showing other children the actions to go with them.

We looked at different types of fruit and vegetables this week including radishes, celery and parsnips.  The children then enjoyed making a face out of the vegetables, talking to their friends about which vegetable or fruit they had and which feature of their face they were doing.

The children have been practising their fine motor skills this week by using the tweezers to pick up the pom poms to go on the c which is the sound we have been learning in phonics.  We used big and little pom poms and we found that the smaller the pom pom was the harder it was to pick up.