Unicorn Class Blog                     Term 3 Week 5                         Week Commencing 5th February 2024

This term we have enjoyed using the calendar and five frames to do a count down to see how many sleeps until the school holidays. During the school holidays there will be Chinese New Year which is also known as Lunar New year, Shrove Tuesday (pancake day) and Valentine’s day. When there were 10 more sleeps to go Harper pointed out that there were 2 lots of 5 to go. There have been lots of children making comments and discussions related to the five frames and how many sleeps to go. This week we have particularly enjoyed doing activities related to these festivals. We continued to enjoy dragon dancing using our dragon head, sheet and musical instruments, playing ‘What’s the time Mr Dragon?’ and Chinese dragon musical statues. We pretended that we were dragons moving to the beat, when the music played quickly we did quick dancing and then when it played slowly we did slow music. When the music stopped we stopped moving and kept very still like a dragon statue. We also enjoyed the rain and pretended the puddles were a river and we were the animals from the Chinese New Year story having a race through the river. The puddles also became a river from the story ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. There was lots of splashing, sploshing and jumping in them.

We made salt dough and then shaped and painted it to make spring rolls for our home corner. The spring rolls were not only used as play food but Erin and Callie used their good imagination and decided to use them as golden bricks for making a castle. We enjoyed using uncooked rice to make patterns, practising letters, pouring and making meals.

We enjoyed eating pancakes, we had the choice of banana, orange and honey for our toppings. Sliced banana and honey were the most popular toppings. Some of us preferred to have a plain pancake. During PE we pretended that the bats were frying pans and that the circle floor spots were pancakes. We held the bat in our hand and moved around the playground in different ways, we also attempted to toss our pancakes and catch them. Catching them was very challenging but we enjoyed trying. 

We have enjoyed cutting out hearts, painting hearts, and making cards. There were lots of creative ideas for deciding what to use and how to make cards. 

We used shapes to make dragons we were very proud of, we explored and discussed the properties of squares, rectangles, circles and triangles. Then decided what would be good for different parts of the dragon such as, “This shape looks like wings”, “My dragon is a sleeping dragon. I have used these curvy shapes to make a circle and it looks like the dragon is all curled up asleep. I am going to make another one, then I will have 2 sleeping dragons”,  “Look, the straight edges are together” and “I think the triangles look like wings”. We used cubes to make colour patterns for dragon’s bodies. We have been exploring the Chinese symbols used for numbers. We have continued to enjoy number songs and nursery rhymes.

We enjoyed sharing and discussing books. We were kindly given some very large books that we have been enjoying turning the pages carefully, sharing and discussing the pictures, characters in the story, what was happening and noticing some of the letters and words in the books. We have continued to enjoy rhyming books, noticing rhyming words within books and joining in with repeated refrains. We have been good at listening to environmental sounds, particularly planes that we have heard but been unable to see because they are flying above the clouds. Also listening to the birds singing. This week we have continued to enjoy learning our alphabet chant and actions, taking turns to use the names of the letters one day then the sounds the next. Last week we had a focus on ‘s’ and ‘a’ . This week it has been ‘t’ and ‘p’. 

We have been discussing ways that we can care for our classroom and why it is important. We had some really good ideas such as, “Tidy our toys so that we do not trip over them like Daddy pig in Peppa pig”, “We have to look after our toys so they do not get lost”, “We need to put toys back in their special homes”. We then chose an area of the classroom that we would like to be the helping hands for and stuck our picture on a five frame for that area. We enjoyed looking at the pictures which were also on the sheet with the five frames as to what the area should look like when it is tidy. At tidy up time we have been working together to make our area look tidy.

During Forest School Libby showed us an old bird’s nest that she had taken out of her bird box from home. We were very fascinated by the way that the bird had used feathers and moss to make a cosy nest for its eggs and baby birds when they hatched. We were also amazed that they would have used their beaks and claws to build it. Some of us used the end of feathers and brushes to paint pictures. Nolan, Jamie and Alfie were very interested in using the hammer and nails, they listened very carefully, followed the instructions for hammer safety and were very happy and proud of the results. There were lots of muddy puddles that we enjoyed pouring with, digging, pushing the cars through, jumping and splashing in. We were keen to dig for worms and moved a log to see what minibeasts we could find. We discovered that when we moved the log there were lots of little worms under and 1 slug. We were interested in holding the worms which wriggled a lot. We were very interested in the slug, particularly the eyes at the end of their antenna and the smaller antennae below that they used to feel and taste. The swings and hammock were very popular again this week.

To make our indoor fireworks experiment we gently mixed oil and food colouring in a bowl and then carefully poured it into a bottle of warm water to explore what happened. We were very excited to watch our colourful fireworks display and made lots of comments about what was happening such as, “Ohh, look at my colourful fireworks”, “The food colouring is sinking down”, “Look the oil went down and now it is floating at the top”. Some of us had predicted that the oil would sink to the bottom of the bottle so we were surprised when it went down then came back up. We wondered what would happen if we shook the bottle. We discovered once we shook the bottle the whole of the liquid changed colour then the oil separated and floated to the top again. We noticed that when we came to school the next day the liquid was still the same colour and the oil was still floating at the top.

This week we have also enjoyed using cloths, pegs and blocks to make and fix dens, houses, castles and towers. Moonie made a tower that a fairy was trapped inside and that needed rescuing. The cars, trains, fire station, fire engines, castle, knights, horses, kings, queens, princes and princesses have also been popular. We enjoyed using playdough, tools and cutters to make lots of different shapes. We enjoyed making and playing shops. We made a sign to advertise what was being sold in the shop and that it was open. 

The week after the school holidays we will be exploring travel. If your child/children has a book or pictures about travel they are welcome to bring them in for us to share.

I hope you all have a wonderful and restful time during the school holidays and I look forward to seeing you all after the school holidays ready for more exploring. 

Best wishes

Mrs Fenwick