Unicorn Class Blog                    Term 2 Week 3              Week Commencing 18th November 2024

There was great excitement at the beginning of the week when it snowed, there was fascination at the way it floated down and everyone enjoyed trying to catch the snowflakes, we were amazed how quickly it melted in our warm hands when we did finally catch some. We wondered why the snow that landed on leaves stayed longer. We loved looking at the snow through a magnifying glass and seeing the patterns that had been made. 

This week we have been enjoying using the dark tent, exploring light and dark with torches, reflectors and sensory toys. We were good at using the timer to take turns. We discussed night time and daytime activities and how some activities could be both such as brushing teeth and reading a book. We discovered that it is daytime when earth is facing the sun and night time when earth is facing away from the sun. We pretended that a torch was the sun and shone it on the earth globe, on the United Kingdom where we live and realised when we had our daytime Australia was facing away so was their night time. We loved Listening and discussing ‘Night monkey, Day monkey’ by Julia Donaldson. This led to discussions about Nocturnal animals. Here is a list of some of the animals we learnt were nocturnal; owls, bats, hedgehogs, badgers, foxes, wolves and moths. We also enjoyed listening to ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell. We have enjoyed painting night time and daytime pictures. 

During our SCARF time we listened to ‘Monkey Puzzle’ by Julia Donaldson. We then discussed, ‘Did the butterfly look the same as her babies?’ A family is the people who live with you and take care of you and there are different families. We took a look back through the book at the animals and how they looked different. We then thought about ‘Do we all look the same?’, ‘Do our families, the people we live with look the same?’ There were lots of discussions about who they live with, comparing different numbers of brothers and sisters and similarities and differences between looks such as, “I have the same colour hair as my dad but my Mummy and sister have brown hair.”, “In my family my Mummy, Daddy and sister are all taller than me but I am bigger than my baby.”

During phonics we have been learning a tongue twister ‘Peter Piper’. We enjoyed looking in the mirror and noticed our mouths made different shapes whilst we were saying different words but when we said the words beginning with ‘p’ our lips started together. We found lots of alliteration and enjoyed oral blending and segmenting. We have continued to point out rhyming words whilst listening to stories, during continuous provision and snack time.

We have had a maths focus on size comparison this week. This has included children helping Hollie the hedgehog find different items she needed during her walk, using Numicon, comparing and ordering the sizes of bears, finding different sized leaves/sticks and using the marble run. 

This week we have also continued to enjoy using the home corner, dressing up, using Lego, Brio trains and drawing with the white boards and pens.

During Forest School we discovered it was very frosty, the mud we usually walked through made a crunching sound rather than squelching when it was wet. We noticed there was lots of frozen water on top of a bucket. We could put items on top of the ice and it did not sink even though we could see water underneath. We then enjoyed using sticks to crack the ice. We noticed that the Forest School area had been tidied up for the winter this meant that we discovered new hiding places during hide and seek. Some of us wanted to make homes for animals to keep warm. We loved using the swings and hammocks. We all enjoyed our hot chocolate and snacks.

On Wednesday for Forest School please can you make sure your child/children are wrapped up warm again this week with plenty of layers, gloves and hat.

Next week we will be having a ‘We're going on a bear hunt’ and hibernation theme.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and looking forward to seeing you all next week for more exploring.

Best wishes

Mrs Fenwick