Unicorn Class Blog                     Term 3 Week 4                         Week Commencing 27th January 2025

The Unicorn Class have been very busy this week preparing for Lunar New Year. They used red paint and collage materials to make a dragon's head. Some children choose to make shakers using junk modelling, pasta, paper and tape ready for the dragon dancing. We noticed that the more pasta that was put into our containers the louder the sound it made when we shook it. However, Jamie noticed that when his container had lots of pasta and was filled right to the top it then made no noise when he shook it. He then took some out and noticed that it made a loud noise again. Another child then commented that the noise was made when the pasta hit the side of the pot but because it was so full the pasta could not move and could not make a sound. This week we had the opportunity to watch dragon dancing on the interactive whiteboard and on Thursday we listened to Chinese music and took it in turns to try the dragon heads on and dance. On Friday we did dragon dancing on the playground using our dragon's head and a big piece of material. We enjoyed using the drums and our shakers to make music to go with the dragon dancing. We have also been making dragon puppets, we used our fine motor skills to carefully colour, cut and stick our puppet together. We have been practising writing letters from our name which we were then able to use for our puppet. 

This week we have loved eating and playing with noodles. Pretending to cook food ready for Lunar New Year, using chopsticks, putting money in the lucky envelopes and pretending to give them as Lunar New Year presents and using a range of decorations to get the home corner ready for the celebrations.

Our maths focus this week has been making comparisons with size and length, we listened to a story about a child's birthday and had to compare the size of the presents e.g. finding the smallest and biggest presents. We enjoyed playing with the comparing worms and going on an object hunt to find objects that were smaller or bigger than the different sized worms. We made comments such as “Look this car is smaller than your worm.”, “Look I've found the magnifying glass, it is bigger than your worm.” and “My blue worm is bigger than your worm but smaller than this orange one.” While we were using the spaghetti we found long and short pieces, the dinosaurs enjoyed eating the longer pieces.

During phonics this week we have continued to enjoy looking at and noticing rhyming in books, learning the words and actions to our Alphabet chant. We have been learning the letters ‘t’ (Tap the tall tower) and ‘p’ (Peek at the proud parrot). The patter we use when writing the grapheme ‘t’ is ‘Down the tower, lift and cross’ and ‘p’ is ‘From head to tail and then right round the parrot.’ We practiced writing ‘t’ and ‘p’ letters in flour, using chalks, pens, pencils and our magic fingers.

We enjoyed going for a walk and exploring in the walled garden.

We have been using the magnets to make a range of items such as a multi story car park, a police station and houses. The Duplo has also been popular. We loved making ramps using the drain pipes and exploring cars, blocks and small world people going down.

Next week we will do some more dragon dancing in the playground. We will also have a bird's in winter theme which will include making our own binoculars, bird food and going bird spotting.

If you have any empty yogurt pots or kitchen roll tubes please can you bring them in for us to use.

Hope you are having a lovely weekend and I look forward to seeing you all next week for more exploring.

Best wishes

Mrs Fenwick