Unicorn Class Blog                     Term 4 Week 4                         Week Commencing 17th March 2025

We have loved learning about people who help us and emergency vehicles.

We were all very excited to have Jackson’s mummy, a real paramedic and her ambulance come to visit us. She showed us some of the equipment she would use to help people who were poorly such as a stethoscope to listen to the chest. We got a chance to press a manual pump that is used to check blood pressure. She showed us the numbers we needed to call if we needed an ambulance, 999 but told us we should only call this in an emergency. She explained that sometimes she gets called when children are very poorly and they have a very high temperature that does not go down with calpol and ibuprofen. We loved exploring the ambulance. We learnt the name for the special bed with wheels, in the back of the ambulance was called a stretcher. We took it in turns to lay on the stretcher. Jackson's mum showed us where she would sit to look after her patient and where the patient’s grown up may sit. We wondered who would drive the ambulance if she was in the back. Sonja told us paramedics work in pairs so she always has another paramedic with her who would drive. We were very excited that we were allowed to sit in the driver's seat of the ambulance. We were very high up, we got to hold the steering wheel and could see lots of buttons. Once all of the children in our group had sat in the driver's seat we stood at the front of the ambulance to see the bright lights. We also got to hear the siren once all the groups had their turn. We went inside but it was still very loud.  Some of us wanted to make cardboard mobile phones like the ones Sonja had shown us. We carefully chose and drew the shapes we wanted our buttons to be. We then carefully looked at the numbers we needed and attempted to copy them. We were very pleased with our mobiles and used them in our role play. We have loved dressing up as people who help us. Looking and listening to non fiction, fiction books and on the interactive white board, people who help us and their emergency vehicles. 

Some of us decided to make emergency vehicles using junk modelling, glue, tape, scissors and paint. Eliana decided hers was going to be a fire engine bag, where she could carry all of her pictures in.

We have enjoyed using the Play Mobil emergency vehicles and have been very good at using the sand timer to share and take turns, especially with the big fire engine with the extending ladder, which was very popular.

Outside we have enjoyed playing in the mud kitchen pretending to be families and going to school, digging for paw patrol, we have also been looking for dinosaur bones, repairing roads, we made sure we put lots of cones down first so we were safe from vehicles, we enjoyed using the bikes and rode around carefully following the cones and stopping at the pedestrian crossings so people could cross safely. We have also loved climbing. When we looked at the pond, we noticed that there was still frogs spawn that looked like jelly balls in there and the growing tadpoles inside had not hatched yet. We enjoyed the story, ‘A teeny weeny tadpole’, we saw how the teeny weeny tadpole changed until he was a frog and managed to jump out of the water to get away from the big bad fish. 

We enjoyed pretending the sand was the beach and the blue scarves were the sea. It was a very busy beach with diggers using their buckets to scoop up sand and putting it into the dumper truck to move the sand around. There were children collecting shells, carefully avoiding the diggers, dumper trucks and even dinosaurs. The people on the boats spotted fish and even a killer whale.

The whole school uses the Zones of regulation approach. We have been using our mini mes in our zones of regulation house, acting out different emotions and what colour zone we might be in whilst feeling that way. We also listened to ‘The owl babies’ and ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ and discussed how the characters might be feeling and what colour zone they might be in.

During phonics this week we have continued to play rhyming games, and play Georgie’s Gym. We are continuing to learn the words and actions to our Alphabet chant. We have been learning the letters ‘r’ (The rapid rabbit races.’) and ‘h’ (The happy horse hops). The writing cue we use to write the grapheme ‘r’ is ‘From head to tail then up and over along his ears.’ and ‘h’ is ‘From head to toe and over his back.’ We practiced writing ‘r’ and ‘h’ letters using our magic fingers in the air, using pencils and whiteboard pens. 

Our main Maths focus this week has been exploring shape. We have been talking about and exploring 2D and 3D shapes. We have been on shape hunts, looking at pictures and seeing what shapes we noticed, using the wooden and magnetic blocks. We named and described shapes using words such as square, triangle, circle, rectangle, corners, sides, pointy bits and round.

We have also enjoyed using the Mobillo, stickle bricks, blocks and playdough to make amazing creations including airports and aircraft.

We will be continuing with our theme of ‘People who help us’ as part of this we will be preparing for Mother’s Day and continue to make emergency vehicles. If you have any empty cereal boxes, milk bottle tops, lids or items that you think would be suitable to use, please can you bring them in.

Hope you have all had a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you soon.

Best wishes

Mrs Fenwick