Unicorn Class Blog                     Term 3 Week 4                         Week Commencing 26th January 2026

The Unicorn Class have continued preparing for the Lunar New Year. They used a big box, 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 shaken. This week we had the opportunity to watch dragon dancing on the interactive whiteboard. We did dragon dancing in the hall and 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 made dragon puppets, using our fine motor skills to carefully colour, cut and stick the puppet together. We loved playing with noodles and rice. 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. We have loved exploring lanterns, dragons, money envelopes, silk purses and spin rattle drums. Some of us wanted to use paint sticks to do observational drawings of some of these items.

Groups of children have been working together to combine different construction kits and small worlds, to create their ideas, and use their imagination to make stories around these. The dinosaurs have been popular this week, the dinosaurs have enjoyed bathing in the water tray and going to the home corner and having some delicious food made for them. 

Outside we have enjoyed working out different ways to collect rain water, splashing in puddles, using the mud kitchen, collecting sticks to make camp fires, pretending to go camping, digging for worms, using the balls, balance bikes and tricycles, playing ‘Hide and Seek’, ‘The Floor is Lava’ and Dragon Dancing.

On Thursday it was National Puzzle Day. We did a variety of Jigsaw puzzles, inset puzzles and problem solving activities such as working out what shaped key fitted the lock and how to open locks.

Our maths focus this week has been making comparisons with size. We have listened to a range of books and discussed the sizes of the characters and objects in the books. We helped Holly the hedgehog find things from the nature trail. We then collected different sized sticks to put in our wheel burrow. We made comments such as “Look this stick is bigger than this stick.”, “My stick is bigger than your stick but smaller than the ones in the wheel burrow.”, “This stick is the biggest, I am going to snap it so it fits in the wheel burrow.” We have also been building different sized towers and discussing heights, “I am taller than my tower.”, “I need to stand on this block so I can make my tower taller than me.”  

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 ‘i’ (Imagine itchy insects) and ‘n’ (Ned is near the net). The patter we use when writing the grapheme ‘i’ is ‘Down the insect, lift and dot’ and ‘n’ is ‘From head to toe and over the net.’ We practiced writing ‘i’ and ‘n’ letters in rice, pens, pencils and our magic fingers.

Next week we will have a bird theme. This will include making bird cake, using binoculars and making them. If you have any empty yoghurt pots, small containers or kitchen roll tubes please may you be able to bring these in. 

If you have any pants or socks that have outgrown your child please may we have these for spares as we are very short on these. 

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend.

Best wishes

Mrs Fenwick