We started Term 3 with our theme of 'The Gingerbread Man'. We practiced story recall, drew story maps, baked our own gingerbread men, practiced number bonds to 5 using gingerbread men buttons, and enjoyed thinking about our senses in relation to the topic.
 

We particularly loved using our gingerbread-scented playdough in the home corner and baking our gingerbread men in our oven "at 200 degrees", as advised by one of the children.

Winter
The Gruffalo's Child

We enjoyed exploring the theme of Winter through the story of the Gruffalo's Child. We retold the story, and created a Wanted poster for the Big Bad Mouse in our choosing time. 

Following our White Rose Maths modules, we focused on composition of the number 5 and learnt about capacity.

We recreated our story in the tuff tray, with the children choosing what the appropriate materials to represent the weather and the scenery. Our art lessons built upon the printing focus from last term, as we exoerimented with making animal tracks in different media. Children also chose to create our story characters using playdough. 

Exploring the theme of Winter, we learnt all about our 5 senses. We went on Winter walks to talk about what we could see, smell, hear, and touch. We all enjoyed doing a taste test to see if we could guess the sweet, salty, sour, and bitter flavours. We also learnt about shadows in The Gruffalo's Child and enjoyed playing with our own shadows and creating shadow art.

We've loved continuing with our dough disco. We've also started doing Dance in our PE lessons, which have encouraged us to think about movement, shapes, and transitions.

In Religious Education, we've been thinking about celebrations and why we come together to celebrate. We preapared and had our own New Year party, complete with food, presents, dancing, fireworks, and a countdown to midnight. We also spent some time in our reflection circle, thinking about how we can show kindness to others.

The Storm Whale in Winter 

Exploring the theme of Winter, our new story was about Noi in the Arctic. We enjoyed drawing Noi in his warm coat, and drawing the different things we saw in the story, such as a lighthouse. We have also been working on sounding out and writing words.

In Maths we have been exploring our White Rose Maths theme of growing 6, 7, 8 whilst practicing number recognition, 1-1 correspondence counting, and composition of these numbers. We also loved playing with our pom pom soup, exploring the concepts of one more and one less.

We started by making parts of our story from playdough. We then thiught about what we might need in the Arctic and started to make these things out of blocks (such as a sled for us to get around!) After learning some more about Inuits in the Arctic, we made model igloos and picked appropriate materials to make the ice ourselves, cutting out a hole for the door. We ten used our models to make life-size igloos in our outdoor classroom.

First, we enjoyed playing with our polar region small world and exploring all the animals that live in the Arctic and Antarctic. Later, some of our animals were stuck in the ice! We used lots of different tools and methods to try and rescue them. We thought about what Inuits need to survive in the Arctic and what adaptations they have made. We practiced putting on extra layers to keep warm in our igloo and enjoyed making hot soup and warm food in our mud kitchen to keep warm and safe.

In Computing this term we have been exploring using comouting hardware, such as screens, keyboards, and a mouse. We practiced logging in and out.

We loved making a hairdressers in our Wendy House, including creating a nice and welcoming space, working out how much to charge people, writing an appointment list, putting the names in order, creating a waiting room, and giving those waiting something to do so they wouldn't get bored! We also made several signs, including one for our 'Crystal Hairdressers' salon.