Welcome back everyone after a wonderful May half term! We started the week settling in doing a lovely Draw with Rob step-by-step video on the carpet. The ship was a little clue for what we are going to be doing in our Summer Fun topic: pirates!!
We have been looking at the Cutty Sark and the Golden Hinde ships on Google Maps Streetview and seeing what sort of features a Pirate ship has. We have been extending this and independently labelling pirate ships in Literacy. Some of us even came up with Pirate names for ourselves and tricked their adults by writing their new pirate name on their sheets instead of their real names! In explore time we extended this by drawing and writing pirate treasure maps. One of the best parts about Literacy this week was playing Pin the Eye Patch on the Pirate instead of Pin the Tail on the Donkey!
In Maths, the children have been recapping how to subitise numbers represented by finger patterns and orientate a rekenrek correctly then pushing a number of beads with one finger. Our key sentence this week is ‘Subitise means say how many you can see without counting’. Our activity in our purple books is an Elmer the Elephant colour by numbers where the children have been subitising, matching to a numeral and reading the colour’s name correctly to get the right colour pencil.
We have been using a variety of representations in Maths, as well as using the new Rekenreks we are also using numicon, dice, whiteboards and whiteboard pens. First we rolled a dice, subitised the number and then found the corresponding numicon piece in partners. The children were absolutely fantastic at doing this independently and sensibly taking turns on the carpet. Outside maths was a scavenger hunt, looking at photos of fingers being held up and matching to the correct numicon outside, too.
Outside in Explore time, we have been playing dress up and reading books featuring pirates such as Peter Pan. We have been making pirate ships out of the construction materials and ensuring that we have the correct parts like the anchor, mast, hull and even a plank for the teachers to walk the plank!
Nursery Rhyme of the week:
I’m a Pirate:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/nursery-rhymes-im-a-pirate/zmmkbdm
How to help at home:
Support your child to subitise past the number 5 and identify larger numbers by seeing “5 and a bit”. i.e. When my eyes see 6 they see 5 and 1 more, when my eyes look at 7 they see 5 and 2 more
Go on a nature walk and observe signs of spring turning into summer. Discuss what you notice as well as what’s the same and what’s different.