Having learnt all about what makes a bug an insect, the children had a great fun finding and identifying plastic bugs on Monday afternoon. What excitement on Tuesday, a real ‘bug hunt’. With it being a cool day the bugs were well hidden but we had some great finds. The reception garden was even more prolific than the nature area with all its ‘bug hotels’ and woodpiles. Slugs, snails, beetles, spiders, a fly or two, a millipede, ants and some worms, all made good viewing under the magnifying glasses and visualiser. It was a noisy session with squeals of excitement and horror as creature escaped and disappeared into any nook or cranny to get away.
Wednesday saw the children heading off to Shepreth on the train. We were well looked after as four British Rail personnel accompanied us and saw us safely across the level crossing. There were some new animals to see this year, the favourite being the red pandas. The bats were lively after their fruit lunch and the meerkats and otters were on good form. Even the tigers were on the move.
Lainie did our talk and let us handle the giant stick insects and cockroaches and the giant millipedes’, their legs were very tickly! The African Land Snail was no great surprise due to our visitor last week but the slime was pretty impressive.
Two groups were lucky enough to hear the hedgehog hospital talk and meet a little hedgehog who had been rescued as a baby; hand reared and was ready to be introduced back into the wild.
On Thursday morning the children wrote some lovely thank you letters which we will be sending off to Shepreth.
Unfortunatley despite the warmth of the classroom 8 days was not enough for the butterflies to emerge. I will take them home and keep you posted!
In phonics this half term we have been revising and practising the ‘ diagraph sounds’ learnt in the spring term (the ones that are on the white cards in the word box) Please find some time this holiday to practise them. Being able to recognise them as a unit of sound is one requirement, the second and most useful is being to recognise them within words when reading (hence the word lists.) There is a good website that the children could play games to practise. We are currently working on phase 4 but Some children are yet to secure the sound in Phase 3.. In class we have played games like Buried Treasure and Picnic on Pluto. Try some on the computer at home over the holiday. It is: phonicsplay.co.uk/PicnicOnPluto.html
Having moved on to learning some of the Year 1 words during this half term, we revisited the reception key words and there are still some tricky words that will need revisiting in our spelling tests next term. The new spellings will come home after the holiday.
Our first week back we will focus on recycling. We will be collecting 2 litre plastic bottles and fruit juice cartons to make bird feeders and summer flowers. We are also collecting empty gravy granule containers.
Don’t forget the summer fete on the first Saturday back to school. We need lots of full tins and bottles for the tombola and lots of people to volunteer to help on the stalls. The money raised helps to fund all sorts of things from which your child will benefit so please make time to get involved.
Please make time to do some reading, writing and a bit of maths over the half term break,, but most of all have some fun. Try and get rid of any lurking germs and have a great holiday if you are going away.