After an interesting ‘Show and Tell’ last Friday the reception children already knew lots of facts about snails. A non-fiction Usborne text entitled ‘Snails’ added to the children’s knowledge and they all wrote some interesting facts for their writing in class. Story recall of ‘Odo the Snail’ was the best writing of the week with most children writing two or more sentences independently.
Spellings this week were more demanding with a few year one words to learn. Many children missed their full marks this week through incorrect spelling of ‘tricky words’ and several forgot that a sentence starts with a capital letter in the dictated sentence.
Our science work involved observing and investigating the way in which snails move and what they choose to eat. My thanks to Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Riley who provided the majority of the snails and thank goodness it was a wet Wednesday morning. Each group had 4 or 5 different size snails to observe and photograph and then our findings were recorded after an interesting discussion.
Art and technology this week reintroduced the children to the artist Henri Matisse and his work called L’Escargot. Having observed snails in their investigation and made them in plasticine and salt dough as an early morning free choice activity, the children were convinced that their paper collages would look more like a snail than the great artist himself had achieved. Look at some of the pictures and see what you think!
Maths work was varied but sharing a number of items between two people (or giving them half) was a challenge for most children, hence some practise required. Sharing a bottle of drink or a shaped biscuit was fine.
The children have all planted a sunflower as they entered the Espresso Challenge.We will be taking care of them and keeping a diary to record their growth.
Good news on the tadpole front, 5 are alive and well and growing rapidly. No legs yet but wait and see, maybe next week!
Next week our focus is spiders. No live spiders please, snails were hard enough to keep track of!