Year R blog:
In Year R we have just started our second half term of school! We have been using all of the key skills we learnt last half term, including relationship building, orange phase phonics sounds and numbers 1-5 as a foundation in order to move our learning forwards.
This term in Year R we learning about different religions and cultures and their special celebrations such as the Hindu festival of lights - Diwali, and the Christian celebration - Christmas! We will be doing lots of cross-curricular activities to fully immerse ourselves in this learning experience.
Last week we focussed our learning on Diwali. In writing we learnt all about the story of Rama and Sita and looked at some photographs of people celebrating Diwali and discussed the beautiful colours, lights and lanterns. Then we used our phonics knowledge to practise sounding out and writing some Diwali key-words like - light, rice and family.
In Maths we have been learning all about the number 6 - including how to write the numeral and word, counting objects to 6, ordering numbers to 6, thinking about where it fits on the number line (what numbers are either side of it - one more, one less), and thinking about number bonds to 6. We have done this through lots of hands-on activities such as sticking 6 stickers on a 10s-frame, counting 6 objects to put onto our dinner plate and using colourful sand- similar to that used in Diwali celebration - to write the number 6 with our fingers.
In our Expressive Arts and Design lessons we learnt all about primary colours and how we can mix them to make secondary colours! We explored mixing colours in different forms from food dye in water, chalk and liquid paint. Then we made some colourful pictures to represent the colourful nature of Diwali.
This week in our Understanding the World sessions we have been focusing on Science. We have explored the properties of different materials, discussing which material would be suitable for making Diva Lamps linked to Diwali. We had a go at making these using playdough.
