Latest News from Holbeach Primary School
On Wednesday 26th May at 3:30pm, there will be an exciting opportunity to go and meet one of our Reception author/illustrator focuses- Dapo Adeola.
It’s free and you don’t need to book- just turn up and meet the creators of Rocket! If you have one, you can take your copy of one of their books to be signed or even buy their new book ‘Speak Up’.
A busy week with lots of fun learning in Purple Class. We read the story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and talked about healthy and unhealthy foods. The children used their phonetic knowledge to write their own ideas about what a caterpillar might like to eat. In maths, we revisited doubling and practised doubling for ourselves. We also took this opportunity to look at symmetry and painted our own symmetrical butterflies. We looked at the life cycle of a butterfly and explored the characteristics of butterflies, their different body parts and how they are different colours and patterns.
We planted sunflowers and beans.
Home Learning:
Fee-fi-fo-fum! There’s lots of measuring to be done! This week we have been exploring giants and measurement. In mathematics, we talked about how we compare lengths accurately, so we are sure which one is the longest/shortest. We practised this by holding two tapes together so that the ends matched. We explored the length of different things both inside the classroom and out. Over the week we used our measuring toolkit to practise measuring in a variety of situations.
In Science , we talked about what plants need to grow, how plants absorb water and why plants need leaves. We carried out a science experiment whereby we planted beans in a plastic bag, using damp cotton wool. We will be closely observing them over the next week to see if they germinate.
In literacy we wrote about our own magic beans! If you had your own magic beans what would they grow into?
We discussed how big we think a giant is and drew these wonderful pictures in Art.
Home learning:
On a blustery day we went outside and witnessed the effects of the wind. Although we can’t see the wind, we can see, hear and feel it’s effects all around us! We made use of a variety resources such as bubbles and wind wands to explore wind force and direction. We looked at branches bending and equipment being blown about. We made the sound of the wind such as ‘whoooooo’ and ‘shhhhhhhhh’. we held up scarves and streamers watched what happened.
We came inside and made kites to fly.
On Monday we started with a quick chat with ‘talking partners’ and we soon discovered that between us we knew quite a lot about snails. A non-fiction text about snails added to the children’s knowledge. In our science work we watched ‘Come Outside’ where they visited a giant African land snail. It also involved observing and investigating the way in which snails moved and what they choose to eat. Each group had 4 or 5 different size snails to observe and then we had an interesting discussion.
In Art this week introduced the children to the artist Henri Matisse and his work called L’Escargot.(The Snail) Having observed snails in their investigation and drawn them throughout the week they knew what a snail looked like. The children were pleased with their finished pictures:
Our class writing this week focused on snail adjectives! Look out our beautiful work:
Have you ever found a message in a bottle or been to an island far away?
Tom is a little boy who lives with his grandfather in a lighthouse. One day he finds a bottle washed up on the shore with an important message inside. It is from a girl called Katy who he has never met before. She has found herself shipwrecked on an island and desperately needs help. She is surrounded by dinosaurs and there is a smoking volcano in the distance. Tom makes it his mission to save Katy. With his trusty hot air balloon he sets off to find Katy. Will he make it in time? or will the volcano erupt and wipe out the whole island?
Reading Katy’s message sparked lots of interest in volcanoes. We used the internet to research images and videos of real volcanoes erupting. The children were fascinated to see the thick lava flowing down the sides of the volcano. Using clay, the children made their own mini volcanoes.
We made plans to help Katy, Tom and the dinosaurs find somewhere safe. The children were very creative in their ideas!
This week in maths we have been focusing on triangles. We learnt that all triangles have straight lines. We talked about whether a Dorito was a triangle, we decided that it wasn’t because its sides aren’t all straight. We looked at triangles in art and architecture. We learnt that triangles have three angles. We used our hands to feel the definition of an angle and played with the idea of creating rotations.
We used concrete resources to play around with: length of lines and joining three lines together.
A big thank you to all the parents that attended the recent workshop, where we discussed ways of helping reception age children develop as readers at home. It was lovely to see the excitement on the children’s faces as their parents joined them in class to have a special reading time together!
Please listen to your child read every day for 10 minutes. Reading for at least 10 minutes every day is great for your child’s happiness, wellbeing and, of course, for improving their reading and writing.
Ten tips to help your child take 10 minutes to read every day
Please bring your child’s books to school daily in their book bag.
