During Anti-Bullying week, we talked about what bullying was and the children identified this in examples we read together.  We discussed as a class what makes us different, and wore odd socks to represent this.  We got into a circle and compared our socks, looking for patterns that were similar and different.

This half-term we started to look at taking away.  We used ten's frames to support the children's understanding.  I made the children a number on a frame and the activity involved the children representing 1 less than my number on their ten's frame. 

Another focus this half term was looking at properties of 2D shapes.  As this is the first time we have covered this topic, we just focused on triangles, squares, circles and rectangles.  

• Square - Has 4 corners, has 4 straight edges that are equal sizes.
• Circle - Has no corners, has 1 curved edge.
• Triangle - Has 3 corners and 3 straight edges.

For the festive Forest Friday, the children had a go at making their own jingle bell by threading a pipe cleaner through a bell and coiling it around a stick.  We learnt the lyrics to jingle bells and had a go at singing this altogether.

As a different activity, the children pegged some pictures in order on a washing line to represent their daily routine.  This introduced us to ordering vocabulary like: first, before, next, after, last.

As part of our design and technology unit, we explored the differences between fruits and vegetables.  We discussed that fruits contain seeds and come from flowering plants, whereas vegetables do not contain seeds and can come from any part of the plant.  As part of the learning objective, the children had to use adjectives to describe how goofs look, feel, smell and taste. 

We incorporated some practice of safe cutting skills into the lesson and the children demonstrated great skills in slicing different fruits. 

As part of the lesson, the children go to try some new fruits which many of them hadn't tried before.  We had cucumber, mango, plums, avocado and blueberries.  We had discussions about which fruits the children liked and why, and if there were any they didn't.  Some new vocabulary we learnt along the way included: sweet, sour, bitter, chewy, dry and juicy.

To celebrate International day of Disabilities, we had some visitors come into school to teach us how to play seated volleyball.  The children enjoyed trying to hit the ball over the net, without getting off their bottom.

We really enjoyed Christmas jumper day, and even got the chance to show off our jumpers to Santa.  

In our maths lesson, we looked closely at patterns that we could see on our jumpers, and had a go at comparing them to other people to see if any of the patterns matched.  We had a go at designing our own jumpers too, thinking about patterns and symmetry.