We learnt about which animals lived in the Arctic and how they adapted to living in the cold climates there. We thought the word blubber was very amusing! To help our understanding, we looked in an atlas to find the Arctic and Antarctica and looked at our class globe.

On Tuesday, we were surprised to find a visitor in our classroom. Knowing (from looking in our atlas) that penguins live at the South Pole, we were surprised to find one at Russell House! We decided we needed to help the penguin and so got dressed (by looking at photos of Arctic explorers and noticing what they wear) to embark on an expedition to the South Pole. On the way, we had to work as a team to complete challenges including ordering the icebergs to be able to jump across them, melting ice to free the penguins' friends and building a bridge to reach Antarctica. The children loved helping the penguin and have been playing lots of expedition role-play games in their free play!

We also looked at polar bears and learnt how important their icy habitats are for them to survive. The children were very interested in what is happening with the melting ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctica and are keen to help look after our planet and protect the polar bears! The children had a try at drawing their favourite arctic animal and writing a word to describe it. I am very impressed with Transition’s efforts in carefully forming their letters.

The children loved our phonics game this week, recapping the letter sounds that we have learnt so far this term; r and m. The children had to run across the playground, choose an object, run back with it and decide if it went in the r tray or m tray. There were lots of rosy cheeks after three rounds of the game and some fantastic phonics work!

Finally, we have been enjoying our physical development activities this term, including gym and dough disco. We have been learning the safe landing position for jumps in gym and this week we progressed onto performing a pencil jump off the equipment. We definitely have some future gymnastics stars in Transition. We have all been enjoying our weekly dough disco where we dance along to a song using playdough and our fingers. Everyone, including myself and Mrs Nelson, has been getting a good workout strengthening our fine motor skills, ready for writing!