In circle time this week, we took it in turns to tell each other all about the special people that we live with, and we showed each other the drawings we had made of our families. We also discussed how to be a kind friend, and the children came up with some fantastic ideas including; sharing toys, using gentle hands, and giving our friend a cuddle. We loved reading the book Sharing a Shell, where three sea creatures have to work together and protect each other after a big storm. We were curious about the anemone in the story, so we looked up some photos of anemones on the computer, and pretended to move our arms around like tentacles to catch food. After discussing how to be a kind friend, we made friendship bracelets for each other, practising our fine motor skills as we threaded the beads onto pipe cleaners. We also made friendship potions using rice, pasta and seeds, thinking carefully about the different ingredients we needed to include. The children made some fantastic kindness and sharing potions for each other.

During phonics this week, we have been listening to body percussion, thinking about how we can use our bodies to make different sounds. We took it in turns to create different sounds with our bodies for our friends to copy, including clapping our hands, stomping our feet, and patting our knees. The children loved coming up with their own patterns and watching their friends to see if they were getting it right. It has also been very exciting for our older children this week as they have begun their phonics lessons in Form 1 with Mrs Cooper! The children excitedly came back into Transition on Tuesday, telling me how they had been superstars and had learned the sound s. They were eager to tell everyone all about their new learning, and excitedly told us lots of words beginning with the s sound, including summer, Sienna and star. 

Our focus for mathematics this week has been on recognising and representing numerals to 5, with the children helping me to sort different representations into the right numbered hoop. When sorting out the bigger numbers, we practised our careful counting to check our objects were in the right hoop. During their play, the children were fantastic at counting out the correct number of bears to live in each house, and some children sorted them into colour families too!

It has been lovely to watch the children settle further into Transition, and to see their confidence grow as they continue to explore their classroom. This week we have been busy colour mixing in the paints, building mountain cities in the sand and investigating forces with the magnets. 

We look forward to another exciting week as we begin to explore our next topic, My Pets.