On Monday, the children learnt all about the different types of dragons that can be found across the world and their various features. We watched a video clip about dragons which introduced lots of new vocabulary such as serpentine, leathery, mythical, wise and reptilian. The children were then able to use these words to describe the dragon in our story George and the Dragon by Chris Wormell. The children looked carefully at the dragon and then thought of their own sentences to describe him. They then wrote some great descriptive sentences in their literacy books.

Later in the week, the children enjoyed the story Dragon Post by Emma Yarlett, which is about a little boy who finds a dragon living under his stairs! The little boy does his best to look after the dragon, writing to various people to ask for their advice. The children had fun imagining what kind of dragon they might find in their house, what it might look like, what it would eat and the special abilities it might have. The children then wrote a fact file for their imaginary dragon, drawing it and then describing its features, its special powers and what they would feed it.

In maths this week, we have been focusing on doubles and linking this to addition. We used Numicon and cubes to explore doubling numbers and counting altogether to find the total of these. The children worked hard to write the number sentences to accompany their doubles and to use the addition and equals symbol in the correct position. This was a great opportunity to also practise our number formation! Later in the week, the children applied their understanding of doubles to double the dots on some ladybirds, drawing the correct amount to double the number and counting the total - it was really tricky doubling larger numbers all the way to 20!

During child-initiated play, the children have really enjoyed making dragon books, using card, paper and staples to create their books. They then cut out their favourite pictures of dragons and some children wrote sentences independently to describe them. Children have also loved drawing dragons and playing in the small world with our dragons, castles, treasure and knights. The children had a fantastic first swimming lesson of 2026 and our new Form 1s loved visiting the pool for their first Russell House swimming lesson! Travelling on the minibus, changing into (and out of) their swimming clothes and getting into the pool was all taken in their stride and they are looking forward to doing it all again next week!

We have had some wonderful Show and Tell items bought this week, linking to our dragon topic. The children have loved sharing their dragons, dragon eggs and dragon stories from home with one another and they have been very knowledgeable about the type of dragons they have! It is lovely to see their enthusiasm for this topic and how it has captured their imaginations. In art, the children designed their own dragon eggs. Using black pens to draw the outline and details, the children then added colour using pastels. The children explored smudging and mixing the pastels to create beautiful, multicoloured dragon eggs! The children used their imaginations to decide what sort of dragon egg they wanted to create and looked at the book A Natural History of Dragons by Emily Hawkins and Jessica Roux to learn about all the different types of dragon eggs that can be found. It really has been a magical week in Form 1!