They loved hearing the exciting story of Prince Rama, Princess Sita and the demon king, Ravana. After watching a shadow puppet retelling of this story, the children then wrote a speech bubble for one of the characters. The children were brilliant at imagining what the characters might be saying and they shared their ideas with one another. 

We have also learnt about all the various ways Diwali is celebrated around the world and the traditions that people follow. The children discovered that fireworks and lights play an important part of Diwali and watched a clip following a little girl celebrating with her family. We had fun making rangoli patterns on the floor using chalk and made a large whole class rangoli pattern using coloured sad, lentils and gems.  Some children enjoyed drawing mehndi designs on card hands and writing Diwali cards. All the children have loved  playing in the roleplay house that is decorated for Diwali with fairy lights and photographs. The children gave the house a good clean as this is traditional to do during Diwali and pretended to prepare delicious meals.

In maths this week, we have been practising the skill of subitising. This is the ability to recognise an amount without the need to count. Dice patterns are one example of when we use this skill. We looked at different amounts of coloured bricks and I asked the children, What do you see? and the children were able to subitise amounts up to 5 easily. I then asked the children, How do you see it? This is the beginning of understanding the concept of number composition, that numbers can be made up of other numbers. The children were encouraged to explain their mathematical thinking by saying, I see 4, I see 2 blue bricks and 2 red bricks. We then took our lesson outside and went on a subitising hunt around Russell House! The children spotted groups of leaves, branches on trees, pebbles, benches and even sheep. They were able to subitise the amount they could see and then talk about the groups within that. We took lots of photographs of what we found.  

The children have loved making their own Diwali clay divas this week. The children learnt about two methods to make the clay divas, one was the coil method and the other was the pinch pot method. The children could choose which technique they would like to use and some even found their own way to make a pot! The children made sure their diva was the correct size for their tealight to sit in and was the traditional shape. The following day the children painted their divas with pearlescent paint and added some sparkly gems using a glue gun.

Once they were dry, we sat on the carpet and carefully lit our tealights. It felt magical when we turned the classroom lights off and we were surrounded by twinkly firelights and the lights of our divas. We watched the story of Rama and Sita one more time and put a fireworks display on the CTouch.