As the weather has felt very autumnal this week, we have turned our attention to thinking about animals that hibernate. We did some research to find out which animals hibernate and which do not. We were also interested to find out where animals hibernate. Some make a nest of leaves, whilst others find caves or wet mud to settle down for the winter. We used some leaves and twigs from our autumn walk last week to create some fantastic leaf art, including hibernation homes for the hedgehogs. We made some great leaf crowns, and created our own hedgehog pictures using leaves for the prickles. We also explored different textures to create hedgehogs in the playdough, using materials such as pasta or lollipop sticks to create the spines. We loved making our own hedgehog bread rolls, and the children were really good at folding and squashing the dough to wake up the magic yeast. They tasted delicious!

We have read lots of lovely stories about autumn this week, including; The Very Helpful Hedgehog and The Squirrels who Squabled, as well as continuing our work on The Gruffalo. This week, we worked together to draw a giant Gruffalo on the floor, and the children helped me to label all of his features and emotions throughout the tale. The children came up with some fantastic adjectives, including delicate, slobbery and gigantic, and they remembered all of his features from the story. 

Following on from our Harvest exploration last week, the children were eager to get into the different courgettes and squash Mrs Nelson had brought in for us from her garden. We loved cutting up the vegetables and feeling the slimy insides of our class pumpkin. The children worked as a team to scoop out all of the pumpkin’s insides, noticing that the big pumpkin had bigger seeds than the smaller vegetables. We thought about why pumpkins have seeds, and the children decided to create an experiment in our growing bed, planting a range of different seeds from each vegetable to see which grows the best. 

Our maths focus this week has been on recognising numerals to 10. We played class bingo, working with our partner to count the correct number of conkers on the tens frame, then finding the corresponding numeral on our bingo board. We had some fantastic careful counting, and superb number formation as the children helped each other to spot the correct numeral.

In phonics this week, we have been practising sound talking words to help develop our listening skills. We made another batch of silly soup, this time segmenting our ingredients into their sounds to help us find them. We mixed together a m-a-n, a c-u-p, and lots of other yummy ingredients from around the classroom. The older children continue to thoroughly enjoy their phonics lessons with Mrs Cooper and come back full of excitement about the letter they have been practising that day!

What a busy half-term we’ve had in Transition, and how quickly it has flown by! I look forward to seeing you all next half-term, after a well deserved rest, as we begin to explore our topic Let’s Celebrate!