We started off the week by watching a video about arctic animals and finding out what life is like at the top of the earth! We learnt some new vocabulary too, including blubber and iceberg, which we’ve been trying hard to remember and use in our class discussions. To help our understanding, we used our class globe, and looked in an atlas to find the Arctic and Antarctica.

We’ve been learning all about polar bears and 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 help protect the polar bears too! We made a pledge to turn off our lights when we’re not in our classroom, save water by turning off the tap and try to reduce our use of plastic. It would mean a lot to the polar bears if you could try it at home too.

On Wednesday, we got to be Arctic explorers! We thought carefully about what we would need to pack in our rucksack, including a compass and some food, then wrapped up warm before setting off on our sledge! Luckily we had a willing husky to pull us along, so we could relax and enjoy the view. We used our telescopes and saw reindeer, walruses and a polar bear!

On Thursday, it was time to head south to Antarctica. We read a story about a lost penguin, and a boy who was trying to help him get back home. Transition were keen to help too and decided we should build a bridge to reach Antarctica. Everyone worked together to get the bridge built, using planks of wood, tyres and crates. Once it was deemed safe by the building team, the children carefully made their way across to return the penguin to his icy home.

In literacy, we enjoyed playing a fun phonics game called Arctic I Spy, where we had to guess which animal each child was thinking of, by listening carefully to the initial sound clue. Everyone was focussed and did very well at guessing the animal. They were also bbbrilliant at suggesting ideas for our letter sound this week!

We have had fun searching for, and placing penguins in numerical order and have continued to practise our subitising skills in maths, by feeding fish to a hungry penguin. The children were really quick at this, as they were worried the penguin might nibble their fingers if they took too long!

Our home corner has turned into a post office which we’ve been having a lot of fun with this week. The children have loved writing letters to their friends and practising writing their names on the envelopes, before buying stamps from the very friendly folk at the Post Office. We even painted our own post box to collect the mail!

Finally, we have been enjoying our physical development activities this term, including gym and dough disco. In gym, we have been focussing on landing in the correct position. We spoke about how Arctic foxes need to hit the perfect spot to catch their prey, and used that approach to help us land with precision. Transition definitely wouldn’t have gone hungry if they were Arctic foxes, as they were super accurate with their landings!