On Monday, we watched the story of the first Thanksgiving on the CTouch board and the children learnt the story of the Pilgrims and the Native American people.

We focused on the theme of thankfulness and shared the things we are thankful for in our lives. The children were thankful for their families, their siblings, their pets and Father Christmas! The children drew what they were thankful for in their literacy books and wrote a sentence to accompany their idea.

In maths, the children have continued to learn about one more and one less, but the focus has been shifted slightly to secure their number recognition to 20. Through the use of Number Blocks characters, the children have been finding out that all the teen numbers have one ten in them. This has helped them to develop their awareness of place value. Through their play the children started to make their own large hundred square which led to lots of discussion about why numbers are written the way they are.

Children with a deeper understanding supported their friends to spot the patterns and before long they were all confidently chatting about what they could see happening. They took turns to write the numbers all the way to 100!

Linking to our topic, the children explored how Native American people would have lived and learned about the types of homes they made. This led to the idea of making our own class teepee which was lots of fun. Later, one of the children wanted to decorate the teepee so we researched the types of symbols that Native American people would have used to communicate with. We taped paper to the teepee wall and lots of the boys enjoyed using pens to copy the various symbols and explore their meaning.

The children have also found out about how Native American people would have used plants to make natural dyes to create bright and colourful materials. The children, of course, wanted to have a go at this themselves! Blueberries, carrots, spinach and beetroot were chopped, grated and then mashed into a pulp to extract the juices. The children then added some water to make a dye. White fabric was dipped in and the children are patiently waiting a few days before removing the material squares to see the results.

Form 1 have also been busy making dream catchers this week using a paper plate with the centre cut out as the frame. They then add feathers and beads for decoration. It was quite challenging to make the holes around the outside of the paper plate using the single hole punch, but they persevered and kept on trying! Once the holes were made they threaded wool through and across to make a web. The dream catchers are now above the teepee in the classroom and they look really lovely.

Our Pre-Prep assembly this week was led by the Russell House gymnastics squad which was really exciting. The children watched individual performances as well as girls and boys group routines. After the floor routines the gymnasts then showed us their work on the vault which the children said was very exciting because they were so fast and strong! 

 

Form 1 enjoyed having a Thanksgiving snack