This week, we have continued our learning about the season of winter. We went on a winter walk around our outdoor environment and used our senses to describe what we could see, hear and feel. We noticed various signs of winter, including the cold weather, bare trees with no leaves and we discussed how we were all wrapped up in our coats, hats, scarves and gloves to keep warm! We also spoke about how some trees keep their leaves all year round; this led to us learning the terms deciduous and evergreen. When we returned to our classroom, we looked at some videos about winter. We observed different signs of winter, including snow, ice and fog. We also talked about celebrations that take place during winter.

We also explored ice this week, and discussed the freezing and melting process. The children experimented with ice in our messy play area; they enjoyed finding ways to melt the ice quicker, including holding their hand on it, and breaking it up into smaller pieces. We had lots of interesting discussions about how ice is made and why it turns into water.

In writing, we have been writing captions about a winter scene. We have been applying our Phase 2 and Phase 3 phonics by segmenting to help us spell, and have also been focusing on the use of finger spaces between words. We are continuing to work on our letter formation, as well as our ascenders and descenders.

In phonics this week, we have started learning our new Phase 3 sounds. We have been reading words containing the new digraphs (and trigraph) we have learnt this week and the children are doing a fantastic job of spotting these in words. We have also started to apply our Phase 3 sounds in our writing. 

In maths, we have been learning about height. We used the vocabulary 'tall' and 'short' to describe the height of different objects, and then practised sorting objects into groups based on their height. After this, we looked at ordering objects by height. We used the additional vocabulary of 'tallest' and 'shortest' when comparing the height of three or more objects.

Swan Class WB 09.01.23