This week, we have been learning all about minibeasts. We looked at many common minibeasts that can be found in our gardens, and made observations about their features, including how many legs and wings they have. The children have enjoyed exploring minibeasts further in our ‘Minibeast Investigation Lab’ role play area, and have also taken their interests outside, searching for minibeasts in our outdoor environment!
To support our learning, we read the story ‘Superworm’ by Julia Donaldson. The children enjoyed discussing the different characters in the story, and were able to recall the beginning, middle and end.
We created our own minibeasts by using our hands to manipulate playdough into our desired shape. We added details using different tools and resources, thinking carefully about the characteristics of our chosen minibeast. We discussed the minibeasts we had made, recalling our knowledge to help us describe them. The children thoroughly enjoyed this activity!
In writing, the children have been writing Phase 3 captions/simple sentences about the minibeast they created. We have been continuing to work on our use of finger spaces between words, and some of us are now challenging ourselves to put a full stop at the end of our sentence.
In phonics, our focus has been to read longer words containing our Phase 3 sounds. We have been using the skill of ‘chunking’ to break words up into two or three parts, before blending to read the whole word. E.g. sun/set and fan/tas/tic. The children are becoming more confident when applying this skill in their independent reading.
In Maths, we have been learning about number bonds. We used part-whole models to help us find number bonds within 6. We split the cubes in different ways to make our desired number, before writing the number sentences to match.
