This week our focus has been on life cycles.
Activities we have enjoyed include, alongside other child initiated activities, have been:

On Monday we focused on learning about the life cycle of a chick and we were excited to have the arrival of an incubator with ten eggs in. We learnt a lot about chickens, cut out pictures of the life cycle and made chick pictures. We counted eggs and in phonic focused on the letter 'c' and found objects beginning with that initial letter sound.

On Tuesday we leant about the life cycle of a bee and tasted honey on pancakes for snack. We learnt about how bees make honey. We stuck pictures of a life cycle of a bee onto paper and had a science experiment where we learnt about how bees spread honey (using wotsits and honey). We counted bees, made 3d individual models of a bee and pretended to be a bee during a movement activity. In phonics we focused on the letter 'b' and found objects beginning with that letter.

On Wednesday we focused on the life cycle of a sunflower. We made a giant sunflower for our display board, made handprint sunflower pictures and dung sunflower themed songs. We cut out pictures of a life cycle of a sunflower and stuck them in order. In phonics we focused on the letters 's' and 'f'. We also matched pictures of flowers to the correctly numbered pot.

On Thursday we focused on the life cycle of ladybirds. We read the story 'what the ladybird heard' counted spots on ladybird pictures and went on a hunt for ladybirds using our wooden numbered ladybirds. We played ladybird bingo and made ladybird paper plate craft. We created ladybird life cycle pictures and in phonics focused on the letter 'l'.

On Friday we focused on the life cycle of a bean. We read 'Jaspers beanstalk' and the story 'Titch'. We cut out pictures of the life cycle of a bean and put them in order, we talked about what plants need to grow. We went for a walk to visit the village allotments and talk about what we could see. We also learnt more about our chicks which are now all hatched and growing fast.

Most activities are available throughout the weeks for all of the children to enjoy.

We also throughout the week:

• Built train tracks
• Did a lot of mark making in various forms: water painting, wipe board marking, pencils, pens, tracing patterns
• Enjoyed movement, music and dancing
• Focused on fine motor skill activities such as threading and using tweezers
• Played lots of matching games
• Learnt about different 2d shapes and their properties and created different shapes with them
• Played lotto games and puzzles
• Had lots of free craft including painting and creating some lovely artwork
• There was name writing practice and practice finding and recognising own name
• Also a lot of listening games, songs and rhymes Along with counting games, songs and rhymes
• We listened to lots of stories and looked at books
• We counted objects and also matched numerals to quantity
• Enjoyed lots of fun phonological activities
  

Please see the links below for home learning ideas related to our curriculum.
For further home learning ideas you can look back through the previous weeks to find more ideas of things you can do at home.

Best wishes, Julia, Claire, Hannah, Lisa and Adam

Home Learning Activities
Plant Life Cycles
Plant Life Cycles 02