As historians, we became detectives, and the children concluded their Mantle of the Expert unit on the Ice Age. They discovered how people survived by making tools, wearing fur clothing, and creating cave art to tell stories. The children enjoyed making their own simple tools, trying on fur, and drawing on “cave walls” with chalk and charcoal. We also held a council meeting to make decisions about saving the last mammoths. The children thought carefully about survival, extinction, and whether people or animals should come first.

As mathematicians, we continued our activities on place value. The children have been grouping and counting using practical resources and working with the place value chart. They are beginning to show more confidence in recognising tens and ones and in explaining how numbers are made. In Sumatra, we have been exploring the vocabulary of greater than, equal to and few than. We then used cubes, numicon, lolly pop sticks and dominoes to describe relationships between numbers. In Tahiti, children have been flexibly partitioning numbers up to 100.

The children have also really enjoyed their musical theatre sessions over the past few weeks. They have started to learn the first verse of You’ve Got a Friend in Me, practising their singing and actions together as a group. Their confidence is growing each week, and they are beginning to perform with expression.

In play projects, the children have been busy building, designing, and creating. Some groups have worked on making Ice Age shelters, others have been designing mammoth models, while others have used role-play to act out life as hunters and gatherers. These projects have helped bring our history learning to life and given the children the chance to collaborate and share ideas.

Home Learning:

Thank you to all of the children that have completed their home learning and returned it back to school in their folder. Just a reminder that home learning is distributed on a Friday and handed back in on a Wednesday. Please ensure that the children hand in their home learning to their class teachers in their home learning wallet.

Sumatra:

This week: Big Maths sheet 

Letter formation sheet

Oxford Owl online reading and/or Phonics book

Tahiti:

White Rose sheet (Place Value)

Spelling

Handwriting

Key Information:

We would like to invite you to our Harvest Messy Church session on Wednesday 22nd October from 1:30–2:30pm in the Dock. 

Messy Church is a fun, creative and family-friendly way of exploring faith together. It includes activities, crafts, stories and songs designed for all ages to enjoy. It’s not about being “messy” in the untidy sense – rather it’s about celebrating learning and community in a hands-on, joyful way. Our Harvest Messy Church is a special opportunity to come together as a school community, to reflect on the season of harvest, and to give thanks for the good things we share. It’s also a wonderful chance for children and families to connect, create, and celebrate together.

We hope you will be able to join us for this special event and be part of the joy that Messy Church brings to our school.