This week in Beech, the children have been using lots of manipulatives to deepen their understanding of mathematical concepts. Year 1 have been working further on place value and played games using dice to make two-digit numbers. They have explored representing numbers with pictures as well as Diennes cubes. Year 2 have worked on division, sharing out cubes into groups of 2, 5, or 10. They have used repeated addition, pictures and arrays to show their understanding of division and multiplication.
In PE this half-term, the children are playing net and wall games. Here they are practising sending and returning a ball in the hall. These skills are essential for playing games such as: Volleyball, Tennis, Badminton, Squash and Racquet Ball.
We started looking more at where our food comes from in Geography. The children learnt about different foods that are grown around the UK and used an atlas to find different cities in the UK. We then explored how different foods are grown by exploring root vegetables. The children learnt how some food grows under the ground and some food grows above the ground.
In Science, we learnt all about life cycles. The children worked in pairs to create their own life cycle of either a human, duck or butterfly. We used the word metamorphosis to describe how animals develop and change after birth. Some animals look very different from their adults when they are born and some animals look similar.
In music, we listened again to Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams. We discovered that Vaughan Williams took his inspiration from watching a lark flying gracefully. We went on a sound hunt around the school to listen for sounds that could inspire us to represent using instruments.
On Thursday it was World Book Day. The children were amazingly creative and brought in a vegetable decorated as a book character. They looked fantastic and we were so proud of each other’s achievements. We spent time looking at all of the decorated vegetables from each class. Our school governor, Mrs Akester joined us in the afternoon to read a book.
