Maple Class - Spring 1, week 1

Date: 9th Jan 2026 @ 12:17pm

Welcome back to the new term.  It was so lovely to see all the children after the Christmas break and hear all about the special things they wanted to share with us.

We began learning about our new big question this term “I wonder where people live?” by reading the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  We learnt that the 3 bears live in a cottage and how this is an old house built of bricks that sometimes has a thatched roof.  We thought about the houses we live in and discussed how different houses are.  We wanted to show our friends our houses we live in so some of us shared photos of our houses.  We took part in some Drawling Club sessions this week and we drew a picture of what we thought Goldilocks house looked like and what happened when we touched the magic door handle, we had ideas such as “the door and windows will disappear”, “a chicken will come out of the door”.

In phonics this week we have moved on to learning our level 3 sounds.  This week we learnt j, v, w, x.  We have been brilliant at using the new sounds to blend and segment words and even wrote some brilliant captions too.   Please practice  these at home with your children so as they can embed what we have been learning in school.

In maths we have begun learning about partitioning numbers and using the ‘part, part, whole’ model.  We were brilliant at finding different ways to partition.  We also discussed different patterns that we may find – in the environment, in nature, sounds, movement and how patterns can help us make predictions.  We discussed what prediction meant.  We worked in small groups to create a pattern of movement that our friends could predict and continue.  We also made our own repeating patterns using a variety of different materials – threading and beads, playdough and when in Forest School. 

In RE we listened to the story of Dogger by Shirley Hughes and talked about things that are special to us. 

We enjoyed lots of Explore and Learn time – outside we were introduced to our new ‘drawing shed’ and enjoyed expanding what we had already been thinking about around the story Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, drawing scenes from the story and adding words or captions to this.  We enjoyed exploring the mud kitchen and discovered some blocks of ice, looking closely at the leaves and bubbles of air in these, then we enjoyed trying to break these apart.  Lots of investigating was done using the magnets in our classroom and children enjoyed finding other magnetic objects.  We have enjoyed having the porridge oats in the tuff tray and thinking about capacity during out Explore and Learn time, building upon what we learnt before the Christmas holidays.

In our KS1 & FS assembly on Thursday we listened to the story The Lion Inside by Rachel Bright and Jim Field and thought about our new school value this term – courage.  We thought about what this means and when we have had to have courage in different situations.  We thought about how if we see others struggling, then it is good to encourage them and help them.  

In PSED this week we thought about the word resilience and what this means.  We read the story Tilda Tries Again by Tom Percival and talked about how we are all encouraged to have a “I can” attitude in Maple class.  We thought about different times we have found things tricky, but shown resilience in not giving up.

In PE we are doing Yoga this term and we began our ‘Arctic Yoga’ journey this week, being lots of different Arctic animals.

We wrapped up warm for Forest School this afternoon.  We looked at how the outside area has changed over the last few weeks.  We looked for natural patterns in the environment and found lots - the tree stumps, pallets, stone wall.  We also enjoyed hunting for bugs and and animal prints.  We used the magnifying glasses to look at things more closely.  We enjoyed going on the swing and playing in the mud kitchen, and getting nice and muddy!  We also all stood and listened to a robin singing beautifully in the tree.  We looked really closely and could spot it near to the top, with their lovey red breast showing. 

Well done to Olivia, Myles and Elsie who all received celebration certificates in assembly this week.