Maple class - Spring 1, week 2
Date: 18th Jan 2026 @ 9:22pm
This week we read Emma Jane’s Aeroplane by Katie Haworth and Daniel Rieley and looked at a map of the world, and our globe, to find out where she had been. We talked about the different continents and Joey enjoyed singing the continents song to us, which we are all now trying to learn! Lots of us tried to make our own areoplanes during Explore and Learn and there was lots of creativity in the creative area. We were very excited to do Drawing Club again and created magic for Emma Jane.
In phonics we have learnt more new level 3 sounds this week – y, z, zz. qu and ch. We also learnt two new tricky words – ‘he’ and ‘she’ and practiced spelling the level 2 tricky words ‘the’ and ‘to’. We have demonstrated fabulous letter formations this week and have used writing for different reasons in provision such as labelling construction creations we wanted to keep.
In maths this week we have been partitioning, adding and finding one more. We have shown super understanding and demonstrated brilliant understanding in the continuous provision. We did amazing partitioning of 2, 3 and 4 and matched dominos to number sentences. During our shape and space sessions we through about 2d and 3d shapes and used these shapes to create repeating patterns and enjoyed creating our own for our friends to continue.
In music this week we had out first ukulele music session with Leigh. We learnt how to hold it and how to play it.
This week in RE we thought about why many Christians believe that children are special to God. Our ideas were that he made the world for us, he loves us all and he made us. We read the story from the bible “Jesus and the Childre” (Mark 1:13:16). We discussed how the bible is a special book for Christians and how you will find bibles in a church. We learnt that the 12 disciples were Jesus’ special friends. The disciples told the people to stop bringing their children to Jesus to bless them and this made Jesus angry. Jesus said that everyone is welcome in God’s family and he said “let the children come to me, don’t keep them away. God’s kingdom belongs to people like them… Anyone who will not receive God’s kingdom like a little child will never enter it.” Then he took the children in his arms and placed his hands on them to bless them.
In PSED this week we re read Tilda Tries Again by Tom Percival and thought about how we can be resilient when building and creating. We then used the construction toys to either work independently or in a small group. Ollie adapted his design of an aeroplane several times, adding more parts, such as a propeller, wheels and seats for the passengers. BeaBea showed wonderful resilience and altered her design using K-Nex when she came up against problems reflecting by saying “I had to change the wings as it was too long and too floppy. I had to add some bits and bobs”.
We continue to love our Dough Disco sessions on a Thursday and Friday and at the end we always finish with a Play Dough Challenge – this week it was creating 2d and 3d shapes and also making Emma Jane’s Aeroplane!
In Expressive Arts and Design we used the natural rubbings we created last week, using wood, leaves, stone, pebbles and twigs, to make a class collage of the 3 bears cottage.
We ended our week with Forest School and enjoyed the sunshine rather than the rain we encountered last week! We enjoyed sitting and listening to the bird songs we could hear, and heard another robin, remembering the one we heard last week. We looked at the three books The Little Book of Garden Bird Songs, The Little Book of the Dawn Chorus and The Little Book of Woodland Bird Songs, pressing the buttons and listening to all the different sounds different birds make, commenting on if we could hear them and our favorites. We also continued to plant more of our bulbs that we have got from Bulbs4Kids, and noticed that the ones we planted before Christmas have already started to come up. We can’t wait to see them when they are fully grown in the spring and summer.
