Maple class - Spring 1, week 5
Date: 7th Feb 2026 @ 8:26pm
This week we continued to think about castles. We read the book There Was an Old Dragon Who Swallowed a Knight by Penny Parker Klostermann and thought about who else lived in a castle. We learnt new words for jobs people had – messenger (carried messages for the king outside the castle) herald (made announcements for the king inside the castle) and marshal (in charge of deliveries). We learnt that carpenters made things from wood. We wanted to be carpenters during Explore and Learn so we used our saws to pretend we were building things in the castle. We also started making our dragon ready for our Chinese New Year parade next week.
In maths we have been learning number pairs to 6. We used numicon and the part, part whole model to find the pairs. Some of us write the pairs on a whiteboard.
In Drawing Club this week we designed a machine to collect food for the dragon.
In Phonics we learnt two new level 3 sounds – igh (as in night, light, high) and oa (as in boat, soap, toad). We also learnt the new tricky word ‘my’. We have worked so hard this week to read and write words and captions.
In music we continued learning the ukulele and we learnt about minims. We noted that crotchets are black and minims are see through and that they are 2 counts.
In RE this week we thought about how babies are welcomed into the Christian family when they are baptised or christened. We thought about the special items that appear at these events such as their outfit, oil, water from the font, a candle and a cross. We also learnt that babies are usually given Godparents who promise to always help look after the child.
Lisa from the library visited this week and read us the story of The Gingerbread Man. We loved her newly coloured hair and her fairy tale themed dress. We also love her story telling voices that she uses for all the different characters in the story.
In Key Stage assembly we read the book The Littlest Yak by Lu Fraser and Kate Hindley. In the story the littlest yak was desperate to grow up, but showed great courage when the teeniest, weeniest yak got into trouble. We shared times when we have shown courage.
In Forest School this week we popped on our wellies and waterproofs and braved the rain! We read the story Litterbug Doug by Ellie Bethel, and thought about the importance of putting rubbish in the bin and not throwing it on the floor. We then went on a litter pick around the school and within no time we had collected a bag full of rubbish. We then returned to the classroom and put it on a tuff tray and read the story Michael Recycle by Ellie Bethel, and sorted the rubbish into items we could recycle.
Congratulations to Ollie, Ottilie and Eddie who all received certificates in our celebration worship this week.
What a busy, but rather soggy week we’ve had! One more week to go until half term. Have a lovely weekend.
