We have had an excellent last week of term. The children worked so hard right up to the end of today. In maths, Mr Short has been helping us to learn position and direction. We now understand what right, left, anticlockwise, clockwise, a quarter turn, a half turn and a full turn are. We had a lot of fun outside trying to move following this vocabulary. Mr Short also moved all of our decks in the classroom to make a maze and we had to give our buddy clear instructions to guide them through the maze successfully. We made a map incorporating places and hazards and then wrote directions using our position and directional language to navigate a route across our maze. In English, we wrote a setting description based on a beautiful illustration from our class book, Zeraffa Geraffa. We worked hard on our descriptive phrases and expanded nouns and we were very proud of our writing. Our art lessons this week explored patterns in nature and we have looked closely at the pattern on giraffe skin. Firstly, we learnt how to shade in different ways using techniques such as stippling, contouring and blending. We also looked at how to shade in darker and lighter ways and then tried the same shading techniques in other media. We then drew our own large outline of a giraffe neck and head and then added in the pattern utilising our shading skills. The end products were very impressive and all very individual. We considered all the plants that we now know from either seeds or bulbs in science and recorded our knowledge on a mind map and furthered our knowledge by completing a quiz.

Sadly this week, we have said goodbye to David who is returning to America. We will all really miss him, but we hope he and his family have a safe journey and that David thoroughly enjoys his new school. To wish him well, we had a yummy snack time, when Mrs Routledge and Barney made us an edible owl out of healthy fruit and vegetables. It lasted about 2 minutes!

Below is a video of David's leaving card.

Happy Holidays!

Maple Class