Maple Class - Term 3, week 4

Date: 1st Feb 2025 @ 10:56am

Wow, what a jam packed busy week we've had! 

This week our weekly focus has been Chinese New Year and the book we enjoyed reading was Ruby's Chinese New Year. We learnt about what the Chinese New Year is and how it is celebrated and we learnt that 2025 is the year of the Wood Snake and will begin on the 29th January.  The snake symbolises intelligence, mystery and renewal.  In 2025 the wood snake will bring new opportunities for growth and change.  We also read the story of The Great Race which explains why the Chinese zodiac sign years are named after different animals.  We enjoyed making our large Chinese dragon and performing a Dragon Dance Parade to parents before home time on Thursday.  Thank you to all of you who came to see us.  We thought the children and the dragon looked fantastic.  We have been listening to lots of Chinese music this week and we have used the instruments to create our own Chinese music in class. 

This week also saw our brilliant Ampney Crucis Literacy Festival return for another year.  We had 6 authors visit the school and Maple class was lucky enough to meet 3 of these authors - Hannah Shaw (author of the Unipiggle books), Emily Lloyd-Gale (author of the Mighty Maurice books) and Lois Kingscott (author of the Dave and Darcy books). 

This week in phonics we have learnt two new diagraphs - ai and ee.  We have practiced reading and writing words and captions containing these sounds.  

In maths we have been taking away from 5, taking away from numbers up to 5 and finding one less than numbers up to 5.  We also looked more at patterns and using 3d shapes to create our own patterns.  

We continued with our Samba music workshop this week and learnt 3 different notes - minum, semibreve and crochet.  We are now reading music and keeping to a pulse while all playing different instruments - the repinique's, curdo's, tamborim's  agogo's and ganza's.  Lee (the music teacher) has been blown away with how well Maple are doing.  

Well done to Felix, Leone and Della who were recognised in our Celebration Worship on Friday. 

Mrs Hopkins and Mrs Duffey attended the Early Years Conference at Cheltenham Racecourse on Friday where we were lucky enough to listen and be inspired by several renowned early years practitioners.  We have come away with lots to think about and a whole list of ideas for Maple Class! 

Have a lovely weekend everyone.