Maple Class - Term 4 week 3
Date: 17th Mar 2025 @ 9:59pm
Last week our focus was growing flowers and our focus book was The Lifecycle of a Sunflower. This also coincided nicely with science week. We looked at the lifecycle of a sunflower and compared it to the lifecycle of a bean and noticed lots of similarities … “they both start as a seed and then grow roots and shoots” … “they both make new seeds”. We drew our own lifecycle of a sunflower and had to think carefully about each stage – this was one of our challenges which was then extended into maths where we then discussed the sequence of the lifecycle using the language of first, then, next.
Due to it being science week we set up an experiment to see if plants do need water and light to grow. We needed one pot to be the ‘control’ so it had water and light. One pot didn’t have water and one pot was put in the dark. We’re looking forward to seeing how each plant grows and making comparisons.
In cricket we worked hard to use our communication skills as a group and with a partner and we loved playing Simon Says!
In Phonics learnt the digraphs ow (as in cow, town, down) and oi (as in soil, foil, coin). We practiced making and writing words and sentences using these digraphs. We have also enjoyed doing ‘speed spell’ to help us learn to spell our tricky words.
In maths we have been partitioning 7 this week. We used numicon, 10 frames, counters and the part, part, whole model to find the pairs to 7 with a partner.
In art we looked at the painting Sunflowers by Van Gough and painted our own, looking closely at the painting and also actual sunflowers.
In our Forest School session this week we enjoyed looking at how our environment is changing and looking for the signs of spring as we went on a walk around the school, we also continued to tend to all the things we have started to grow in our Maple garden.
In PSED we listened to another 5 children share their passions. It is always lovely to hear children share their ideas and talk about things that really interest them. Well done to all the children who have done this so far, we look forward to hearing the remaining children next week.
Friday afternoon saw us celebrate Holi. The children learnt what this festival is and got colourful.
We hope you all had a lovely weekend and we look forward to welcoming you to Maple class on the 20th March to see the children perform their Samba drumming music which they will have performed at Cheltenham Town Hall.
