Adding a comment

Thank you for everyone who has commented on the blog so far. It is lovely to hear your views and ideas and the children enjoy reading the comments in class.

If you have not managed to add a comment yet or are having trouble doing so then please follow this simple guide

At the bottom right corner beneath each blog entry is a comments link.

Click on it to take you to the comments form.

On the comments form add your name in the first box and your email address in the second box (your email address will not be shown on the blog).

Leave the third box empty (where it says website)

Add your comment in the large box and click submit comment.

I will then be able to look at your comment and add it to the blog for the children to see.

 

Thank you

Mrs Saeed

Letters and Sounds

We have been working so hard on our phonics this term and we have now learnt all 43 phonemes in class.

Here are the phase 3 sounds that we know. Children, can you tell your mums and dads how to say each sound? 1

We now need to practise, practise, practise so that we can remember all of the sounds and begin to use them in our reading and our writing.

As a little bit of homework for half term try to have a go at the online ‘Pick a Picture’ and ‘Buried Treasure’ games to practise applying the new sounds. Can you score 10 points?

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/PictureMatch.html

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/BuriedTreasure2.html

Good luck sound detectives! Let me know how you get on by adding a comment at the  bottom right of this blog entry.

Thank you

Mrs Saeed

 

Owl Pellets

As part of our owl topic we have learnt that owls like to eat mice, shrews, voles and small birds and that they swallow their food whole or in large chunks.  Some of their dinner cannot be digested so the bones, fur, teeth and feathers are stored in the gizzard and coughed up later as an owl pellet. Today some of us became science detectives and had the opportunity to dissect an owl pellet to investigate what the owl had eaten for its dinner. Very carefully, we used tweezers and pointed sticks to tease the pellet apart and looked closely at what we found with a magnifying glass.  We discovered lots of interesting items including a whole mouse skull with front teeth attached, many tiny rodent bones, some seeds, bark, fur and even quite a large metal hook??? We are not sure how the owl managed to swallow that! It was fascinating! The rest of us are having a go tomorrow.

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Barn Owls don’t only live in barns!

Did you know that barn owls have asymmetric ears to help them to hear their prey or that they can open and close their ears using a pink flap of skin or that a group of owls is called a parliament? Well, our class do! We have been finding out fascinating facts about barn owls in class, reading the story The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark and learning to retell a report about barn owls.
To extend learning we were very lucky, yesterday, to have a visit from Mrs Barn Owl and her keeper Ian, from Wild Owl. It was a fantastic experience for us all, especially when Mrs Barn Owl flew across the room. Many of us were sure that we could feel her wings touching us as she flew over our heads!
We all sat really well listening to Ian, answering his questions and asking some of our own. Hugo was brave enough to take the talon test to check whether Mrs Barn Owl’s talons were really as sharp as we thought and he said that they felt spiky.  Ian demonstrated how owls have silent flight by flapping a pigeon’s feather, which was very noisy and then an owl’s feather which flapped silently.

The most important lesson that we learnt is that barn owls are not pets but belong in the wild and it is up to us all to ensure that they continue to thrive in UK.  To help owls to survive we can put up owl boxes for them to nest in and leave grass to grow long to provide a habitat for the owl’s favourite dinner;  the field vole.

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Chinese New Year

January 31st was Chinese New Year and to celebrate the Year of the Horse we made paper lanterns and decorated the classroom with streamers. We were very lucky to have a visit from Mr Xu who explained some of the customs that people perform as part of the celebrations, such as throwing fire crackers to ward off evil spirits and eating dumplings. He then told us the story of the Great Race – the animals that make up the Chinese zodiac. We held our own race and placed the animals in order just like in the story. Finally he taught us how to write the character Fu in Chinese which means good fortune or happiness.

fu_character1            fu_character1

Fu                                                                upside down Fu

 

In Chinese houses the character is usually displayed upside down on red squared paper or fabric on the door for New Year. It was a bit tricky but we all had a good go.

We all had a lovely day.

 

Chinese New Year