Wow – what a week! I think we are a tired bunch of Rabbits today. We started the week on a high with our performance of Barmy Bethlehem. I was so proud of how well the children remembered their lines, all the words to the songs and how brave they were to perform in front of such a big audience!

In English this week we have finished reading ‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’. We have been thinking about everything Plop has learned about the dark from the different characters in the story. We wrote in character as Plop and wrote a letter to his baby cousin Brownie. The children had to think about how we set out a letter and how to use descriptive language to describe what the dark is like.

In Maths we have been continuing our work on shape. Year 1s have been recognising and drawing 2D shapes and Year 2s have been counting vertices on 2D shapes.

In RE this week we have been thinking about ‘What is Advent?’. We talked about how Christians believe that advent is about preparing for the birth of baby Jesus. We discussed how Christians will have an advent wreath with 5 candles. We learnt what these candles represent and we created our own advent wreaths.

In PE this week, we have moved onto looking at attacking and defending. On Friday we practised passing and stopping in hockey. We then put our skills into practice by dribbling the ball and shooting to try and score. We had to concentrate to keep control of the ball!

Our school value of the month for last month was Love. At the end of every month we will be setting a homework based on our value. Rabbit class have produced some lovely work that shows us what love means to them and their families.

We have a very festive week ahead of us. We are going to the church on Monday for the Christingle service. On Tuesday it is Christmas jumper and Christmas dinner day! On Wednesday it is the mince pie concert. On Thursday we are having our Christmas party and on Friday it is the last day of term – woohoo!

This week we had a very exciting visitor join us in Rabbit Class. Elfie has returned from The North Pole, and is causing all sorts of mischief in the classroom! We have also gone fully festive in Rabbits class and have got tinsel and Christmas lights all over the place! The children did a fantastic job of decorating the tree – I’m not sure there’s any tinsel left in the whole school!

We have been very busy rehearsing for our Nativity, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t also been working really hard in our lessons too.

In English, we have been learning about expanded noun phrases. Expanded noun phrases add more detail to the noun by adding one or more adjectives. For example

• a huge tree
• some colourful sweets
• the large, royal castle

We have continued reading ‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’, and we reached the part in the story when Plop is looking through the telescope at the night sky. The children thought of some fantastic adjectives to describe the night sky and put these into sentences to write a description about the sky at night.

In Maths, we have moved onto looking at shape. The Year 1s have been naming and identifying 3D shapes and Year 2s have been looking at the properties of 2D and 3D shapes.

As part of our work towards becoming a Dementia Friendly School, we have selected Alzheimer’s Society as one of our chosen charities.  On Wednesday, we joined people all across the UK in dressing up as elves to raise money and awareness for Alzheimer’s Society. We discussed what memory is and how it works, we also thought about what dementia is and how it is related to memory. We did some activities that helped us to understand how we need our memory for our daily lives, how the brain is used in our day-to-day lives for different tasks and about dementia and how this may affect the memory of those people living with it.

In Science we have continued our work on the seasons. This week we thought about what the weather is like in the different seasons. We thought about what clothes you would need to wear in each season and what things you might need.

We have a busy week ahead of us next week with the performance of our Nativity on Monday at 2pm & 6pm. We have been practising really hard and can’t wait to perform it for you all. We will also be going to watch the pantomime on Wednesday – oh yes we are!

In English this week we have gone back to our class book ‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’. We have read up to the part of the story when Plop watches the fireworks. We used our senses to describe the fireworks. We started the week listening to a poem called ‘Fingers’ from ‘A Great Big Cuddle’, we then used the model of the poem to write our own about fireworks. Year 1s had to focus on using ‘and’ to join words, and Year 2s had to include adverbs in their poem.

In Maths this week, the Year 1s have been looking at subtraction. They have been subtracting by taking away/ crossing out and subtracting by counting back on a number line.

The Year 2s have been learning ways to add two-digit numbers together. We looked at using the base 10 equipment to help us and then moved onto written column addition.

On Wednesday this week we took part in ‘No Pens Day’, it was a chance for the children to put their pens down, talk, listen and take part in lots of pen/pencil-free activities, all while raising awareness for Speech and Language UK.

Rabbit Class LOVE show and tell so we took some time this morning to share and listen to each other.

Then we learned some sign language, we worked out how to sign our names and some of us even tried to start using sign language to communicate secret messages!

We practised ‘What’s your name?’ and then practised signing our names. Check out the videos below to see how we got on…

What’s your name?

Signing our names

For Maths, we got into partners and each person had to cut out six 2D shapes. We sat on the carpet back to back, and one partner had to make a picture with the shapes, we then had to describe to our partner where to place their shapes and they had to try and make the picture the same without looking!

In Geography, we continued our work on ‘Hot and Cold Places’. We explored the features you may find in three different locations: Antarctica, a hot desert and a rainforest.

In Science, we talked about the different seasons. We thought about how we would describe the weather and we also talked about what happens to the trees in different seasons.

Homework this week is to practise the songs and words for the nativity. The lyrics have been stuck into homework books and can also be found by clicking on the link above. Spellings for Year 1s are /er/ as in herb & /ir/ as in bird, Year 2s spellings are /y+oo/ as in flute and /y+oo/ as in statue. The handwriting sheet has been stuck into homework books but can also be found by clicking on the link above.

Next week, we will be doing our final practises for the Nativity play and we will be joining people all across the UK in dressing up as elves to raise money and awareness for Alzheimer’s Society on Wednesday 4th December – we will be in the full festive spirit by Friday!

A reminder that forest school will be on Thursday next week, so everyone should come in PE kit on Tuesday and Year 1 should come in forest school clothes on Thursday.