Prep Blog

Sportsday 2011 on PhotoPeach

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Bonjour to our Grade Prep-1 pen pals the in Sarthe department, France. We hope you like our song. If you would like to see where we are, this map shows our location.

The Prep room has been a hive of activity this term. During our morning Literature sessions we are busy working on forming all of the letters correctly and our handwriting is really improving. The children love our Reading sessions and are becoming independent in their work habits as they have to take responsibility for completing a set activity, without input from me as I read and work with a different group each day. During writing time the children are starting to write with greater independence as they take risks and have a go at writing unknown words. In Maths we have learnt about whole and half, telling the time on the hour, talking about the days of the week and months of the year, sharing amounts, discussing the chance of something which is impossible, likely or unlikely as well as revising and building on our knowledge and understanding of number. After our excursion to Ceres we have had lots of discussion centred around the environment and are focussing on learning more about insects and minibeasts. We are in the process of making a mural filled with many different types of minibeasts. We know the features of an insect and have made a big list of minibeast creatures. We have also talked a lot about lifecycles of different things and have enjoyed growing our own herbs, watching the changes as the seeds have grown.
We had a great day celebrating our 100th day at school. Our special morning tea was delicious and we had lots of fun making our special crowns.
The term is certainly going quickly, but there is still lots more learning to be done!

Making our toys that move. on PhotoPeach

Tomorrow is the day for making our toys. How excited is everyone? The answer is very. We have spent time talking about the types toys which we could make. Further on from that, everyone has designed their own toy taking into consideration the materials they will need. Our toy has to have one moving part, more if we would like. There are a selection of materials to use and lots of parents are coming in to help us make our toy. It will be great.

We are on the countdown until the end of term. Our writing is really starting to happen as we are recognising lots of words. We are really trying to write with finger spaces and use lower case letters as well as capital letters at the beginning of sentences and full stops at the end.

Maths has involved learning about mass, light and heavy, number work, adding and subtracting. Today we have started talking about money, recognising coins and talking about their value. We have learnt the days of the week and talked about different times of the day. We have measured things around the classroom and talked about length, short and long. We have learnt what ordinal numbers are and enjoyed having races to work out the position people came in the race.

Our reading continues to improve. This term we have had fun making class big books, writing and illustrating them. Everyone looks forward to reading groups and doing lots of different activities.

It has been a busy and productive term and we are achieving so much with our learning.

Welcome to Term 2.
Our Inquiry Unit this term is Toys. We will be focussing on the design of toys, why they are made from particular materials and how they work? Students will bring a toy from home and talk about how it functions, what makes it move and what it is made from. As the unit progresses the children will have the opportunity to make their own toy.

We will be further developing our speaking and listening skills throughout the term through role plays and different discussion activities.

This week we are revising our knowledge of numbers to 10 through playing lots of games.

We have started Guided Reading sessions and the children are working well in small groups.
They are enjoying reading lots of interesting texts.