We're Going on an Adventure 

Our journey blasts off with the class going on a bear hunt, will we make it back? The children learn the action story by Michael Rosen off by heart using the Talk4Writing approach. The children then learn about bears and create fact books, draw pictures and collages about bears and other animals they wish to go searching for. The practise using their phonics knowledge to write words and begin to write sentences as well as use describing words to make their writing better. We incorporate art and design by making traps for bears and shelters for our animals alongside paintings and drawings of animals that the children wish to learn more about. 

We then move onto adventures from around the world including Africa using books such as Handa's surprise and Amazing Grace. We will include lots of discussion about faraway places and adventures the children might have been on e.g. holidays, places they want to go or stories about other places they have read and talk about why they are different from our country. 

Towards the end of the term we will learn about knights and princesses, dragons and castles and think about how life was different a long time ago. We will use computer programs to design, paint and take pictures of our own suits of armour or princess dresses. We will investigate properties of different materials and explore concepts such as floating and sinking and melting. 

During maths sessions, we will learn lots of new skills including counting in 10s and 2s, number bonds and halving and sharing through the use of our topic stories and others such as Give me Half!, Cockatoos by Quentin Blake, and A squash and a squeeze by Julia Donaldson. 

We will practise and improve our existing skills such as number recognition to 20, finding 1 more and 1 less, shapes and measures through fun games and outdoor activities. We will use lots of manipulatives so show children these concepts in practical ways. Below are some great tools that we will use to help your children learn. Perhaps you could use some at home too...