Our story this week was 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff.' We read the story and focused on using expression for the characters speech. The children then had to identify the speech and match it to the character. They practised using a deep growly voice for the troll, a small quiet voice for Little Billy Goat, a normal voice for Middle Billy Goat and a loud voice for Big Billy Goat. The children really loved this story and enjoyed re-enacting it in our small world role-play area with the troll and the bridge and the three goats. They were using the vocabulary 'trip trap, trip trap' when the goats went over the bridge. They used good expression when pretending to be the characters.

The Billy Goats called us up and asked us to solve their problem of the broken bridge. As architects used our critical thinking skills to make a plan and select materials. We selected the type of bridge we would like to build form a series of pictures. We then discussed the different materials our Duplo, Stickle Bricks and wooden blocks were made of and the benefits of selecting each material. We worked as a team to think about any issues that might arise whilst building during our planning stage. As engineers, we worked as a team to build a new bridge that would get from one side of the water to the other. We were taking turns, actively listening and building on others ideas. The Billy Goats were so impressed with our bridges!

We learnt some new positional language this week, such as, ’on,’ ‘under,’ ‘over,’ ‘next to,’ ‘beside,’ and in between. The children followed the instruction to place the teddy in the correct place and then had to use the new vocabulary to say where I had placed the teddy.  The children used their fine motor skills to cut out shapes with the troll and the goats on, and then consolidated their positional language by following instructions using our new vocabulary to try and put them in the correct place.

We learnt the ‘t’ sound this week and practised forming it in glitter using the formation rhyme, ‘down the tower, across the tower.’

We celebrated NSPCC Number Day by recognising numbers  and counting to the cardinal number in our ‘Active Maths’ session. We formed number on the numbered roads using cars. We played a number hunt, ran to the right  number, throw the beanbag to it and showed the matching ‘finger numbers.’ We played another game to jump on the correct numbers on the number mat/throw the beanbag at the correct number.  

We carried out assessments this week to see the progress the children have made this half term.