Dear Parents,
After what we hope has been a magical Christmas holiday, we have started another exciting term full of interesting new things to learn about.
This term, our topic is ‘Scented Garden’.
In English, we are sharing the books, ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and ‘The Enormous Turnip’, which centre around story retelling, alphabet practice, phonemic awareness, and sequencing. We will also explore reference books, non-chronological reports and my fantasy plant. Spelling, punctuation, and grammar will continue to be taught alongside these topic-related activities, which will be focussed on the children’s current individual targets.
In the first half of this term in Maths, we are continuing to look at place value, addition, and subtraction within ten, and then moving to within 20. Later in the term, we will move on to more practical maths, including length, capacity/volume, and weight/mass.
In Science, we will do many experiments linked to our topic ‘Scented Garden’, such as creating our own pizza and windowsill gardens, rainbow flowers, and testing the senses in various ways.
Geography will be all about the rainforest flora, how it formed, its layers, and its key features and characteristics. We will explore different types and ranges of rainforest plants using descriptions, observations, and research.
RE will involve the children building on their learning of the different faiths by zooming in on who is a Muslim and how they live. Pupils will find out about Islam, key beliefs, and ways of living for Muslims. They will also learn about some of the key Muslim beliefs about God.
We will make our own instruments in Art and Design to recreate the sounds of the rainforest in various ways. We will also create art with various types of plants and flowers, leading on to making our own rainforest sculpture.
In Music, we will explore a range of different types of music around the rainforest and nature, exploring how we can recreate the sounds of nature ourselves and listening to various sounds of the environment.
We plan to support this term’s topic with educational visits centred around plants, nature, and the senses.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact us at any time.
Kind regards
Eva Sebeszta, Rochelle Pearce and the Durham Team