What a wonderful, busy half term it has been! The children have settled well and it has been lovely to see them grow in confidence, make friendships and learn new things. 

Our topic focus for Autumn term is 'Terrific Transport'. The children have begun to learn our focus text 'The Train Ride' by heart. They have practised retelling the story using a story map and have worked in pairs, small groups and as a whole class to retell the story.
We looked at the vocabulary in the story and picked out key words and phrases and explored what they meant. For example: a gaggle of geese, strutting, mare and foal. We then learnt about alternative words for example instead of 'strutting' you could choose 'hopping' or 'gliding' or 'sneaking'. A mare and a foal are a mother and baby horse. We learnt about names for other parent and baby animals.
We talked about describing words and looked at the section of the story that talks about a 'shiny red tractor'. We then looked at other transport example photos and thought of descriptions for them. For example: a long, green truck or a giant, pink airplane or a shiny, silver train.

In Maths we have explored shape, pattern, positional language, size and length. Children have taken on lots of challenges both inside and outside linked to their learning in Maths. They have been on shape hunts, made patterns using conkers, acorns and leaves, used teddies to apply our knowledge of positional language for example "Can you put the teddy behind the chair?", "Can you put the teddy underneath the table?", "Is teddy beside the car or over the car?". 

We hope your child has loved their first half-term as much as we have and we wish all our families a restful, fun filled half term.