Once There Were Giants

On Monday morning, we read the fantastic story ‘Once There Were Giants’ by Martin Waddell. The story follows a baby who lives amongst giants – Mum and Dad. The baby grows a little, and soon she can walk and talk. Then the baby grows a lot, until she is all grown up and has a baby of her own. The children enjoyed listening to the story and discussing questions linked to the text, such as ‘Who are the giants?’ ,‘What is a giant’? Later in the week, the children shared photos of when they were babies and in a circle time, we discussed what we could do now that we couldn’t do when we were babies. We also discussed what we hoped we would be able to do when we grow up a little bit more and a lot more. This led into a lovely discussion about what we would like to be when we grow up. In Literacy, we drew pictures of who is in our family and used our initial sounds to label each individual.

In maths, we have been learning to compare size using the language big and little, small and large, larger than and smaller than, and taller or shorter. We had a lovely session on Monday where we helped big bear and little bear sort their food items according to there size, big and little. Then on Tuesday, we read the story ‘Dear Zoo’ and afterwards received a big box from the zoo ourselves! We wondered for a while what animal could be inside given the size of the box. We had a great time guessing! On Thursday, we compared the size of number shapes using the language larger than and smaller than. On Friday, we moved onto to comparing height using the language taller and shorter. We build towers and compared them with our friends. Next week, we will move on to our next block called ‘It’s Me 1, 2, 3’ where children will begin to count, represent and subitise numbers 1, 2 and 3.

Next week, we will be reading the story ‘Owl Babies’, another Martin Waddell classic. The story follows three baby owls who wake one night and find that their mother is gone. Worried and scared, they wait patiently on their branch for her return. As we read the story, we will share times that we have been brave like the little owls in the story and times we have missed our mummies. In literacy, we will be drawing a picture of a time that we were brave and labelling it with using our initial sounds. We will also be drawing, painting and crafting lots of pictures of owls and will also visit the library to learn more about them. In phonics, we will continue to practise reading simple words with the sounds we have learnt so far in our WordTime sessions, and will also learn two more sounds, ‘c’ and ‘k’. We have been so impressed by the phonics homework so far from all the children. Keep it up!

The children have settled so well this term and we are truly proud of them. We hope they have a wonderful and restful half term when it arrives.

Thank you for reading,

Mrs Foster, on behalf of the Year R team.