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Wingham Primary School

Learning together, we grow kind hearts and healthy minds

Term 2

This term we have continued to delve into what makes us special. We have noticed that part of being special is that we are all individual, different and unique. To gain further understanding of this we have been looking at our likes and dislikes, our families and interests as well the celebrations we are part of. As a result of this we have been looking at and comparing festivals and celebrations that we follow in our family as well as those followed from around the world. We have taken time to compare how they differ and are similar to our own. It has been such a busy time!

In the first week we became fully immersed in activities celebrating cultural heritage through our class and within the school.  Each class had a specific author to study and we have enjoyed listening to stories written by Antinuke. 

We also enjoyed learning about Turkish culture when Mrs Rougvie visited. We learnt how to say hello and goodbye in Turkish, marvelled at some of Turkeys outstanding areas of beauty and  got to taste some authentic Turkish delight!

Our artist this tern was Wilfred Branch. We looked at his  achievements and artwork, before having a go to create some incredible abstract art of our very own.

The children also discovered that some annual events that occur in the UK do not always celebrate happy times. We have looked at the meaning behind remembrance and the significance of the poppy. We created some fantastic observational paintings of poppies, made some poppies in our tech area using loose parts and observed a two minutes silence to commemorate lives that have been lost throughout our history.

We had a fantastic time immersing ourselves into the  celebration of Diwali enjoyed by people of the Hindu and Sikh faiths. The story of Rama and Sita gave an insight into this celebration. The children made their own story maps using objects from around the class to retell the story to each other in small groups. They used their artistic skills to create Diva pots and Rangoli patterns in a variety of interactive ways- using paints,pens,drawing and using 2D shapes in maths to create pictures inspired by Kandinsky.

In Literacy, we have been developing our reading and writing skills. Writing shopping lists in the role-play area, cards for Diwali and Christmas, and writing letters to Santa to post in the hope he will deliver gifts to us at Christmas. We have had a focus text each week linked to each celebration/event and looked closely at the way the books are structured and how to use the illustrations as well as our phonic knowledge to decode tricky words.

In Maths, we have been developing our counting skills, discovering how subitising skills help us when it comes to counting a mixture of different valued coins and applying what we have learnt to real life contexts. This has really helped when looking at the number bonds to 5 so that we can quickly recall the different ways we can make numbers.

We have discovered that we are all unique and as special as each other. We have been developing our understanding of how important our senses are and what difference it would make to our lives if we lost one of them. We were so lucky to welcome one of our mummy's in who came and taught us some sign language that people who live with deafness use. We were so grateful and gained such a great understanding.

We have enjoyed the story of the first Christmas and why it is one of  the most important events in the Christian calendar. We have then really enjoyed retelling it through our Christmas nativity entitled ‘The Easy Cheesy Nativity’ which yet again was an amazing performance. All the children were superstars!

In the last two weeks we have been busy learning about Hannukah as well as Christmas and created a whole range of different arts and crafts including calendars, Christmas cards, Christmas tree decorations and ornaments. We even found out that the tradition of having a Christmas in our homes was introduced  by Queen Charlotte over 200 years  ago! we even got to decorate our own class tree.

We have had such great fun and look forward to more learning adventures in the New Year!

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