Dear Crocodiles and Elephants,

We hope you have had another lovely week in the sunshine. It was lovely to ring and speak to some of you last week and hear all about the fun you are having, the new skills you are learning and the lovely family time you are able to have. We will be making some more phone calls over the next two weeks and hope to chat to you all!

To work out what minibeast we are looking at this week we have a riddle for you. A riddle is a bit like a puzzle that you have to solve.

There is a special hunt of 7 pictures that you could print off and grown ups can hide, or you can look at them on the computer to see if you can work it out.

Maths

Now you have worked out the minibeast for this week, could you solve this next riddle? You are going to have to use your super maths skills to work them out. We have talked about doubling before; it is adding two numbers together that are the same. We have done the first one for you. Can you complete the challenge?  

Phonics and Reading

This week we are continuing to learn how to build bigger words. We are looking at CVCC words where there is a consonant, vowel and then two further constants at the end. For example, tent and help.

There are games in Education City- Subjects- English-F2- Letters and sounds- Phase 4 and 5. Please encourage the children to play these games, along with any others of their choice.

There are lots of games you can play with these words that you already know such as pairs games, hangman, writing on ground grass, sky boards, magnetic letters, eye spy etc.

More games can be found at https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/Phase4Menu.htm

and on Espresso which you can login to through the SIMS ID login. Espresso has word and sentence building games as well as some useful videos of how to make the sound. Click on Foundation, then Literacy, Phonics, Kim’s phonics. Please let the children use the activities found on the right hand side. 

Please let us know if you are having problems signing into SIMS ID.

The two new tricky words for this week are ‘have’ and ‘like’ please show your child these words written down and on their tricky word bumblebee mat provided at workshops. The action for ‘have’ is put one hand in the air do an air grab and pull it back down and the action for ‘like’ is to tap your collar bone twice.

The children enjoy coming up with sentences for the new words; playing stations with them (where they have to run around the outdoor classroom to find the word) and splat the tricky word where they are all laid out and first person to splat the word wins.

There are games relating to tricky words found in Subjects- English- F2- activities or for more of a challenge Subjects- English- Year 1- activities.

For reading this week, as you will have now used up all the physical books we sent home on the last day, we have allocated either 2 or 4 books on Bug Club at the appropriate level for your child to read and answer the questions to the quizzes as they go. We have ensured all children have the minimum books allocated to them as of Sunday afternoon.

There is another story by the same author as The Hungry Caterpillar it is called the Bad Tempered Ladybird. You might already have it at home but if not here is a link to a video of it. The ladybird is very grumpy!!

Writing

Hello Crocodiles and Elephants,

We hope you enjoyed reading about the Bad Tempered Ladybird.

Read the story again and this time you need to be a detective and find something. As you are listening to the story, look very carefully at the pictures and see if you can find the speech bubbles. You might have seen speech bubbles before when you have read with the adults in school. They are bubbles with an arrow. They are used in books to show which character is speaking and it tells you what they say.

Did you find them?

We would like you to do some writing in a speech bubble this week.

Can you think of another animal the Bad Tempered Ladybird could have met in the story? Perhaps it met a cat, a shark, or a badger. What would the Ladybird say to your animal? Write a sentence in the speech bubble showing what the Ladybird said. Then, we would like you to draw a picture of your animal and write a sentence in a speech bubble showing what your animal says back to the Ladybird. Try to think of something different for your animal to say to the Ladybird.

Don’t forget that your sentences need a capital letter at the start, finger spaces and a full stop at the end. You also have your tricky bee word mats and phonic strips to help you when you are writing.

Challenge - can you create extended sentences that use conjunctions?

Creative

Hello Crocodiles and Elephants,

Wasn’t the Bad Tempered Ladybird grumpy?

Normally ladybirds are one of the friendliest minibeasts we can find in our gardens.  Just like in the story, ladybirds love to sit on a green, juicy leaf eating aphids.  This is what makes them excellent minibeasts to have in our gardens.

We thought you could make a little home for the ladybirds to encourage them to come into your garden.

Once you have made your ladybird home, perhaps you could use the ladybird spotter sheet to see how many different types of ladybirds you can find in your garden or on your walk.

Computing

Can you create your own Bad Tempered Ladybird maze game in Purple Mash? Try to create a game collecting aphids and create a baddie of your choice. Login to Purple Mash through Sims ID.

From the home screen press computing then 2 Do It Yourself and then platform in the games section. There are some instructional videos for the children to watch first.