Rabbits and Foxes news November 2015
We would like to say a big Happy Birthday to Edith who turned 3 recently and we would also like to welcome Holly, Raphie, Sam, Aria and Zander to the Foxes!
During the month of November we have been very busy exploring a number of themes or topics. We started off over the last few months looking at Autumn and thinking about all the different signs of Autumn that we had spotted when out and about with our friends and our families. The children told us that they had seen the leaves turning different colours and falling off the trees! Some of the children had collected conkers and pine cones too. We then moved on to focusing on our independence skills as we are all growing up and some of us are preparing for school next Summer. We then celebrated Scottish book week by reading a number of stories by Scottish authors, and we are now thinking about Winter and Christmas time as we come closer to our Christmas performance.
Literacy
As we explored Scottish book week, we enjoyed reading a number of Scottish stories and learnt about what the book cover can tell us about the story. We talked about who the Author is, what the title might tell us and what an illustrator is. The children shared their favourite story book titles with us and we discussed what we liked about our favourite books. We had a lot of fun listening to the Gruffalo in Scots. There were lots of funny new words we had never heard before. We had good fun guessing what they meant. We learnt that the Scots word for a Fox is a Todd. After reading a few of our favourite stories we played a game where one of us pretended to be a character from the story and the others asked questions about the events in the book. This helped us to think like the character and to begin to understand different viewpoints.
Numeracy
As we lead up to our Christmas performance, we have been focusing on the numbers 1 to 12 and exploring these numbers, their form and what they represent in the 12 days of Christmas. We have been carrying out lots of different activities to help us to recognise and to remember the numbers 1 – 12 such as sorting activities where we try to find so many objects to represent the numbers, using the magnetic numbers to create the sequence of numbers, using the number stones out in the garden to find the numbers 1-12 and many more!
Health and wellbeing
As we have been working on our independence skills this month, we have been building our confidence and awareness of all the things we are able to do all by ourselves! We love trying out new things for ourselves and being able to show our friends as well as our mummies and daddies what we can do! We have had lots of fun having races to see who can put their shoes on the fastest, even the teachers joined in! Practicing these skills not only helps to boost our confidence, but they also help to prepare us for school and to further develop our fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
Expressive arts
This month the children have been very creative as they have modelled hedgehogs out of clay and match sticks after a lovely discussion about the animals which hibernate during the colder months.
After reading lots of lovely Scottish stories, including the Gruffalo in Scots, some of the children decided to draw pictures of the Gruffalo, they are very creative!
We all loved watching the snow fall one Friday afternoon and this sparked a good chat about building snowmen, sledging and snowball fights. The children were so excited about the falling snow that we all decided to use chalk to draw our own snowmen. Our lovely chilly snowman friends are up on the wall so our families can have a look.