So the last couple of weeks our literacy focus has been information texts;
We made an anchor chart as a class - the children had a variety of non-fictions texts to look at and we discussed all of their features and added them to some large paper - it's really helped them and also filled up my working wall too!
Ta - da!
We also made a poster for all of the cool facts that we found out from reading our information text books;
In the afternoons we have been doing lots and lots of art - I taught them how to draw a portrait and we then use lots of different media (such as paint, oil pastels, pencils using our newly learnt shading techniques) to draw a portrait of our friend. We practised really hard because we had a special visitor coming to visit us, King Charles II wrote us a letter asking if we could draw his portrait - he had a big space on his wall in his palace that he needed to fill.
He wasn't wearing the most regal of clothing, but the children were very excited that a real King came to visit us, especially as we had read lots about King Charles II in our information text books, and they produced some beautiful art work that I'm in the process of turning in to a Royal Art Gallery - so pics will be added when I finish it.
On Monday the children came in to a very messy classroom indeed...
Someone had turned all of our chairs the wrong way, our signs on the board upside down, there were four leaf clovers drawn on our carpet and poor Mr. Potato head was looking very silly indeed! We found a letter on our board from a tricky leprechaun called Lucky...
Most of the children had never heard of St. Patrick's Day, so we watched some videos about celebrating St.Patrick's Day and listened to traditional Irish music during our lessons that morning - they had such a great time!
Snack time was the best part of the day because Lucky had sent us some delicious treats to say sorry for making our classroom messy!
We had lucky charm cereal (at a hefty £5.00 a box, owch!!) and delicious green milk! Some of the children even began designing traps for how to catch Lucky;
We looked at typical Tudor buildings and walked down a typical Tudor street... it was very different to the houses we live in today.
We were also lucky enough to read another person from The Great Fire of London that we had been reading about - Samuel Pepys. He told us all about the Plague and the fire, and he even read a little bit from his diary!
Some of the children were lucky enough to try on the plague mask, which I found extremely creepy!
The next session on the trip surprised me the most - candles and quills. The children got to make their own beeswax candle, which they loved - and really tested their fine motor skills;
Then they got to use a quill, practising to write how Samuel Pepys would have during the 17th Century....
...the room descended into a deafening silence!! I was astounded! ...even my most reluctant of writers sat there without muttering a word, concentrating on using their quill to write the alphabet.. and then even more shockingly, asking for BLANK PAPER so that they could write letters!!!
I'm going to make a trip to the park soon to collect some feathers and make my own quills - anything to get them writing!!
So that's it for now.. the last few days have been a bit crazy because we have no heating - the school was closed Thursday afternoon and Friday.. it's been snowing practically non-stop for 3 days now so I'm not even sure we will be in school tomorrow... we will have to see!
I've been making the most of spending time with Charlie, he's had so much fun in the snow...
Whilst the other half has been making the most of storing his beers in his new favourite way...
The snow may not look much to my American followers, but by British standards this is a lot of snow! With Easter beginning on Friday, it doesn't look as though we're going to have much of an Easter holiday...
Dani x
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