Welcome to Seahorses

Teacher - Seahorses Amanda Waters
Photo of Amanda Waters

Hello and welcome to Seahorses Class!

We are a vibrant class of 10 busy and active children learning alongside 5 adults. We love to be as multi-sensory as we can with our learning and a combination of songs, signalong, movement, exploration and mark making works well for us.

Through a combination of structured activities and self-selected tasks, we support each other in learning and playing cooperatively alongside and with each other to achieve a shared goal or purpose.

Every afternoon we have Golden time which is an opportunity to celebrate and enjoy the achievements of ourselves and our friends.

Seahorses Spring Term 1 VISUAL Timetable

 

 

Curriculum Information for parentsTopic: Vehicles, transport and travel
SubjectProfiles & Ideas for Home Learning
MathsIn Maths we will be learning about counting on and back, using number lines, time lines and rulers supported by our ‘Vehicles, Transport and Travel’ topic. We will be experimenting with our own vehicles, measuring how far they travel, how long they travel for or how high they go. In our role plays as travellers, we will be creating and using maps to build on our previous learning of using directional and positional language to find and locate things around the class and school. We will also be experimenting with water, giving us a chance to explore things that float and sink and record our findings in simple graphs to represent what we have found out. The children will be encouraged to explore both natural and man-made resources to design and build boats of their own, including measurements and listing items, which will be supported in our English and Science lessons. To support your child’s learning at home you could try using a tape measure around the house to measure and compare lengths of various household items, commenting on items that are bigger/smaller, higher/lower, longer or shorter. You could also have fun experimenting at bath time or in the kitchen sink with natural and man-made items, making predictions on whether they will float or sink.
English Our theme this term is ‘Vehicles, Transport and Travel’ which will give us a chance to build on our previous learning by finding out more about the wider world and its communities and how we might travel there. We will also be exploring the ‘Vehicles, Transport and Travel’ featured in stories such as ‘The way back home’ and ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers and ‘Dig, dig, dig’ by Margaret Mayo and ‘Dump Truck Disco’ by Skye Silver. We will learn signs, songs and symbols to help us retell the stories and will use ‘Talk for Writing’ story mapping and ‘Colourful Semantics’ strategies to support us in sequencing and retelling the stories independently. At home to support your child with their learning, why not look out for various modes of transport while you are out and about – listen for things in the sky, what could they be? Look at the night sky – can you see any satellites? What about a trip to the beach to look for different kinds of boats? Please feel free to send in any notes or photos.
ScienceIn ‘Vehicles, Transport and Travel’ Science, Seahorses class will be learning about everyday materials and their uses and explore how they have been used to inspire various vehicles. We will be looking at and comparing their properties and using them to design and create inventions of our own. Natural and man-made materials is also something that you could discuss with your children at home – please encourage them to notice and comment on the textures, weight and properties of the items and discuss what they are used for as well as how they might have been made. You could even do some online research and collect some basic facts to share in class! As always, feel free to share any photos or projects completed at home with us so we can share with our friends at school.
PSHEIn Personal, Social, Health and Emotional lessons the children will be learning to explore and reflect on how to persevere and build some resilience with tasks and challenges. Did they succeed first time? If not, how might they have felt? We will consider how it might feel meeting new peoples or exploring new cultures, will explore and celebrate our own strengths and the strengths of others. We will be using examples of our own day to day challenges to develop an understanding of how to persevere with tasks, even when we feel things are really tricky. We will explore the idea that everyone has different strengths and hope to recognise the ways in which we are the same as, and different to, each other and we may all respond differently to the different challenges we face. Through a combination of structured activities and more self-selected play, we will be supporting the children in playing cooperatively alongside and with each other to achieve a shared goal or purpose. We will be talking about how this makes us feel and looking at developing the emotions involved in this process.
ComputingTechnology will be used throughout the term to support the children with developing their understanding of our ‘Travel’ topic using maps and giving directions as well as building fine motor control. We will be using simple software to practise organising and making themed images and typing or forming letters or numbers. We will have daily opportunities to practise typing our name as well as some of the high frequency words we are learning to read, such as ‘no’, ‘to’, ‘the’, ‘go’ and ‘was’. We will use programmable toys, such as Beebots and Coda-Pillars, to practice giving simple directions and build in the use of maps and local landmarks to support our learning theme.
Art & D.TOur art and D.T projects will be opportunities to explore our topic further as well as develop our creative design and planning skills. The children will be encouraged to design their own vehicles and maps and we will be looking at different ways to create 3D model versions of the vehicles we design.
HumanitiesIn History and Geography, the children will be re-capping and learning more about vehicles and travel, comparing both old and new. We will be using non-fiction books to collect facts on Henry Ford, the designer of the first mass produced car, as well as other great Inventors or Explorers and placing them on a timeline across history. We will be using Google Earth to look at different continents and countries and will explore the different types of weather experienced across the planet. At home, why not try doing some research of your own using BBC Bitesize or create a poster or factsheet for your child to share with friends in class.