The highlight of our week was the visit by Space Odyssey with their space dome on Thursday. The children spent almost an hour in it learning about our solar system, the rockets, stars and planets. We started off singing the planet song and learning the names of all the planets including our own. Then we followed Astronaut George on a planet adventure as he set off to see if he could find a planet better than the Earth to live on. But none of the other planets had water to drink, fresh air or friends so he came home. The children learnt facts about each planet;- that Mercury is the smallest, Venus the hottest, Mars the reddest with two robots on it, Jupiter is the biggest, Saturn has ice rings, Uranus rolls on its side and Neptune is the furthest from our sun and is also the windiest and the stormiest. We then followed Tim Peak as he set off in his rocket before finishing the session finding pictures and patterns in the stars of the night sky. The children listened extremely well, responded to the questions and were really enthused and excited to be taking part in such a special activity. A big THANK YOU to our PTFA for raising money to pay for this bi annual event. 

In literacy this week our story has been Little Red Riding Hood and we have finished making our display in the library as well as baking buns for grandma.  The children have painted, made trees, written wanted posters for the Big Bad Wolf and written speech bubbles for the Three Bears. Well done everybody. We also did our monthly piece of independent writing on Tuesday and it is amazing to see how confident the children are becoming in using their ponics for writing even including our latest sounds ai, oo and ee.  

Lots of children this week earned a Reading Eggs certificate - Congratulations. 

We have been talking about time and ways to measure time in maths and starting to have a go at learning the days of the week and months of the year. Finding out how long a minute really is (and what we can do in a minute!) as well as looking at the hands on the clock. There is lots of learning and if you get a chance at home, do talk to your children about whether it is morning or afternoon, what day it is, when their birthday is etc. 

Thank you to all the parents who have volunteered to come to Thorncombe Woods with us. We have two parents to accompany us, but you will get your chance later in the year..... I have more trips in mind! 

Have a happy weekend and if you do go 'Down in the Woods' look out for the Big Bad Wolf!