Wow – I cannot believe we are a third of the way through the (calendar) year and close to heading into the final term of the school year! March has been a good month, we have been busy and I’ve managed to get a few projects off the ground that I wanted us to work on together.
We started the month at a Wales themed day that a friend hosted which was lots of fun, and a week or so later we had an Ireland themed day. The children had great fun learning about these countries, making food and crafts as well as playing with their friends.
We hosted our speaking and listening group and focussed on ‘People of Note‘ for this one. Emma studied Fatima El-Fihri and Daniel studied Roald Dahl. Our next one is coming up soon with the theme of ‘Spring’ so we have been busy working on that project this month. We have been on walks to spot the signs of spring, learnt about pollination and the plant life cycle and done lots of spring based crafts. We have talked a lot about use of language as we looked at the spring themed poems and touched upon ideas such as alliteration, onomatopoeia and metaphors. I plan to extend this for our literature fair project in April.
In terms of the formal work we have really pushed on this month with the maths programme we are finding; Daniel seems to have really built up his confidence now and we have really progressed with his understanding of mathematical concepts. Emma is doing well too and is enjoying the work. We have also been dipping into grammar work with Daniel and have, in the last week, started a real focus on handwriting. Daniel and Emma are both keen to learn ‘joined up’ writing so we are working through a set of books to help them on that journey. Daniel’s writing is untidy at times – often because he rushes and knows what he wants to write but he can’t write is quickly enough. When he slows down his writing is much neater and his spelling much more accurate.
The children continued on with their work on the continents and we took a look at Africa. I’m going to come back to this and finish it off in the coming month as there’s a few things I want to do with them before we finish up this area of work.
This month we got back into the Sassafras book (we are on anatomy now) and the children are enjoying that. We have learnt about the skeletal system and are no partway thorough the respiratory system.
Our CREST award group started up this month and we managed to get the first two experiments done. We have the dates planned for the next five experiments with the next one after Easter now. I know my two really enjoyed these and it’s nice to be able to do this sort of thing in a group with friends.
We have continued on with our regular groups such as PE and football, Spanish and swimming lessons but I must admit I am looking forward to the break over Easter time so we can just be for a short while and I can get some ideas from the older two about their next areas of study.
March has been the month when Emma has really taken off with her reading. I’m not sure what and when things clicked for her, but her confidence has really grown and she can read her songbirds books with relative ease at the moment, and it’s lovely to watch her excitement. It’s hard to forget that she is only just five, and those 16 months difference between her and Daniel really are huge at this age.
They’re both enjoying their Spanish too, and I really must start doing some stuff at home with them both and include Harry too so he starts to become familiar with the language.
March has been more of a month for cracking on with the ‘bread and butter’ of their learning – getting the maths and english/reading skills developed and I plan for April to be much more project based as we take on some bigger projects and look towards Easter.
