E...e... Eager Eddy Elephant

It's a vowel this week folks! Ee will have a big impact on your child's life... Later they will learn about rhe Magic e and the different ways e joins with other vowels...... But for now, they just need to know it is a vowel that can say 'e' as in egg and elephant, or 'e'as in eat!

it would be great if you could help by practising the sounds made by 'e'and 'i'- e.g. Pit and pet - as this will really help when trying to write sounds and words.

We made excellent elephants this afternoon. Andie came for her last 4Stars session before starting school next week and she was lightning quick at cutting and pasting her elephant together. well done Andie!

Have a peep at what we did....

....and here is the Letterland character and formation to help you....

Lastly, our Number of the Week will be 4. You can talk about ways to make 4, what comes before and after it, and practise writing it- here's the rhyme for correct  formation....

C...c...c..cute, colourful caterpillars

Well you've guessed it... The letter this week is Cc.

We read The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, who is the author we are reading at the moment.

Then we made some really cute,colourful and creative caterpillars that will be on display in our room and in the library.

C is a copycat! It doesn't make a sound of its own - it borrows sounds from k and s. Talk about the sounds with your child when you see c at the beginning of words.

Here is the letter formation for Clever Cat

And our number focus is number 6. Practise the correct formation, use the right hand pattern, and see how many ways you can make 6...... e.g. 5 and 1, 4 and 2, 3 and 3 (a double!)

O...o...Olly, Oscar and Olivia Owl!

As you can see, our letter of the week is Oo. It is an important letter because it is a vowel and it has a short  sound...as in orange, and a long sound...as in over. 

Long vowels say their own name. This is important to know as your child becomes a confident reader and begins stretching along words for sounds. Knowing both sounds for the vowels gives them wider choices to help achieve success.

In 4Stars, we watched a Youtube video of The lovely Owl Babies story then made and named our own owls. It was lovely to have Andie with us again, working alongside all her Room 6 friends.

Look below to see what we made.....

Here is the correct letter formation so you can help your child practise and build confidence...

.....and our Number of the week is 0, so here is our rhyme for the correct formation. 

Talk about zero and what it means, it will become a very important number as their knowledge grows!

G..g..Goats Galore!

Ourl letter this week is... You guessed it...Gg!

We watched a story about The Three Billy Goats Gruff and we all loved it.

Next we made our own grand and gorgeous grey goats grazing on green grass!

We think they look great, hope you do, too when you look below.....

Andie joined us for a 4Star visit and she is really ready for starting school soon... You are a great worker Andie!

Focus on Gg as you do the alphabet chart this week.....it has 2sounds- g in goat, and g in giant. Our main focus is the hard g sound in goat. 

T is for.......

   Our letter for the end of this week and the start of term 4 is Tt.

Today we used shapes to make things that start with t...and it is amazing what you can make with just a few shapes!

Take a look at our tractors, trucks, trolleys and taxis.... 

Deandre even made a teacher...!                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Have a look at the correct letter formation for Tt... called Ticking Tess in Letterland. If you find time in the holidays, help your child to practise and build their confidence for Term 4!

I...i..i..i...Incy Wincy Spider

We had an exciting 4Star session today!  Breeia and her Dad came and we were busy bees learning about Ii

I is a vowel  and many children find it tricky to say the eound correctly. Think ..."Indians are itching" and that should help the sound to be correct.

We learned the Incy Wincy Spider finger rhyme and then we made Incy Wincy Spiders with webs... Not a drainpipe! (We will do the darinpipe tomorrow!)

Have a look at our interesting and inventive work!

L..l...leaping Ladybugs

Today Breeia and Laura came to 4Stars and helped us to make lovely little Ladybugs.

We love our ladybugs and tomorrow they can leap around In the leaves!

l..l..l is a Stretchy sound and it is in alot of words your child will work with so it is an important letter to learn.

Don't forget to keep practising with the alphabet chart so your child is familiar with letters and sounds. Begin with the letters in their name as a great starting point.

Have a look at our ladybugs and the Lucy Lamp lady letter formation chart....              

It is so important to start letters in the right place-the children seem to enjoy these Letterland stories and it seems to helps them to recall correct formation more easily.....

Q..q..q..Queens, quilts and quiet!

Today we have learnt about the letter q at 4-Stars. 

We made Queens and quilts and we played Queenie, Queenie...Who's got the ball. It was a good game inside for a wet day!

We know that q doesn't go anywhere without u! They are always together in words.......

quick, quiet, quiz, question, quite, quack, quit, quill, queasy, quickly.....and our favourite word queue!

It was great to have Israel and Breeia joining us today with their Dads. Not long and you will both be school kids, we can't wait!

Look at our work, and read Quarrelsome Queen's rhyme so you can help with practise at home...

Here is the story we use to form a Qq correctly....

R..r..r..r

This week our letter is Rr. It makes a stretchy sound.

We watched and listened to the Rainbow Fish story and then we made our own beautiful Rainbow Fish to hang from the window.

It was great to have Blake and Dallas visiting for 4-stars and they were super workers!

Look what we made...

S-s s

Our letter this week is Ss.

This has a sound that is easy to recognise but often hard to say! If your child has trouble with this sound, encourage them to take their time and s-t-r-e-t-c-h or 'chunk' the word. It can be tricky when it is in the middle!

'Sh'is a digraph using 's'. Digraphs happen when the letters make a different sound together, than they do on their own. Say the sounds separately then join them together snd you'll see what I mean!

Talk about s sounds and the sh digraph with your child- make a list of words together. See if they recognise s blends like st, sm and sl too.

Have a look at the Sea-horses we made at 4Stars....

O-o is for octopus

This week at 4 stars we looked at O.  O is a vowel which has a long and a short sound.

This time we are focusing on the short 'o' as in octopus and ostrich.

Knowing this sound will help in reading and writing when trying to sound out words.

We listened to an octopus story and made our own octopus. We made sure we had 8 legs on our octopus because we learnt that oct means 8 - an octagon has 8 sides!

Cooper joined us today and explored our classroom. He enjoyed our Dora Alphabet cards!

B..b..Bears!

Our letter for this week is Bb..... 

So today we sang 'b'songs and read a story about a VERY grumpy bear....

Then we made our own bears and we will show them at our assembly in the morning.

It was great to have Cohen with us for his first day at school and Cooper came to join us as part of 4 Stars. 

Have a look at our boisterous bears.....!

H-h-h. We made hats

Our letter this week is Hh so today we made Lemon Squeezer Army Hats.

We learnt that Colonel Malone from Stratford invented the Lemon Squeezer hst. The top of it is shaped like Mt Taranaki and it helps to keep the rain off.

Colonel Malone wore his hat at Gallipoli.

Look at us in our hats!

A is for A.N.Z.A.C Day

We made these fabulous sunset/sunrise silhouettes today at 4 Stars. The hill represents the hills of Gallipoli and the crosses are to remember soldiers who died there. We have started to build an understanding of ANZAC Day and its ceremonies. We read the lovely book "My Grandad Marches on ANZAC Day" by Catriona Hay and Benjamin Johnson and we thought about what it would have been like to be in the war 100years ago.

It was exciting to have Kage, De andre and Chante join us for the afternoon. At the end we played ANZAC Fruit Salad  ( a chasing game ). Instead of fruit, we were ANZAC, Gallipoli and Last Post !

We welcome any beginning students to visit on Thursdays at 1.25 to get to know us and work within the classroom...... if you are interested, ring the office and let Raewyn know.

D-d-d-d-DINOSAURS!

What an exciting afternoon we had today, working with the letter Dd and it was great to have Kage and Katelyn here working with us.

We read Ruth Paul's great STOMP book and used this to try and create colourful dinosaurs.

We had a peek at some 'real' dinosaurs using a virtual reality I-Dinosaur book from Hawera library. We managed to capture this guy and photograph him sitting on a friendly arm!

After that we made our dinosaurs and went outside for our own STOMP adventure. We stomped, jumped, roared, and crawled around having great fun!

Haxe a look at our work from today.........

T-t-t-trains!

Our letter this week is t. We had a really busy time trying to make train tracks, a train and a tender  on our capital T. 

We have already come across t in our phonics so we know that we can call it Ticking Tess!

Ten is a good number to focus on because it starts with t-t-t.

It was lovely to have Jack, Anya, Katelyn and Cooper joining in with us today!

Ii........ I is for insect!

What a fabulous 4Stars we had on Thursday!

Our visitors were Ruby, Kage, Jack and Anya and together we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar- a very popular choice!

We found out that caterpillars are insects because they have 6 legs

We made paper loop caterpillars....have a look!

Ll....Ladybugs! Our first Four Stars for 2015

Look at the fabulous ladybugs we made at FourStars today!

Our first letter was of course 'l', so we enjoyed reading  The Bad Tempered Ladybird by Eric Carle and made our fabulous "Twirling Lady bugs".

We were joined by Anya, Ruby, Eli and Kage who worked really hard and were great visitors to Room 6!