We have had a wonderful week packed full of fabulous learning opportunities, all of which the children engaged in beautifully with wonderful enthusiasm and curiosity. In Phonics, we have continued to grow our knowledge of trigraphs (three letters making one sound). We have focused on 'ere' (sphere, here, adhere) and 'ier' (fierce, pier and tiers). The children thoroughly enjoyed creating a variety of sentences using these words and proved their decoding and blending skills are developing as the year progresses. In Maths, the children have been busy understanding doubles, near doubles and the concept of subtraction using their knowledge of number bonds as a guide. Our Inquiry learning this week has encouraged the children to use and develop their research skills. The children have loved discovering a variety of facts all about polar regions and deserts. The children have then worked extremely hard to compare these regions in their writing lessons using the conjunction 'but.' Do take the time to ask your child what wonderful facts they have learned about the weather, animals and plants that grow in these hot and cold regions. We all had lots of fun creating 'Kindness Jars' linked to our core text 'Between Tick and Tock.' Just like the main character Liesel, we filled these jars with examples of random acts of kindness we could do to brighten somebody's day. Moving forward, we will pick a random act of kindness from the jar each day and work hard to try and incorporate it into our school day or even at home. It was wonderful to hear all the children's kind and thoughtful ideas. In PE this week the children have continued to work on balancing as part of our Gymnastics lessons and they all loved furthering their French vocabulary through song. Well done Year 1! Another wonderful week!