Week 3
Literacy
This week the children are going to be reading the Gruffalo and looking carefully at how he is described.
You can listen to the Gruffalo story here as well as many other Julia Donaldson stories.
https://www.bwis.org.uk/home-learning-19/
The children will then make their own Gruffalo from dough!
Encourage your child to talk about their Gruffalos as they make them, using descriptive language from the story. Challenge them to think of additional words to describe him. What colour is he? How would he feel? How could you describe his eyes? His teeth? 
Think of the materials your child could use to create their Gruffalo. Straws? Beads? Buttons?
Phonic Activities
This week in Phonics we will be learning the digraphs ai, ee, igh and oa. Have a look at the clips below to help you learn all about these new sounds.
Don't forget to click on the PowerPoint below to practise all your sounds taught so far.
Recognising Sounds:
To help you with recognising your sounds maybe you would like to have a try at completing the activity below.
Have a go at cutting up bits of paper (or ask your grown ups to help) and write on each piece a different sound. Your task is to then find and suck up the sound that your grown up calls out one at a time. For every sound recognised correctly you win a point but if you suck up a wrong sound then a point cannot be won. I wonder how many points you can get? Play again and see if you can beat your score!
Initial sounds Activity:
If your child is practising hearing and recognising initial sounds in words then please see the activity below.
The two sound monsters are feeling hungry! Can you feed them food beginning with your chosen sounds. Have a go at drawing two of your own sound monsters and name them each a sound. For example in the picture you have monster 'p'.
Can you find them different things around the house beginning with those sounds to feed them. Monster 'P' loves to eat pens, potatoes and pegs. I wonder what your monsters will eat?
VC/CVC words Activity:
If your child is practising stretching their words to hear more sounds in order to create VC or CVC words then please look at the activity below.
Have a go at writing your different sounds on individual bricks or sticking a piece of paper onto them with your sound on. If you do not have bricks at home maybe you could try labelling tins!
Your task is to have a go at creating a tower using the sounds you hear in the words your grown up shouts out. For example, if your grown up shouted out the word, 'run' you would be looking for the sounds - 'r','u','n'. Say the word slowly, stretching the word to help you segment and hear the individual sounds. Make sure your sounds are in the right order. Read back your word to check.
Remember to read and practise your words at least 3 times a week. Click on the link to see some fun ways to practise your words at home.
Maths
This week we will be looking at 2D shapes.
We will focus on naming a circle, triangle, square, rectangle, pentagon and hexagon.
How many of these shapes can your child name? How many sides does it have? How many corners? Is it curved or straight?
Play the game 'guess my shape' - hide a shape in a bag and describe it to your child e.g. 'it has three sides and three corners. What is it?'
The children will be making their own Gruffalo character faces using 2D shapes!
Cut out some shapes and model making a Gruffalo character face. Encourage your child to tell you what shapes you are using. Your child should then have a go at creating their own. Can they tell you the shapes they have used for their character?
Say a Number Challenge
Call out a number between one and ten. On a whiteboard or a piece of paper, encourage your child to draw something that represents that number. It could be the numeral, dots, pictures, a shape e.g. a square to represent the number 4, etc. It is up to the child!
Project
Nocturnal Animals
This week we will be talking about nocturnal animals.
With your child talk about what nocturnal means and which animals are nocturnal and why.
Print and cut-out pictures of animals (see links below). Ask your child to split the pictures into two groups - daytime and nocturnal animals.
Animal Pictures
Colour Mixing
Ask your child about the colour mixing activity we did last week. What colours did we make? How did we make them?
This week we are painting our own Gruffalo!
We will give the children the three primary colours red, blue and yellow. We want children to be able to select appropriate colours and mix them together to create new colours e.g. red and yellow makes orange for the Gruffalo's eyes.
Think about what colour the Gruffalo's spikes are? What colour are his eyes and the poisonous wart on the end of his nose? How will you make brown for his body? What colours will you mix together to create these colours?
Gruffalo Dance
Part 1
Click on the link below and listen carefully to the instructions to create a dance linked to our story of the week The Gruffalo.
