A warm welcome back and a happy new year! It has been so nice to see the children back in class and to hear about their Christmas break. It certainly sounds like the children have had fun and I am very envious hearing about the presents that Santa has brought!

It seemed strange to start the week on Wednesday and I think myself and the class have had to check which day it is more than once this week. We spent Wednesday morning spending time thinking about what we like about ourselves and how to make sure that we look after our mental health. The children put together and A-Z all about themselves and after initially being a little modest the children really begun to enjoy the task and think about their qualities. The children then put together a design inspired by the book 'A is For Awesome' thinking about their achievements and using their A-Z. In shared reading we started by reading the first chapter of our book for the half term 'The Executioner's Daughter.' We made predictions as to what we thought the book would be about based on the first chapter and then used skim reading to find information about the Tower of London. In English we looked at using figurative language to improve sentences and then looked at how to describe a visual prompt again using figurative language. In maths we started the new term by looking at symmetry and reflection (with some times tables thrown in for good measure). History we started our topic (The Tudors) by looking at the function of castles and in particular all the functions that the Tower of London has held. In art we also based our learning around a book, 'Sandy's Circus' which is about the artist Alexander Calder (reasons for this will become clearer next week). Finally, in PE we started our new topic gymnastics with the children starting to work on their gymnastics skills.