The Snake is in the Grass

Monday 18th^h June 2012 This morning was the start of our letters and phonics week and we were very excited to see some new friends in the classroom with us today. We were joined by Shuhei who really enjoyed his time playing with his new friends. On the table we noticed a big red box with light coming from the top. We could put things on the top and trace them through the paper. Darren said it was called a light box. Next to it on the table there were some large cards with all the letters of the alphabet on them and four kinds of wooden shapes: a big straight line, a short straight line, a small curve and a large curve. We could then put the wooden shapes on top of the cards to make the letters of the alphabet. On the carpet there were also some really big foam letters which fit together to make a floor covering. We tried this for a while but they took up too much space so we moved some of them as we also wanted to play with trains and cars too. On the writing table we had a try at following the white roads on the tracks without straying onto the black with whiteboard markers. The lines which looked like roads were wavy, zigzag or straight and it was fun trying to be as careful as we could getting them right. There were also lots of puzzles on the table and we tried both the alphabet and numbers too. This was a little tricky as some of the letters look the same but wouldn’t fit in the holes. We soon realized that letters like H and I were upside down while the N was actually a Z on its side. After snack time we all got together on the third floor for some songs and activities together. We started off with ‘Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ which we did 3 times and gradually got faster and faster which made us all laugh. We then sang the ‘ABC’ song which we all know and love. Today we focused on the letter S and the sound it makes. We then put our hands together and made the motion like a snake moving and sang the song:

“The snake is in the grass,

The snake is in the grass,

Ssss ssss,

The snake is in the grass”

When we looked in the book there was a snake in the grass along with lots of other things that began with the ‘ssss’ sound. We spotted a spider, a stick, the sun, a snail and spots. There was a special place in the book where you could put your finger and trace out the letter ‘S’ too. Darren then showed us some photo cards which he whizzed around so fast that we had to look very quickly and carefully at. We then asked “Slowly please” and realized there were pictures of a sunflower, the number six, a pair of scissors and a seahorse. We then played a game where we closed our eyes and one of the cards was removed and then had to see which card had been taken away. In circle time we went to the light-box where we could see our names under the white paper and when we turned the light on we used markers to trace our names. There was also play-dough on the table which was rolled into long strips which we used to make the letters on the big cards. We could choose whichever letter cards we wanted to make and some of us made the first letters of our names. On the carpet we looked at an alphabet book titled ‘Alphabet Rescue’. This was a great book about some lower case letters which fix an old fire engine and then help wash a car, rescue a cat from a tree and put out a fire at the letter making factory. It was great because we spotted the letter ‘S’ in the pictures and also some of the letters in our names. We went to the park together today and although it was very warm we played on the swings, in the sandbox and also had a go at soccer although it felt too hot and sticky to run far. Love always Darren, Kana, Rachel, Goh and Miyuki