This week our learning was based on the book 'Kipper's Birthday' by Mick Inkpen.

We loved this funny story and had lots of fun at small world using the stick puppets and props to retell the story. 

            

Of course, we wanted to be part of the birthday celebrations ourselves so turned our role play area into a birthday party with hats to wear and lots of pretend cake and drinks to tuck into. We used a balloon pump to blow up balloons to decorate the area and each made our own triangle of bunting which we threaded onto ribbon. It made a lovely colourful decoration. Can you spot the triangle you painted?

  

When we went to the party we took presents we had wrapped ourselves and handmade cards. We cut out birthday cake pictures and stuck them onto the front of our cards, then wrote 'love from' and our names inside. It was hard work preparing for the party, but we had a good time once we were there!

            

There was a lot of cake making this week - but none you would want to eat! We used playdough, sand and Sticklebricks to create these cakes! We chose numbered candles to put into our playdough cakes and added a matching number of candles. We guessed how many scoops of sand would fill our cake cases then tested it out. With the Sticklebricks the challenge was to make a cake that would be strong enough for us to walk across the classroom for an adult to take a photo.  

        

On the maths table we used different maths equipment including Numicon, tens frames and Unifix to show the number on the birthday cards or cakes. 

    

We compared presents by weighing them up in our hands to guess which was heavier and which was lighter. Then used the balance scales to find out if we were right. 

       

We had fun using party bags and little toys to practise our counting and number recognition too! We worked in pairs with goody bag each. We counted to see how many items were in the bags, found the number on our number fans, then decided who had more, who had fewer, or if we had an equal amount. We also filled the bags ourselves, counting carefully to put in the amount on the numbered birthday card.

Good counting Antelopes!