It has been a fantastic first week back after half term. The children have returned with a great attitude to learning and have settled back into routines. 

This week, we have been learning all about the festival 'Diwali'. We discovered that this festival is also known as 'The Festival of Light'. We discussed that Diwali is mostly celebrated by Hindus, and it is celebrated around the world in many different ways. 

We read the story Dipal's Diwali to learn how people prepare for and celebrate Diwali. We found out that during Diwali, people celebrate in many ways - for example, they may clean their homes, hang up decorations and exchange gifts. We also spoke about how it is important to be respectful of other people's beliefs and traditions. We enjoyed taking part in lots of different activities within our provision, including making rangoli patterns, creating our own mendhi designs and creating diya lamps.

In writing, we have been applying our phonics knowledge to write initial sounds and CVC words. We are becoming much more confident with segmenting, as well as our recognition of taught graphemes. We have also been practising our letter formation, ensuring our letters are sitting on the line correctly. 

In Maths, we have been learning about addition. We learnt that when adding two groups, we have to count both groups to see how many we have altogether.