Dinosaurs Help Reception Class with Subtraction

Children in the Reception class at Whirley Primary in Cheshire have started a topic all about dinosaurs and fossils.  The eager palaeontologists have been keen to demonstrate their knowledge about prehistoric animals to their enthusiastic teachers.

One of our team members visited the school today to conduct a morning of dinosaur-themed activities with the children.  Prior to the start of the school day, our team member was given a short tour of the well-appointed Foundation Stage/Key Stage 1 teaching area.  Although, the children have only been studying dinosaurs for a short while, there were lots of amazing prehistoric animal-themed learning to admire.

Dinosaurs and Fossils

Counting with Dinosaurs – Dinosaurs Helping Young Minds to Get to Grips with Subtraction

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A Carefully Planned Scheme of Work

The Reception class are getting to grips with subtraction.  The innovative teaching team had set up a number of work stations around the tidy and spacious classroom and on one table a dinosaur inspired subtraction exercise had been set up.  Could the children work out how many dinosaurs were on one side of the paper compared to the other side of the paper?

Unsurprisingly, gaining confidence with mathematics is one of the key learning and development goals of the Early Years Foundation Stage national curriculum. The children in the Reception class at Whirley Primary are certainly being provided with plenty of opportunities to develop and improve their counting skills.

During our workshop we set the children a special challenge, could they draw their very own dinosaur and label the body parts including the skull?  As well as supporting the literacy component of the topic area, our dinosaur expert suggested that the class could use measuring cubes to measure the size of the dinosaur drawing that they produced.

A Successfully Completed Dinosaur Inspired Subtraction Exercise

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Learning to Recall

Whilst our team member was admiring the special dinosaur activity area where the children could dig for dinosaur bones and fossils in a sand tray, the teacher (Miss Egerton), highlighted some of the work the children had produced in their topic books.  As an introduction to the topic, the children had taken part in a dinosaur egg hunt, one of the exercises in the topic book involved the recalling of information and putting events in chronological order.

Learning to Recall and Retell with a Reception Class

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

It looks like the dinosaur and fossil themed term topic is proving to be a big success.

The Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.