Mad about animals
In KS1 this half term, we have been learning about animals. We have learnt about mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. We have been learning facts about these animals and their features. These are things that make the animals unique and identifiable.
We identified each animal and sorted them into groups.
AJ – ‘I think a lizard is a reptile because it has dry scales.’
JJ – ‘A fish has scales and a tail and fins.’
Help at home by discussing animals with your child. What features does it have? Ask ‘Can you tell me what type of animal this is and why?
Food for the birds.
It’s been a busy week in Nursery. The children always love exploring the outside area, especially looking for worms and bugs under the logs. This week they began to notice that they couldn’t find many. Where they had gone?
We talked about the cold, wet weather. The children then began to think about the birds in our garden and wondered what they were eating? We decided to make them some food. Cutting up lard very carefully, we mixed it together with bird seed, it was “sticky” and “gooey”
We pressed it into cups, added string, and then hung them in our Nursery garden. We took some home too, so that we could watch the birds at home. Let us know if your bird feeder attracts the birds into your outside space. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Some other activities from this week in Nursery.
In group time, children in red, blue and yellow group learnt about the number 4. We looked at a domino that had two spots on one end, and two spots on the other. When we looked at the spots together, there were four. Children knew that a car had 4 wheels and a chair had 4 legs. We jumped four times and counted four claps.
Help at home: Have a look around your house and surroundings – What can you find four of? . Can you spot any numeral fours on doors or number plates? Send us an e-mail to let us know how you get on – you could send a photograph to show us what you find. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Next week’s learning:
We will be finding out about Lunar New Year.
Nursery Rhyme of the week
Can you sing along with Wind the Bobbin up ?
Sound of the week
We will be revising all the sounds that we have covered this term
Reminders
We are looking forward to meeting with the parents/ carers of our children in Red, Blue and Yellow group at our meetings next week. The meetings will take place on –
Tuesday 10 February 3.30 -6.30pm
Thursday 12 February 4.30 – 7.30pm
If you haven’t booked an appointment please contact the school office.
Please attend your appointment by entering via the main school entrance and making your way towards the school hall.
The Nursery Team
Phase 3 Stay and Learn
Thank you to all parents and carers who attended the Stay and Learn this week. Hopefully you found the ‘Phase 3 Phonics’ presentation and lesson informative and that you enjoyed playing the phonics games with your child in class. If you’ve any questions about the information you heard/saw during the session, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Please take a short few moments to feedback on the Stay and Learn session by copying this link and pasting it into your browser:
https://forms.gle/JWgXSyfTj53kx6Em9
Book Club
Enjoy seeing some of our 3,4A learners enjoying their favourite books in today’s book club…
Help at home: Ensure your child reads daily for around ten minutes and completes their reading record task ready for Friday’s book club!
Great Fairies of the World
This week, we read Great Fairies of the World by Stephanie Moss. This rhyming story introduces fairy characters with jobs that help others, including an architect fairy, a doctor fairy and an engineer fairy, to name just a few!
We discussed how the author chooses the most interesting and imaginative words to bring the characters to life. Through describing images and making our word choices more adventurous, we’ve developed our oracy skills and strengthened our writing too.
In provision, we linked our fiction reading to non-fiction information about real-life heroes in the community.
We also used the fairy theme in our classroom challenges by:
- using our phonics skills to read the fairy names and creating our own names using some of the phase 3 digraphs and trigraphs that we know. (If you’d like a reminder of how to pronounce them – watch this video!)
- finding answers to a reading quiz.
- designing and creating fairy gardens.
- making fairy potions and talking about the ingredients.
- practising our scissor skills by cutting out stars to make wands – just like in the story!
Phonics
Spring 1 week 5 focused on reading longer words, using the ‘chunking method’. When we ‘chunk it up’, we segment and blend longer words one syllable at a time. For example: sunset (s-u-n, sun. Then, read s-e-t, set. Finally, join them together. Sun-set. Sunset.)
Ask your child to show you how they ‘chunk-it-up’!
Help at Home: Here’s a game you could play at home to help your child remember Tricky Words.
This week’s game is: Tricky Word Splat.
- Write a selection of tricky words on paper/sticky notes.
- Place around the room/floor.
- Say a tricky word for your child to splat. You might jump on the words, splat with a masher or create your own ideas!
Each week, we learn a new poem and recite it daily. Saying the poem aloud helps the children focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word and line, supporting their reading development. This week’s poem is called Mrs Bluebird.
A visit from D-Side
This week, children also took part in an online safety talk with Dave from D-Side. They learned how to stay safe when using the internet, including asking a grown-up for help and telling an adult if something makes them feel worried or unsure. Watch out for more information about on-line safety in next week’s post!
If you’d like to email us any photos of your child’s home learning, share any achievements or tell us about any exciting events, please send them to our Reception email. Children love to share them with their friends and it’s also great for their confidence and communication skills too!
Year 3/4 – PE
This week, we’ve enjoyed taking part in yoga which is excellent for both physical and mental health. It helps to develop strength and flexibility. We enjoyed trying the following poses:
- warrior one
- warrior two
- triangle
- tree
Why not try some yoga at home?
Reading – Viking Boy
As we continue to enjoy Viking boy as our class novel, we have been making sure that we remember the key parts of the story. We’ve been using story maps to help with this. Each time we read a chapter, we have been adding to our maps, noting down a five word summary of the main events. This is sometimes quite a challenge as lots can happen in a chapter! We sometimes add illustrations to help us remember too.
Reading and Writing : Bog Baby
We’ve been reading The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis and using it for our reading and writing learning.
It is a lovely story and has enabled us to retrieve information and start to infer the characters’ feelings from the pictures and text. We’ve also talked about wild animals and nature.
We’ve orally rehearsed sentences and been using conjunctions to make them more interesting. The children have also written some sentences, sometimes using conjunctions too.
Help at home by talking about The Bog Baby story. What would you do if you found a beautiful little creature? There is a video version here, read by the author. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
Yorkshire Museum Trip
Recently, Y3,4 went on a school trip to the Yorkshire Museum!
We learnt more about the Romans, our current topic in History, and other periods of history as we looked around the museum, too. We also enjoyed observing artefacts that date back to the Roman period in Britain.
A highlight, though, had to be marching as a centurion!
A centurion is a commander of a century in the ancient Roman army.
Did you know? As the Romans stood opposite their enemies before battle, they stood in complete silence as an intimidation tactic! Much different to war cries you may have heard from other armies!
Learning about toys from the past
Today the KS1 had the pleasure of having a lovely visitor in school. Sue! Sue is a long-known resident at Scholes Primary school. Today the children were able to ask Sue all about the toys she played with when she was younger.
Here are some of the questions we asked:
2C
What companies made toys back then?
What was your favourite toy to play with and why?
1/2B
What material were your toys made from?
What were toy shops like?
1A
Did you have a slide or did you go to the park when you were younger?
Did you have colouring books?
See some of Sue’s answers below.
This half-term we have been learning all about toys from the past. We’ve learnt how to spot older toys and the materials they were made from.
Help at home by discussing toys you played with when you were younger and try to identify differences between toys then and now. It would be brilliant if you could get older family members involved such as grandparents or even perhaps well-known neighbours.