Great Fairies of the World
This week, we’ve been reading Great Fairies of the World by Stephanie Moss. This rhyming story features fairy characters that have jobs that help others; architect fairy, doctor fairy and engineer fairy, to name just a few! We’ve been discussing how the author uses the most interesting descriptions/words that they can think of. We’ve been describing images and making words more adventurous. This has helped develop our oracy skills and helped us in our writing too.
In our writing, we’ve created our own fairy characters and written about the jobs that they do.
In provision, we’ve linked our fiction reading to non-fiction information about real-life heroes in the community.
We’ve also used the fairy theme in our classroom challenges.
Living and learning: Internet Safety
We joined in with learning about Safer Internet Day on Tuesday 11 February.
When asked what being ‘online’ means and what you can do online, children had lots of ideas. Many of them talked about different games and programmes that they play and watch on-line at home.
We spoke about some important uses for the internet, such as the way we use it for our learning- our eBooks. We also discussed how we should limit our time online to keep our body and brain healthy and why we shouldn’t use electronic devices close to bed time.
In Reception, we used the story The Adventures of Smartie the Penguin to talk about internet safety. Smartie receives a tablet for his birthday but encounters some problems when using it, including adverts, websites that are too old for him and people saying unkind things online, during a game. He makes the right decisions and always asks Mummy and Daddy for help. There is a memorable song throughout the story:
Ask your child what they can remember about keeping safe online.
Maths: Length and height
We’ve been developing our understanding of how to compare and measure length and height. We’ve been ordering by length and comparing the length of objects; saying which are shorter, longer, the shortest, the longest or the same (equal). We’ve been measuring objects using non-standard forms of measurement. We measured the length of our bodies using different objects.
Phonics
It was assessment week in phonics and we’ve been reviewing and revisiting our Spring 1 learning. Your child will have come home with a grapheme mat and a tricky word mat. If any sounds are highlighted on the grapheme mat, these are those that your child is not yet secure on. Please keep practising these at home.
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! In Little Wandle phase 3, we learnt lots of new words. The children will continue to learn new tricky words fairly rapidly so it’s important to keep practising them. We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words. Here’s another you could try!
Help at home: Musical tricky words
- Write the tricky words on individual pieces of paper, lay them out on the floor.
- Play your child’s favourite song for them to dance to.
- When the music stops, your child should pick a word to quickly run to and stand on.
- Your child reads the word they have landed on.
- Remove that word and repeat until there are no words left!
Poetry Picnic
Each week we learn a new poem and we recite this poem every day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem was Furry, furry squirrel.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm. Can your child re-tell this week’s poem to you?
Parent-teacher meetings
Thank you to all the parents and carers who came to the parent-teacher meetings this week. It was great to see you all there, keen to find out how your child is doing in school and how you can continue to support at home.
A few people asked about how to say the graphemes correctly, using pure sounds – here are links to help you pronounce Phase 2 graphemes and Phase 3 graphemes.
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!
Reminders
SWIMMING DATES- Spring 2
Rainbow Class- 26 Feb, 12 Mar, 26 Mar
Sunshine Class- 5 Mar, 19 Mar, 02 Apr
These dates are also stuck to your child’s classroom door or window to view whenever needed.
Sponsored maths challenge – Please see the Sponsored Tens Frame Challenge letter that has been sent home this week.
World Book Day 2025: Stay and Read – Thursday 06 March. Further details to follow (see calendar).
Happy half term! Enjoy the break and we’ll see you again on Monday 24 February.
A very busy week
This week, as part of our Expressive Arts and Design curriculum, we’ve re-visited learning to draw ourselves. We used mirrors to look at our faces and talked about what shape we needed to draw on the paper first. We then looked at our features and tried to add more details to our drawings such as hair, ears and eyes. Some children added eye lashes and eyebrows.
Have a go at home together. Can you draw each other? Start with a circle shape for your face and then add in some features
Tuesday was our Internet safety Day at Nursery. We talked about ways to stay safe whilst using technology at home such as always making sure that we are near a grown up. Only using apps and games that our parents and carers have said are ok for us to play. We also agreed that we’d tell someone if we saw anything that we didn’t like pop up on our screens.
We also followed an interest in magnetism this week. The children found the magnetic boards outside and wanted to find out more. We began exploring to find out which things were magnetic.
“It sticks to the cake tin, look”
“Metal, it sticks to the metal leg”
We found a construction kit that we could make models that used magnets to hold the parts together.
Learning after half term:
We’ll be reading Jack and the Beanstalk and beginning our ‘growing’ theme. If you have a copy of the book at home, please read it together.
Nursery rhyme of the week – Mary, Mary quite contrary.
Sound of the week – ‘Uu’ for Umbrella
We’re also learning about growing up and looking at how we change as we get older.
It would be great if we could look at some photographs of children when they were babies and toddlers. If you are able to, please send us an email with one photograph of your child as a baby and one photograph of them as a toddler. We’ll use these in group time sessions and will also be adding them to our Home Corner family display.
scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Reminder – World Book Day
It’s World Book Day on Thursday 06 March. This year, we will celebrate by bringing our favourite book to nursery to share with our friends. Please make sure that your child’s name is in their book. If you can stay a little bit longer at drop off on Thursday morning, we’d love for you to share a book with your child or to join in with some of the World Book Day activities that will be in provision. It’s always a day that we really enjoy at nursery, so please join in if you can.
We hope that you all have a happy and healthy half term and we’ll see you on Monday 24 February.
Y2 Football
Well done again to our fantastic Year 2 football teams for playing some fantastic football this Monday evening. Our next game will be Monday 24th March.
Thank you again to FOSP for the brilliant football kits, and to parents for bringing their children along!
Miss Young
Nursery Coffee Morning
Following the half-term break we will be holding another Nursery coffee morning.
Yoga
For the last 2 weeks of half term we are doing yoga in PE. We are LOVING IT! We start the learning off with some breathing exercises, then practise some yoga poses. We put 3/4 balances to create a ‘flow’ and then have a go at creating our own balances.
On our mats we practised lots of low and high poses.
We also did some balancing in pairs and in threes!
Geography fieldwork
We have really enjoyed the fieldwork part of our geography topic this half term. We surveyed the village and our school grounds, thinking about litter, noise, traffic and plants. Our locality is really nice!
We did notice quite a bit of litter around school so we are going to pick it up.
Help at home by talking about how we can positively impact the environment (eg picking up litter, recycling, planting trees).
PE – yoga
We are doing some yoga lessons to finish this half term. Being aware of our bodies, balancing and stretching were great exercise. We loved the paired poses!
Feed the birds
It’s been a busy week in Nursery. The children 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, frosty weather and how the ground had been very hard. 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.
Self-help skills are very important as the children develop. At lunchtime we are developing our skills of independence by learning how to use a knife and fork. We have been practising this skill in our dough area too.
In group time, children in red, blue and green group learnt about the number 2. We looked at a domino that had one spot on one end, and one spot on the other. When we looked at the spots together, there were two. Children knew that they had 2 eyes, 2 ears and 2 feet. We jumped twice and counted two claps.
Help at home: Have a look around your house and surroundings – What can you find two of? You might see two wheels on your bike or 2 eggs left in the box. Can you spot any number twos 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:
Sound of the week- “e” for elephant.
We will be choosing some of our favourite Nursery rhymes to revisit this week. Which is your favourite?
Pat a cake, The Grand old Duke of York or Jack and Jill?
The Nursery Team
School Trip to Magna!
Supertato
On Monday morning, we welcomed in the new week with another stay and learn. We invited parents and carers into class to explore all things fine motor and early writing, or as we like to call it- Funky Fingers!
Thank you to those who could join us for another fun and hopefully informative session.
As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please use the QR code below to tell us how we did and to make suggestions of what you might like to see next time!
If you missed the session or would like to look back on the presentation, please click the link below.
Literacy
On Tuesday, there was a vegetable-based mystery… Who had captured the vegetables and why were they trapped?
It could only be one thing… The EVIL PEA!
After reading the story Supertato by Sue Hendra, we read and answered some true or false statements to check our understanding of the story.
We’ve been making Wanted posters to warn everyone who to look out for! We’ve also been writing about a picture from the story.
Our new word of the week is: mischievous. A perfect word to describe the small, green villain in our story!
We’ve enjoyed lots of activities linked to our focus story.
Maths
In maths, we’ve been exploring and comparing weight. Using the correct vocabulary (light, heavy, lighter, heavier, lightest, heaviest, balanced, equal), as we investigated.
In provision we’ve been weighing different vegetables, using the balance scales.
PE; Yoga
Last week, we started our yoga unit in PE. We are learning that yoga is meditation through movement. It is taking a lot of balance and control to move in and out of our yoga positions.
At the end of each session, we finish with a visualisation that focuses on our breathing and creating peaceful images in our minds.
Ask your child if they can demonstrate some of the yoga poses we have practised.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Mrs Bluebird
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
Click below to watch Reception recite this week’s poem.
Phonics
Spring 1 week 5 has focused on reading longer words, by using the chunking method (segmenting and blending longer words one syllable at a time, i.e. “s-u-n, sun, s-e-t, set, sun, set, sunset”)
Ask your child to show you how they ‘chunk-it-up’
Each week, we’d like to give you an idea of a game you could play at home to make reading even more exciting.
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!
More photos of our learning this week…
Dates for your diary
Parent-Teacher Meetings- Tuesday 11 February/Thursday 13 February (pre-booked appointments)
Class Trip- York Railway Museum- Monday 3 March (details sent home)
World Book Day- Thursday 6 March, 9am-10am Join us in class, to share in reading time with your child. They can also bring in their favourite book to share with the class later in the day (please name the book)