School places September 2020
Accepting your school place for September 2020
Our older Nursery children, who are due to start school in September 2020, will have received their offer of a school place last week. We hope that everyone is happy with their offer and that you were allocated your first choice. Please remember to read the offer information carefully. You MUST contact your child’s allocated school to accept the offer, should you wish to take the place.
If your child has been allocated Scholes (Elmet) Primary School, please contact school to accept your child’s place using the office’s email –scholesoffice@spherefederation.org
School has already sent an email to welcome parents/carers, so please check your inbox and reply with the details requested as soon as possible. Thank you.
Simon Sock
We hope you enjoyed your Easter break. Ferdie had a great time playing in the sunshine and ate lots of Easter eggs!
This week, we will be thinking about the story Simon Sock by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet . We were lucky enough to all get a free book via the Book Trust this year. Some children received a book called Simon sock. If you got a copy share it with your child, if you didn’t, follow the link to the story.
Talk about the story. How many socks for different occasions do you have? Why is it alright to be friends with someone who doesn’t look like you?
Here are some activities that you can try that are linked to the story.
Sorting activity – get some socks and then sort them into pairs. What patterns can you see? Which socks are big and which are small? Can you sort your socks into pairs? Can you make a pattern with your socks black, white, black, white?
Mark making activity – draw a sock shape or cut one out for your child. Let them design their own pattern on it. Use lots of different colours to create a stripy pattern or a spotty pattern
Creative activity – use an old or odd sock to make a puppet. Draw eye shapes and stick them on with glue or sellotape. Add any other decorations that you have around your house.
Working on our muscles for writing – make a small washing line with wool, string or thread. Tie it between 2 chairs, at a height that your child can reach. Using some household pegs ask your child to peg their socks onto the line.
Maths activities with socks – make a pile of socks. Can you ask your child to give you 4 socks from the pile? Choose any number below 5 see how they get on then extend to 10. Split a pile of socks (maximum of 10) into 2 piles. Ask your child to count how many socks there are altogether eg 3 in one pile and 4 in another. Change the amount each time.
Self – care – teach your child how to put their socks and shoes on independently. This is a skill that they will need when they arrive in Foundation 2 in September. Taking the time now will really help your child when dressing on their own after PE in September.
Let us know how you get on by replying to the email address scholesf1@spherefederation.org. We would love to hear about what you have been doing. Also we are happy to answer any of your questions too.
We’ll post again on Wednesday and Friday this week, so remember to check in again soon. Have fun!
Five Star Sports LIVE sessions
Five Star Sports regularly come into school to deliver fabulous sporty sessions. They are running some LIVE sessions on Facebook for you to join in with. There is a Monday session for younger children and Saturday morning football sessions. Join in and keep active with them.
Easter activities
Happy Easter! We know that it’s the Easter break, but in these unprecedented times we thought that we’d continue to post some ideas of activities that you can do at home, if you choose to do so. Some of these are Easter related and others are ideas that you can continue after the Easter break.
This will be the only post for the two week Easter holidays. During this time, you can still email your child’s class teacher, although they may not respond as quickly as they have been doing
The most important message this Easter is to have fun as a family. Read together, play outside, bake, garden, watch a movie, sing and dance. Make the most of this time together.
Easter Holiday ideas
Here are some links to a CBeebies programme called “Let’s celebrate”. It shows children celebrating Easter along with a child friendly reference to the Easter Story.
Watch the CBeebies Easter programmes -Talk about what you watch with your child. Have you done any of the things that Toby has done to prepare for Easter? Have you seen any baby animals? See if your child can remember the names of the young animals from two weeks ago. Have you seen any spring flowers in the garden? Talk about their names and colours. Can the children remember painting the daffodils for their Mother’s Day cards?
Here are some activities that you may like to try over the Easter holidays.
Make an Easter egg picture – Cut out some egg shapes from paper and ask your child to decorate it. The patterns we use in Nursery for mark making are zigzag patterns, wave patterns, horizontal lines, vertical lines and circles.
Easter egg hunt – Can your child help you to think of some clues for the Easter egg hunt? Can you write their instructions for the rest of the family?
Decorate an egg – Make a hard-boiled egg and allow it to cool down. Ask your child to decorate it using coloured pens. Use a slide or create a ramp with a large box propped against a chair. Whose egg rolls the furthest?
Counting eggs – Sing ‘Hickety Pickety my red hen‘ song together. Count the eggs as they hatch. Count carefully counting to each egg as it pops.
Counting ducks – We enjoy singing the ‘5 Little Ducks‘ song at Nursery. Each time a duck is lost, count how many are left. Use each finger to represent a duck.
As always, stay safe and have fun. Let’s hope that the sun shines!
The journey home
The chicks have grown even more since our last post on Monday. Mrs Long was having to refill their food several times a day! Yesterday, we decided it was time for them to return home to the farm where they can enjoy having a larger space to run around in.
Here are a few photos of them this week; you can see how much their feathers have grown. They also got even better at jumping and 3 of them managed to jump out of the cage when it was opened!
They were quite happy on the journey to the farm, pecking the box and eating some more food! Here are some photos of their journey and them waiting to meet Robert, the farmer.
We hope you enjoyed watching our chicks grow as much as Mrs Long and her family did. In the future, when places re-open, you might enjoy visiting them in their new home with your families.
Story Time
Happy Friday, Nursery! Have you had a good week? We hope that you enjoyed seeing all of your teachers on Wednesday and that you had fun joining in with some of the Supertato activities. What was your favourite?
Today, Mrs Beesley is going to read one of our favourite Nursery stories, ‘The Monkey with a bright blue bottom’ written by Steve Smallman (published by Little Tiger Press). The story is about a cheeky monkey who stumbles across a paintbox and decides to have some fun. Nursery, don’t tell your grown up what happens; we know you love the funny ending!
Here are a few questions and things to talk about after you’ve listened to the story.
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- Why did the monkey think the birds were pretty?
- What colour were all of the animals at the beginning of the story?
- What happened when the leopard growled in his sleep?
- Can you remember what the monkey painted on the bear? (What are spectacles?)
- How did the animals feel when they woke up and saw what the monkey had done?
- How do you think monkey felt when he was surrounded by all of the animals? Does he feel differently at the end of the story when they all laugh at him?
- Which is your favourite animal? Why?
- Think about the animals at the beginning of the story (grey) and at the end of the story (colourful). Which do you prefer? Why?
If you enjoyed the story and would like to do a few activities, here are a couple of ideas to get you started.
- Twinkl has some jungle animal colouring pages if you have a printer.
- We enjoy singing and moving to the songs ‘Animal Boogie‘ and ‘Walking through the jungle‘ at Nursery. Can you move like the animals in the story? You could hide some toy animals around the house or garden and make some binoculars (cardboard tubes or roll up some paper) to go on your own jungle walk.
- Draw and cut out some basic animal outlines and enjoy being cheeky monkeys with some paints or pens. What colour would you make a snake? What pattern would you draw on a giraffe?
Home Learning
Thank you again to everyone who has been in touch via our email. We really love to see what you have all been doing whilst keeping safe at home. It’s great to see so many happy faces. Here are a few of your friends learning and having fun at home…
Miss Morris and Miss Logan have enjoyed joining in too! Miss Logan made a ‘book in a box’ for Supertato and his veggie friends.
Wake Up Shake Up (WUSU) playlist
A few children seem to be missing our daily WUSU sessions. We have had a lot of email requests for videos that children can dance along to (there is one already on the Year 1 & 2 Class News page). Here is the playlist if you would like to dance along to your favourites. There are more videos in the pipeline…watch this space!
Hello from all of your Nursery teachers!
Good morning, today we’ve got a few messages to share with you from everyone at Nursery . We hope that you enjoy watching them (more than we enjoyed recording ourselves!) and spotting a few familiar faces. We’re really enjoying seeing your email photographs, so keep sending them in.
Unfortunately, Miss Backhouse isn’t able to record a message at the moment; she’s ok though, so don’t worry. She’d like us to pass on a big ‘hello’ and she hopes that you’re all having lots of fun with your families. Miss Backhouse is being kept very busy looking after her mischievous cats and drawing lots of super pictures. Do you think she’s been drawing Batman and unicorns?
Rainbows
Have you noticed lots of rainbows recently? As we’ve been going on our daily walks and bike rides around the villages where we live, we’ve all spotted lots of rainbows in people’s windows. Have you seen any? If you have already made a rainbow, please let us know and send us a photo of it.
If you haven’t had chance yet, there are lots of different ways to make one. Why don’t you get creative and have a go! There are many examples on the internet already and we’ll post your rainbows as you send them in.
Do you have all the different colours at home to paint a rainbow? Don’t worry if you don’t, experimenting with colour mixing is a great activity. Talk to your child about what happens when they mix different colours. How could you make orange? What happens if you mix blue and yellow? All you need are some paints and paper (or your patio/path outside!). If you wanted some extra ideas, there are some colour mixing resources on Twinkl, such as these finger painting mats.
We often see children painting and drawing rainbows in Nursery and lots of children enjoy singing along to I can sing a rainbow. Why not sing a long at home as you make your rainbows. You could even go on a ‘rainbow hunt’ and look for items around your house that are all the different colours of the rainbow.
Supertato
Finally for today, we hope that you’re having fun with the Supertato activities. Ferdie enjoyed colouring in a picture of the Evil pea yesterday. He also loved making little peas by rolling playdough into ball shapes. This was great for strengthening his paw muscles, but he also practised his counting at the same time! He had to make 1,2,3 or 4 peas and make sure he stopped when he had enough peas in each pod. Ferdie could even say which pea pod had the most and fewest peas in. Well done, Ferdie! Keep sharing your learning at home with us and we’ll be back on Friday with a story time and some of your friend’s photos.
Supertato!
We hope you enjoyed the weekend and found some fun things to do at home and in your garden. This week, we will be thinking about the story Supertato by Sue Henndra. You might have this story at home, but if not we have posted a link to it on YouTube.
Read or listen to the story with your child – talk about the various vegetables that they can see in the story. Are there any vegetables that they haven’t seen before? Which vegetable is their favourite to eat? Talk about evil pea and how he is being unkind to the other vegetables. It is always a good idea to revisit the story throughout the week, your child may even be able to retell the story, in their own words, using the pictures to help them.
Here are some activities that you can try that are linked to the story.
How many different ways do we eat potato? Talk about this with your child eg mashed potato, chips, jacket potato, crisps.
Make your own Supertato or super vegetable – Draw on the eyes with a marker and add a paper cape with sellotape. Send us a picture via the email we would love to see your creations.
Have a try at vegetable printing or drawing your favourite vegetable. What colour is it? What shape is it?
Sorting carrots –Which are long, which are short? Can you put them in order from shortest to longest? Use the words long, longest, short and shortest with your child. How many carrots have you got? Count carefully pointing to each carrot as you go.
Evil Pea – If you have frozen peas in your freezer have a look at them in their frozen state. Feel them, what do they feel like? Watch them defrost. How long does it take? Does it defrost more quickly in different places around your house? Use the words “frozen” and “melting” with your child.
Make a sign – tell evil pea to stop being unkind. Ask your child what they want it to say and write this for them. They can add pictures of evil pea and maybe a STOP sign.
Let us know how you get on by replying to the email address scholesf1@spherefederation.org. We would love to hear about what you have been doing. Also we are happy to answer any of your questions too.
Have fun!
Chick news
If you have been keeping up to date with our chick news, you’ll know that we were going to move the chicks into a bigger cage this weekend. They love the extra space and have been running around and starting to flap their wings. The chicks are getting better at jumping too; they can now jump over the side and escape when we open the door to feed them.
They’re growing quickly and are really hungry; we’ve been filling their food tray up several times a day. This also means that they poo a lot too! Mrs Long’s first job today is to clean them out and give them some fresh water.
They’ll be going back to the farm soon to join the other chicks and mother hens. We’ll let you know when they do and post a few final photographs of them before they go home.