Zog
We hope that you enjoyed the sunshine on Saturday and managed to get out for some exercise and fresh air. Mrs Long is lucky enough to live within walking distance to Temple Newsam. The bluebells in the woods there are beautiful at the moment and have a lovely fragrance. Have you seen any growing anywhere near your house?
This week, we will be thinking about the story ‘Zog’ by Julia Donaldson. You might have this story at home, but if not we have posted a link to it above. Julia Donaldson is one of our favourite authors and we really enjoy looking for the rhyme in her stories.
Read or listen to the story with your child – before you start the book ask your child a few questions. What do you think dragons look like? What do you think they sound like? The teacher in the story teaches the dragons “……all they needed to know”, what do you think dragons need to know? Read the story to your child and talk about the pictures.
Here are some activities that you can try that are linked to the story.
Can you draw a dragon? Perhaps draw the basic outline of a dragon. Can your child add the spikes to its back and the fire from its mouth? What colours would you use for the fire?
Small world play – Build a castle with any bricks or children’s building materials that you have at home. If you don’t have bricks use food boxes to make a castle. You can decorate this and add any toy figures that you may have.
Get creative– Make a crown or a wand, using bits and pieces from around your home. Send us a photo into the email address.
Watch – Here is an action video to watch and join in with your child. Let’s get active, even if we are inside! Fly like a dragon!
Get active – Take part in a scavenger Hunt outside or around your home. See image below or if you have a free Twinkl subscription, you can download it. This is linked to our senses. Talk to your child about their senses.
There are also few Zog themed activities and games on the Forestry England site. Most of the crafts and games are suitable for younger children with just a few activity sheets aimed at older children.
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!
Story Time
It’s Friday again and another week of being in ‘lockdown’ completed. Well done! We hope that you’re all remaining happy and healthy at home. Keep sending us your e-mails; we really do love to see your photos and read about all of the activities that you’ve been doing at home. We’ll share some of your photos at the end of this post so that you can see what your friends have been doing too.
As it’s the end of the week, we thought we’d continue with our popular Friday Story Time posts; we’ve had a lot of positive feedback to say how much children have enjoyed hearing some familiar voices . Today’s story, is another Nursery favourite. It’s called ‘ The Paper Dolls’ and is written by Julia Donaldson (published by Pan Macmillan).
Miss Logan is reading the story, and in case you’re wondering, she’s sitting in Nursery’s book corner because she has been working in ‘Big School’ this week. She’s been helping to look after Key Worker children that still attend school at some points during the week. As you can see, Nursery is exactly the same; we really hope to be all sat together, listening to stories again soon.
Here are a few questions and things to talk about after you’ve listened to the story.
- What were the girl’s slippers like?
- Can you remember what was on the girl’s ceiling?
- Who do the Paper Dolls meet along the way? (Dinosaur, pigs, tiger, crocodile, a boy)
- What do the Paper Dolls say to all of the animals/people they meet?
- Can you think of another story where the character says “You can’t catch me…”?
- What did the boy do to the Paper Dolls? How do you think the little girl felt?
- Can you pick out any of the rhyming words in the story?
If you enjoyed the story and would like to do a few activities, here are a couple of ideas to get you started.
- You could try to make your own paper dolls at home. Here is a link to a template or you could experiment with the traditional way of folding paper like Julia Donaldson talks about here. Send us a picture of all of your attempts!
- When you’ve cut out your dolls, draw faces on them and colour in their clothes. What would you name them?
- Can you make up a story together about an adventure for your dolls? Where would they go? Who would they meet? What might happen?
- Talk about memories. Parents/carers – What happy memories do you have from your childhood? Did you have a favourite toy? You could call a relative and ask them what they liked to play with as a child.
Home Learning
We hope that you enjoyed reading ‘Simon Sock’ this week. Did you help to sort the socks into pairs at home? We hope so!
Please remember, our ideas are just suggestions and there are many different ways to learn at home together. Children in Nursery learn through play. Baking, painting, jig-saws, role play, physical games outside, playdough, building Lego models, singing songs and reading stories are all activities that involve lots of opportunities for children to learn and develop skills included in the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. ‘Learning’ for Nursery children does not have to include children being sat at a table practising letters and counting, although your child may also enjoy this. We know that it can be very hard juggling work commitments and learning from home with other children in the house as well. Mrs Long, as well as others, has two young children at home. It can be hard! Keep talking to each other, read, have fun and play together as much as you can.
Here are some of the photos that you have emailed of your learning. Some are ‘Simon Sock’ activities and others are things that children have been interested in at home.
Let’s go to the Dough disco!
At Nursery, the children love dough disco! Its great fun and helps to develop the muscles needed for an effective pencil grip. We enjoy joining in with this disco song at Nursery sometimes and there is also a YouTube channel devoted to daily dough disco routines.
To take part you will need a small ball of dough each. This can be commercially available dough or you could make a batch with your child, it’s easy…
Dough recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup of flour
- ¼ cup of salt
- 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil
- Food colouring (optional)
How to make
- Add the flour to a bowl.
- Mix together the food colouring and water in a separate bowl.
- Mix the two bowls together add more flour if it gets sticky.
- Add the vegetable oil at the end.
- Store in an airtight container.
Then you are ready to go. Happy dancing!
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!
