Home Link – Technology
As part of the Early Years Foundation Stage, children need to be confident using a range of technology. Please write a few things down and return this sheet to nursery to let us know what technology your child likes to use at home. You could also e-mail us a photograph of them using it: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Here are a few examples of technology that your child may enjoy using at home…
- Toys with buttons, switches or remote-controls
- iPads, tablets, computers, phones – What are their favourite apps or games
- CD/DVD players
- TV with remote control
- Cameras
Mr McGregor’s Garden
We enjoyed learning all about the life cycle of a bean plant. We are just beginning to see signs of life in some of our beans. At the beginning of the week, children enjoyed talking about the type of plants that Peter
Rabbit likes to find in Mr McGregor’s garden. They drew pictures of the plants and we used them to create a big map of his garden on the floor. We had great fun navigating a remote-controlled Peter Rabbit around the garden and we used lots of positional language.
Here are a few other things we’ve enjoyed this week:
- looking at leaves with the digital microscope
- creating a new supermarket role play area and writing our own signs
- painting outside in the Tuff Spot
- making a ‘seaside’ area on our stage outside
- counting lots of satsumas at snack time
Children continue to watch the tadpoles and wait with excitement! We noticed a few of them have already grown back legs.
Week 4 – What are we learning this week?
Over the last couple of weeks, there have been a few recurring interests that we’ve noticed amongst children. The first is a fascination with very long worms and the other is an interest in wands, princesses and castles. So, as we like to follow children’s interests as much as we can, we’re going to learn about worms! We’ll enjoy reading the popular rhyming story ‘Superworm’ and we’ll use non-fiction books to find out fascinating worm facts. Listen to the CBeebies Bed Time story of Superworm.
In our sensory area, we’ll have wiggly spaghetti worms and in maths, we’ll be comparing and measuring the length of worms. We’re hoping to investigate a different printing technique by using string to create worm prints.
Look out for some castle enhancements in our construction area and a new castle small world scene that we’ll develop with the children. We’re also aware that there’s likely to be a lot of excitement and interest in the up and coming Royal wedding…
This week’s letter sound will be ‘Ww’ for worm!
- Listen to the Jolly Phonics W song and sing along at home.
- What can you find around your house that begins with w?
- Keep encouraging your child to hear the initial sounds in words by playing eye-spy games.
Reminder -Please remember to send only water in your child’s water bottle and ask children to leave their toys at home to play with after nursery. Thank you.
Nursery places available for September 2018
We currently have spaces available in nursery for September 2018. If you are looking for a nursery place for your child, or know of anyone who is, please get in touch.
15 hour and 30 hour places are available and we offer a variety of session times including morning sessions and full days. We begin each day at 8.30am and wrap around care is available.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.
Contact Mrs Beesley or Mrs Long:
- e-mail: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
- call the school office: 0113 2649149
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Home Link – Plants and growth
We’re going to continue talking about last week’s home link activity as not many of you had chance to be creative! Please scroll down to the ‘Plants and growth’ Home Link post from last week.
We’re also going to learn about the letter ‘n’ sound. If you find something beginning with the letter n, please bring it in for our sound shelf. Remember to write your child’s name on it.
Bikes, bubbles and bunnies!
We were really pleased that Peter Rabbit’s friend, George, could visit us on Tuesday afternoon. The children were really well behaved; they asked Gemma lots of questions about how to look after rabbits and they were gentle and calm around George. Photographs to follow!
Children have been fascinated with the tadpoles and have really enjoyed observing them closely with magnifying glasses and finding out about their life cycles in non-fiction books. They’re looking forward to watching them develop into tiny froglets!
On Friday morning, we were really lucky to be able to watch the ladies Tour De Yorkshire race from the playground. We took the flags that we had made and waved them, cheering as the cyclists, flashing police bikes and a helicopter went past. Afterwards, we stayed with the older children in school to watch a skipping performance and we took part in Wake Up Shake Up.
Week 3 – What are we learning this week?
We’re going to continue our learning about growth and life cycles, focussing on plants this week. We will learn:
- about the life cycle of a bean plant. We will plant our own seeds in bags and cups so that we can closely watch what happens. We’re hoping to see something similar to this video.
- about the letter sound ‘n’. Listen to the Jolly Phonics ‘n’ song.
- to operate a remote-controlled toy around Mr McGregor’s garden.
- to use positional language to describe where Peter Rabbit is hiding. There’s a video on YouTube that might give you more of an idea of the type of language that children need to be able to use. For example, Peter Rabbit is… in, on top of, underneath, behind the table.
- about bubbles – they seem to be a common interest amongst many children at the moment!
Tour de Yorkshire in Scholes
We enjoyed the excitement of the Tour de Yorkshire coming through Scholes on Friday. Each class decorated a bike to display and the whole school went outside to watch the women’s race speed past. We did some WuSu (Wake up, Shake up) dances while we were waiting and the Year 4 skipping team showed us their skipping dance from the skipping competition, too. It was a day to remember for sure!
Parent Consultations
We hope that you found our Parent Consultation meetings informative this week. It was good to see so many of you and to be able to talk about how much progress children have made so far this year. If you still haven’t had chance to speak to Mrs Long, please speak to staff to arrange an appointment.
Further to these discussions, here are some links that you may find useful regarding the Early Years curriculum.
- What to expect, When? This document provides an overview of the Early Years Foundation Stage and what type of things children are expected to be able to do at different stages throughout the year. The booklet has been written to help you as a parent know what to expect during these important years by focusing on the seven areas of learning and development which are covered in the EYFS.
- Jolly Phonics songs – We sing these songs in nursery and learn a new letter sound each week. Each song is accompanied by an action.
- Pure sounds – watch a video clip of our Foundation Two staff saying the pure sound with each Jolly Phonics action.
- Segmenting and blending – In nursery, we learn to segment and blend words orally. We teach children to break down (segment) a word into the sounds that they can hear such as ‘p-e-g’ or ‘c-u-p’ and then to stick/join (blend) these sounds together again to make a word. We do this practically in nursery, playing lots of games. It’s quite difficult to find video clips on line to demonstrate – this is an American version of an oral segmenting and blending game
Please speak to nursery staff if you have any questions.
Home Link – Plants and growth
We’ve been busy planting seeds in nursery and talking about what plants need to grow. Children have notcied some changes in our nursery garden; leaves are starting to grow on the trees and we’ve spotted bees visiting spring flowers.
This week, we’d like you to continue learning about plants and growth. You could…
- Go for a walk around a garden or park. What plants and flowers can you see growing? You could take photos or draw some pictures of things you see.
- We’re learning the ‘f’ sound this week for ‘frogs’ and ‘flowers’. What other words can you think of that begin with ‘f’?
- Does your child like gardening? Send us a photo and tell us what they’re growing at home.
- You could try planting some seeds yourselves. Cress seeds grow quickly!
- Make a model of a flower (Junk modelling, playdough or construction toys) How could you make the stem, the flower and the leaves?
- Paint a picture of some flowers. What colours do you need? What are the parts of a flower called?
Peter Rabbit and friends
Following on from children’s interest in the latest Peter Rabbit movie, we introduced some rabbit enhancements to nursery this week. We enjoyed listening to some of the original Peter Rabbit stories written by Beatrix Potter and in the art area, we created our own rabbit paintings. In maths, we counted out carrots for Peter and Benjamin Bunny. We focussed on language that we can use to compare groups of objects. Lots of children were confident at using more/ mostwhen comparing groups of objects, but many children found less/ least/ fewer trickier. Please help at home by using these words in everyday situations. Thank-you for sending in lots of ‘r’ objects for our sound shelf; we enjoyed playing “eye-spy something beginning with r,” in group times. Due to illness, we’ve had to postpone our visit from George the rabbit. We hope to find out the answers to our questions next week.
Week 3 – What are we learning this week?
We were really pleased to be able to get some frogspawn last week and as we hoped, children were really intrigued to find out about the ‘fish’ swimming in the tank.
This week we will learn:
- about the life cycle of a frog
- to make frogspawn prints using bubble wrap – investigating printing with different textures
- about the letter sound ‘f’ for frog. (Listen to the Jolly Phonics f song here)
- to count out a set number of tadpoles and remember to stop when we’ve reached that number. (Eg. Can you get 5 tadpoles from the pond? Remember to stop when you reach 5!)
- Sing ‘5 Little Speckled Frogs’ using the frogs in our water tray.
Slippery slime and tiny tadpoles
We’ve had a great start to the week. On Monday morning, children helped Miss Backhouse to follow some instructions for how to make slime. They helped to measure out a cup of glue, a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, a tablespoon of a special ingredient and a splash of colour and they mixed them all together in a bowl. The result was a bowl full of colourful slime! It provided lots of opportunities to talk about its texture and properties. Some children realised that they could stretch it and stretch it and stretch it… We talked about the length of their ‘slime worms’ and compared them to find out which was the longest and shortest worm.
If you’d like to make some at home, follow the recipe that we used.
On Tuesday morning, some children noticed that there was a new tank on display in the Quiet room. After closer investigation, they could see that it contained a jelly-like substance and some tiny ‘fish’. We talked about what was in the tank and used some non-fiction books to find out more information. Children were very excited to discover that they’re not tiny fish, but tadpoles! We’re looking forward to learning all about the life cycle of a frog and watching the tadpoles grow and change over the next few weeks.
