Holidays in the past…
Wow! What an exciting week we’ve had! Starting with our sports roundabout on Monday. The children had a fantastic time and showed amazing team spirit. Thank you to all of the families who came along to support.
Abbey House Museum…
On Tuesday, we had a brilliant trip to the treasure trove that is Abbey House Museum. The children enjoyed learning about holidays in the past, which ties into our current topic work. They tried on costumes, learnt about souvenirs, woolen swimsuits, the ‘penny lick’ ice-cream, Punch and Judy shows and more! Lunchtime was in the beautiful setting of Kirkstall Abbey and park, before more explorations inside the museum. The children were so sensible and we’re really proud of how they represented our school whilst out and about on our adventure. A big thank you again to our parent volunteers.
There are so many photos, that we’ve made a video. Enjoy!
Literacy…
The children used their experience of the trip, to write recounts of their day. We discussed how we can use words such as ‘first’, ‘next’, ‘later’ and ‘finally’ to show how time has moved on and to sequence the events of the day.
Maths…
As we move through the last few weeks of the school year, we are revisiting and revising skills. This week we worked on recall- remembering number bonds within five automatically and some within ten. In provision, we have supported this through using part-whole models to again explore the parts that make a whole number.
Here are some more snapshots of learning this week…
Home-Link Challenge
Oooo arrrrrr… next week we’ll be embarking on a pirate themed adventure! We’d like you to use some old packages, boxes and other reusable materials to make a pirate themed accessory. It could be a treasure chest, a telescope or even a parrot!
Diary Dates…
14 July-Transition afternoon 1.30-3.00: Please collect your child from their usual classroom, at the usual time.
15 July-End of year disco 2.30-3.30: Children are to come to school in school uniform. Please send named disco/party clothing, in a named bag. Thank you.
Living and learning : Drug education
We also looked at different scenarios and talked about what we would do in that situation.
Sports Roundabout
We had a successful Sports Roundabout this afternoon after a break since 2019, due to the pandemic. All the children enjoyed collecting points for their team and showed great teamwork and support for each other. Thank you to all the families who came to show their support too. The points are listed below.
1st Northern Ireland 507 points
2nd Iceland 518 points
3rd Germany 502 points
4th Portugal 493 points
5th Sweden 483 points
6th Italy 477 points
7th Belgium 454 points
8th Spain 394 points
9th Netherlands 379 points
10th Norway 366 points
11th France 360 points
12th England 346 points
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch
This week, we have been reading – The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch.
We created our own story maps to retell the story.
Can your child retell the story using some of these story maps?
In Maths, we have focused on deepening our understanding of numbers to 10.
We have:
- compared groups of objects.
- split numbers into smaller parts.
- recombined parts to make a whole amount.
- explored numbers that can be split into 2 equal parts.
- developed our sense of magnitude eg. knowing 8 is a lot more than 2 but 4 is only a little bit more than 2.
On Tuesday, the children really enjoyed their skipping session with the Skipping School.
Check out our other learning in the classroom.
Home Link
Based on our book this week… write instructions to make a sandwich.
Think carefully about each step.
Then follow your own instructions to make the yummy sandwich.
Planes, boats and pirates!
Children are loving the new pirate themed enhancements in Nursery this week. We’ve been talking about boats, investigating floating and sinking and drawing pirate maps to hunt for hidden treasure.
In the dough area, we’ve been practising some of our dough disco moves; we pushed our thumbs into the dough to make ‘thumb pot’ boats.
In the Sunshine room, we’ve been making dens and toasting marshmallows in our new camping role play area.
Outside, we spotted some ladybird lavae on our willow tree; we even saw one that was beginning to pupate. We’re going to keep checking it regularly to watch what happens next.
Muscles and Bones
Muscles and Bones in our body
Part of our science topic is all about our keeping healthy with food, exercise and lifestyle choices.
We talked about what it would be like without bones. What would our limbs feel like?
• Could we move and, if so, how?
• Could we stand?
• Would our muscles still function?
• How do animals that don’t have bones function
(e.g. octopus, snail, spider)
We depend on bones to give our bodies support and enable us to stand and walk.
- Bones aren’t essential for life but without them it
limits the size an animal can be. Our muscles are
attached to our bones and work with them to
provide support.
Today we were learning about the muscles and bones in our body. We watched this Video about the muscular skeletal system. To help us understand this better, we practised some exercises in the playground to help us think about which muscles and bones we use in certain movement, like throwing, jumping, skipping and balancing. Our pictures show us doing these exercises.
Ask your child:
How many bones are in our body?
How many muscles are in our body?
Which muscles do we use when we run? dance? throw?
Skipping School
- aim for an average of at least 60 minutes of moderate or vigorous intensity physical activity a day across the week
- take part in a variety of types and intensities of physical activity across the week to develop movement skills, muscles and bones
Living and Learning: Relationships education
In today’s Living and Learning lesson, we talked about ‘What makes a good friend?’. This lesson builds on pupils’ learning from key stage one about special people and extends their leaning about their close networks and friendships.
We discussed these key points:
- recognise the different types of friendships that are important to us (eg: family, friends, groups we belong to, neighbours)
- explain why friendship and having friends is valuable
- identify how friends show they care for and value each other
- describe what is most important in a friendship
To read some examples of good friendships and we discussed the best friendship ideas. Taking feedback from the class, we made a list on the whiteboard of all the different qualities that make a good friendship.
Here is what we said: 
Clean up!
Our focus has been environmentally based owing to our book Clean Up!
This book has helped us to think about how to look after our oceans, animals and earth. It has helped us to understand that we are responsible for our own litter. The children have extended their vocabulary through the use of: recycle, sanctuary, island and pollution.
Here are some insightful quotes from the children…
A sanctuary is a place where they take animals to be rescued.-Norah
An island is a big patch of land with sea and sand.-Stanley
When we find some rubbish, my Mummy picks it up and puts it in her pocket.-Leo
Take it home to put it in your bin.-Poppy
We need to take all the litter out to clean up the ocean.-Prisha
No-one wants to go to the beach with litter everywhere!-Sofia
We have been using tweezers to help collect litter from our ‘sea’ in the water tray. Here are some other brilliant ways we have enjoyed learning through our provision:
We are doing incredibly well with our learning and consolidation in Maths. We know so much about counting, doubles, odd and even numbers, one more/one less, the composition of numbers etc -we like to show off and have a go at everything during ‘Challenge Time’!
Thankyou for listening to your child read regularly and for adding comments to their reading records. We will check the online books to see which children have read the most times this half term…there will be prizes!
Other pics of our fun learning this week:
Home-Link
Please take a photograph of your child reading their e-book in their favourite spot at home. Send your pictures to our email address.
Living and learning : RSE
Our Living and learning lessons for the next few weeks are all about families and relationships. We have talked about how each of our families are different and are made up of different people and sometimes across different households too. Lots of children shared how many people were in their family and could talk about their special people.
