Super sewing!
We have been brushing up on our sewing skills today. As part of our design technology unit, we will be designing and sewing cushions. Our first job was to master threading a needle and securing a knot at the end ready for stitching – this ensures the thread doesn’t pull through the fabric. This took quite a long time and the children were excellent at helping each other. They watched a demonstration of how to do running stitch and back stitch and created their own stitching on binca. The children who took to this like a duck to water were able to challenge themselves by stitching a shape, a pattern or even their initials.
Triathlon’s everywhere!
The AJ Bell World Triathlon Series has been in Leeds this week, with some children from school taking part.
We are also hosting our own triathlon in school to raise money for FOSP. Reception, Year 1 and 2 are doing the swimming element and KS2 are cycling or running. Children have been organised into either Red Team, White Team or Blue Team – with trophies to be awarded. Please donate your entry fee on the Gateway app.
Library visit
The Junior Leadership Team enjoyed a visit to Scholes Library last week and were welcomed by Madeline. It is the first time the children have been to the library since the start of Covid, so it felt very different and exciting.
Madeline explained how the system works within the library and explained how every child could register and get their own library card. The cards can be used at any local library and children and adults can borrow up to fifteen books at a time. Madeline explained where the fiction and non-fiction books were for key stage 2 and then the children enjoyed listening to a story before they were let loose choosing books. They selected five books to take back to school for others to enjoy – it was quite a tough decision as there were so many fabulous new books to choose from. These have been distributed across the classes for everyone to enjoy.
So, get yourselves along to the library and get registered. You can then enjoy an array of wonderful books to read at home. Happy reading!
Living and learning : money education
We had some money workshops delivered in school this week. This linked to our living and learning lessons which were all about where money comes from. We talked about how we might get pocket money, money for presents or earn money by doing chores.
Science – animals including humans
We have started our new science topic which is all about animals. Some children were surprised to find out we are animals (mammals) too!
We will be learning about mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians and how they can also be grouped into carnivores, herbivores and omnivores.
Help at home by talking to your child about animals you have as pets, or that you see when you are out and about.
Design Technology – sewing
Our new topic this half term is design technology…and we’re learning to sew!
We are going to design a puppet and then make it. Before we do that though, we are learning different stitches and evaluating good and bad examples.
A very insightful comment from a child summed up sewing so far…
It’s harder than it looks!
Transport
We can’t believe that we’re now entering our final half term of this academic year! Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be learning about different types of transport. We’ll be looking at whether something travels by land on a track or the road, or if it travels by air or sea.
To start our transport theme, this week, we’ve listened to some stories from ‘The Little Red Train’ series of books. Children enjoyed hearing about Duffy Driver and his adventures on The Little Red Train.
In group time, our maths focus has been talking about our daily activities and using words to describe when things happen such as during the day, night or in the morning or afternoon. We looked at our daily routines and tried to sequence the events. Try to use some of this language at home, too. What happens in your house in the morning? What do you do as part of your bedtime routine? What comes first, next, last? What day is it today? Do you go to Nursery tomorrow?
In phonics, we’re learning to orally blend words. We’ll be doing lots of ‘sound talking’ over this half term to give children plenty of opportunities to develop their oral blending before they move into Reception. For example, when giving instructions, we may segment the last word into separate phonemes and then immediately blend the sounds together to say the word (e.g. It’s time to get your c-oa-t, coat!). Have a go at home. Whilst setting the table, you could say…Can you put the c-u-p, cup on the table, please. Where is the f-or-k, fork? To begin with, try to keep it simple, with one syllable words.
Outside, children were amazed at how much our plants have grown in the vegetable planter over the holidays. We could even see some radishes poking out of the soil. Children enjoyed picking the biggest ones and we washed them to eat at snack time. There were very mixed reactions; some children loved the ‘crunch’ of the radishes and others weren’t too keen on the flavour! Well done, Nursery. It’s always good to try something new – especially when you have grown it yourself!
Next week, we’ll be looking at different types of vehicles with wheels. If you, or any of your family, have any toy cars, trucks, monster trucks etc. that you no longer use at home, Nursery would be grateful for any donations. Thank you.
Reminders
- Our Nursery registration closes at 9.10am. Please ensure that you arrive to Nursery between 9-9.10am to allow us to begin our learning activities on time. Thank you.
- Please send your child with a rain coat to Nursery everyday; the weather is very changeable at the moment.
- We have lots of water bottles that don’t have children’s names on – remember to check that your child’s hasn’t worn off. You may also want to check cardigans and jumpers, too.
Rainbow Fish
Our focus book has been ‘The Rainbow Fish’ by Marcus Pfister.
In this book the Rainbow Fish shares it’s shiny scales with its friends. We had a class shiny scale and passed it onto a friend when we noticed them doing something praise worthy. Here are a few reasons that the children passed on the shiny scale:
I gave it to Stanley because he’s my very best friend.-Leo
Ella because she was doing good swimming.-Freya
I gave the shimmering scale to Max because he is my best friend.-Jack
Jacob because he’s a good friend and has good manners.-Marshall
Our provision has reflected this under water theme and the children have completed many related challenges:
Our new artist is Katsushika Hokusai. He is famous for his paintings, drawings and printings. In Literacy we read non-fiction text about him and answered comprehension questions about his life. Does your child remember where he was born? We had a go at recreating some of his sea art through printing and painting. We also drew our own fish and cut it out.
Swimming was brilliant for Rainbow this week, they completed so many laps in their triathlon. The swimming coach gave them all a shared Golden Assembly certificate. It is proudly displayed in the classroom.
The weather has really enabled us to enjoy our outdoor learning. Thankyou for remembering to apply sun lotion to your child on a morning and for sending them with sunhats. Please continue this throughout the coming weeks. Here we are having a little Sports Day initiation too.
Home-Link
You may have spotted our outdoor Fish and Chip shop. This week, could your child write a price list/menu for our new shop. Please send your photographs of the work to us.
Rehearsals Are Underway!
As our first week back comes to a close, Year 6 have been extremely busy rehearsing for their end of year play – The Adventures of Superstan! The children are working incredibly hard to pull together and make this thing work! So far, there have been many examples of skills we aspire to have at Scholes: creativity, initiative and detail when making props; voice projection when acting; and fantastic teamwork when creating some dance moves for our catchy songs!
With the casting completed and some fantastic directors in place, this is sure to be a performance you won’t want to miss!
We look forward to seeing you at the show.
Welcome back!
Welcome back everyone!
We hope you all had a lovely half term and you’ve recovered from all the Jubilee celebrations. Whilst this is the last half term of the school year, it might be worth a little reminder about learning the children can do at home. It is still really important that the children read daily at home. Each week the children will be set a task for their reading journals. This needs to be completed and returned to school each Friday. Parents, please sign the journals on a weekly basis. Those of you who are still regularly going on Times Tables Rockstars, well done! This really does help with fast recall of multiplication facts. Daily practise for those children who are wobbly on their number facts would really benefit from using this app.
Homework, including spellings will continue to be set every Friday. Don’t forget to visit our spelling strategies section of the website for some helpful tips on how to learn these.