Welcome back!
Happy 2022!
We hope you all had a very restful and healthy Christmas. It’s lovely to have all the children back in school again.
Year 5 and 6 have started a new science unit this half term all about evolution and inheritance. They have a new set of vocabulary that they will be getting their heads around!
- evolution: change in living things over time
- inherited: the way that a trait or characteristic is passed to offspring from parents
- trait: a quality or characteristic belonging to something
- adaptation: a small change that a living thing goes through
- natural selection: a process in which living things adapt themselves in order to survive, that they don’t have any control over
- prehistoric: the time classed is ‘before history’ as it was so long ago it hasn’t been recorded or written
- variety: differences between things as part of a whole group
- fossil: the prehistoric remains of a plant or animal
Could you help your child learn these words at home? You could create some flashcards with images on that might help jog their memory, you could create a poster of the words. Could you describe one of the words and your child has to guess which word from the list it is? Be creative and have fun!
Living and Learning : I know when to interrupt (and when not to).
We have talked at length about this!
Young children often feel the need to tell adults immediately something that is in their thoughts. Sometimes this can be at an inappropriate moment. We discussed different scenarios and when it is okay and when it is not okay to interrupt.
New Year, New Science Topic
Welcome back to 2022!
The children have settled well this week and have demonstrated good learning habits and routines straight away – well done!
We’ve kicked off the term with a new science topic ‘Electricity’ and kicked off talking about electrical appliances in and around our home. Our first sparky discussion was “What is electricity? What does it do?” – there’s so much to learn! Here’s a helpful bbc clip.
Why not have this discussion at home?
Today, we’ve learned about mains and battery operated appliances and realised that some are actually both!
In the forthcoming weeks, we will be creating our own circuits from wires, batteries and bulbs and why they work (or don’t work!), so watch this space. 
Here are the scientific words children will be learning…
New topic: Romans and Anglo-Saxons
This week, we’ve started our new topic: Romans and Anglo-Saxons.
In this topic, we’ll learn loads about the Romans in Britain. We’ll use our history skills to analyse different sources of information and we’ll learn loads of key information about this period of time. We’ll be continuing our history learning in our reading and writing lessons, too – and our weekly Latin lessons, of course!
Today, we reminded ourselves about chronology and thought about when the Romans came to Britain. This timeline below is one we use in school and shows all the history we learn across school in the order happened (chronological order).
You can help at home by asking your child about their learning. Even better if you this vocabulary when having your discussions.
Happy New Year!
We hope that you all had a fantastic Christmas and enjoyed the New Year celebrations. We’re looking forward to seeing you all this week and finding out about your holidays and time with your families.
If you’d like to choose one or two photographs of your Christmas or New Year celebrations, please email us and we’ll share them at group times and on our Nursery display. Scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
We’re also looking forward to meeting some of our new children this week for their doorstep home visit. You’ll soon get to meet everyone when they begin Nursery next week.
Reminders
- Remember to bring your water bottles this week – containing WATER only please. Also, don’t forget to write your name on it if Santa brought you a new one!
- The weather is very mixed at the moment. Remember to wear a warm, waterproof coat to Nursery and bring a hat and some gloves. (All named please.)
See you soon!
Living and Learning: Physical Health and Fitness
5/6A are very excited to show off our brand new WUSU dance!
Wake Up, Shake Up is a very important and exciting part of our school routine. To ensure we are keeping physically active and healthy for 60 minutes every day, children participate in 10 minutes of dancing and movement to music.
A few were slightly apprehensive about learning a new routine, but their dance moves have sent shockwaves of positivity through school – even the teachers are wanting to join in!
Take a look at our brand new WUSU video here – we hope you enjoy it!
1,2B Christmas party
There was dancing, games, snacks and lots of fun!
Merry Christmas!
We’ve had a brilliant week filled with lots of festive fun! Here are a few photos from our Christmas party, our secret visit from Father Christmas and some of the other festive activities that we enjoyed.
As you will no doubt have already heard, we received a letter in Nursery this week. It was from… Father Christmas! He’d been to visit school and to play in Nursery with us, but as we’d all gone home, he sent us a video message instead. He told us that he’d put his sack down somewhere but couldn’t remember where. He also said, that if we managed to locate his missing sack, then we could have a little early Christmas treat. Luckily for Father Christmas, we are good detectives and found his missing sack under our Christmas tree! We hope that you all enjoyed reading your new story from Santa.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We’ll see you in January.
It’s Christmas
Christmas spirit has definitively been in full swing this week!
In Literacy, we have been reading the Christmas story. This has deepened our knowledge of how people celebrate traditions and special times.
The wise men followed the star.
Baby Jesus was born.
There were shepherds. They look after the sheep.
In Maths, we have used part, whole models to partition numbers up to five. We created number stories and represented them in a part whole model.
In Phonics, we have focused on reading words.
We have all enjoyed the Christmas themed areas. There has been dressing up, playing in fake snow, creating candy canes and many more. Just take a look…
We had a special visit from Professor Myers. She had a very special Christmas investigation for us.
How strong is a candy cane?
First, we made predictions. Then, we tested them out using lots of objects around the classroom.
We had an exciting video to watch. It was Santa! He had been in our classroom whilst we were all at home. Santa left a sack full of presents for us to share.
Our last day has been full of dancing and fun (and a little bit of sugar).
Have a wonderful Christmas break. We look forward to seeing you all in the new year.
We have sent home your child’s change of clothes to check and restock for next half term.
Festive Fun!
It has been fabulously festive this week!
Show time!…
We’ve recorded our Very First Christmas Play! The children all looked amazing in their costumes. Thank you to parents/carers for providing costumes and to those who helped their child/ren to learn their lines. We really hope you enjoy it!
The journey of a letter…
This week, we read The Jolly Christmas Postman by Allan and Janet Ahlberg. We’ve been learning what happens to our post after we put it in the letterbox and what we need to do to our letters, to make sure they get to their destination. We may have even created our own special post to be delivered to our homes (shhh!) Let us know if you receive anything special in the post!
Would your child like to watch The Journey of a Letter again? Click here to be taken to the video.
Christmas dinner…
On Thursday, Reception had their special Christmas dinner and got to visit a very magical Christmas wonderland in our school hall:
Maths…
In maths this week, we’ve been learning about the parts that make a whole. We started by thinking about the parts that go together to make a whole toy and the parts of us that make our whole body. Later in the week, we thought about the parts that make a whole number (the numbers within numbers) We will continue this learning into next week.
More festive fun…
Here are some more snapshots of our learning this week:
Next week, we will be learning why Christians celebrate Christmas, through the story of The Nativity.
Home-Link Challenge…
We’ve been learning about how some other countries around the world celebrate Christmas. See what your child can remember from our learning, by asking the following questions:
-Which country that we looked at, use paper lanterns as decorations at Christmas time?
-In Denmark, why is it so great if you find the almond in the rice pudding dessert? What does it mean?
-Which country have the legend of ‘La Befana’, the old, kind witch who helped the Three Wise Men on the way to find the baby Jesus?
-In Australia, what does Santa wear and what pulls his sleigh instead of the Reindeers?
Diary dates…
Monday 13 December- Links to Nursery & Reception’s production emailed.
Friday 17 December- Non-uniform and Reception Christmas party day.