Science – hygiene, germs and keeping clean
We have been learning all about hygiene (keeping clean) in the last few weeks.
All three classes joined a Zoom where we met Dr Boswell today. He is a microbiologist. His job is to look at microbes (also called bugs and germs) and find out about the ones that make us ill and cause infections.
He uses a microscope to look at them because they are too small to see with just your eyes. He told us that 1 germ can become 1000 in 3 hours!
The best way to stop the spread of germs that make us unwell is to wash our hands (and dry them) because they like moist places to live. They have basic needs, just like humans. They need warmth, food, water and oxygen to survive.
Help at home by making sure your child knows how to wash and dry their hands properly to stop the spread of germs.
1A School library visit
Class 1A enjoyed yet another trip to our school library today. I am always very proud of everyone’s behaviour when we leave for the library – such smart walking and amazing silent voices! They are all also very respectful of the books. It’s lovely to see how enthusiastic they are about the books they find and how eager they are to share the books with their friends. Keep it up 1A! 🙂
Help at home:
- by remembering to bring your library books back in to school on a Monday to be changed.
- by showing lots of enthusiasm for your child’s chosen book and by sharing it together at home.
Year 1 Maths
We have revisited our learning about the ‘greater than >’, ‘less than <‘ and ‘equals =’ symbols that we focused on previously. We used our trusty conkers and other equipment to help us.
Moving on from our learning about splitting carrots into parts and wholes. We have been looking at pictures and equipment to see what is a part and what is the whole. We are impressively good at this and have begun to move this knowledge on to splitting numbers! Using a lot of examples and our STEM sentences we are able to quickly see the parts and wholes. Our STEM sentences go something like this:
3 + 5 =8 (in digits or pictures)
3 is a part. 5 is a part. 8 is the whole.
2+2= 4
2 is a part. 2 is a part. 4 is the whole.
Just look at some of the fantastic examples that have been produced from Year 1!
Year 1 are growing in their knowledge and confidence in Maths. It is wonderful to see!
Help at home: Practice writing digits 0-9. We are reversing some numbers. As the year goes on we will become better at this too!
Harvest Time
It has been a very busy week in Nursery. We have noticed the children enjoying building and designing, using their imagination and skills of cooperation to work together with their friends. They have also been using construction kits to create their own designs.
“Will this fit?”
“Try this one, we need a straight bit”
“It’s an aeroplane with wings, here are the windows”
We have also been thinking about harvest time. We talked about all the vegetables that are harvested in Autumn. We made our own farm outside with vegetables to harvest and used our senses to explore corn.
We also continued our interest in conkers by rolling and balancing them, using our fine motor control to help us. It was tricky!
Thanks to everyone who brought in Autumn treasures we shared our final few this week. So many interesting things corn, pumpkins, conkers and acorns. We have really enjoyed exploring their contents and finding out all about them.
Help at home
This week we have been working very hard at taking care of ourselves. One of the Prime Areas of learning in Early Years is Personnel, Social and Emotional Development, so learning to take care of ourselves is very much part of our curriculum.
We encourage the children to put on their coats and fasten them up independently.
Changing from wellies to shoes is something that we do many times throughout the day. Pushing your foot into your shoes can be tricky but with some practice we can do it.
We have had quite a few coughs and colds this week so our ” nose blowing area” has had lots of use. Getting a tissue and looking in the mirror to check that your nose is clean helps to develop independence.
These skills of independence are something that you can help with at home. Supporting your child to put on their own coat and shoes, to wipe their nose independently and to wash and dry their hands.
Next week in nursery will be our final week of the half term. Our story next week is Room on the Broom, it’s written by the very popular author, Julia Donaldson. You may be familiar with the story from the BBC version. You can watch it on BBC iplayer
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week is Incey Wincey Spider Can you sing this at home?
Reminders
Nursery closes for half term on Thursday 24 October.
We will return to Nursery on Monday 04 November.
Leaf Man
This week, we’ve explored all things autumn!
Understanding the world; seasonal changes
We took an autumn walk to spot changes in the natural environment. We remembered lots of these from our nature study sessions.
Leaf Man
We’ve been reading the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.
“A Leaf Man’s got to go, where the wind blows”
The book takes us on Leaf Man’s journey, as he travels on the autumn wind across different autumnal landscapes.
Our ‘word of the week’ is seasons. We know that we have four seasons in the year; spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Inspired by the book, we made our own ‘Leaf Man’ pictures.
Understanding the world; Farmer time with Farmer Luke
Did you know that Reception classes have the opportunity to video call with a real-life farmer, working on his farm?! We speak to farmer Luke once each half term to see how farm life changes over the year and what jobs he is busy doing. Farmer Luke has an arable farm, so it’s a very busy harvesting time of year. He took some time out this week, to show Reception around the farm. Next door to his farm are some animals too. Reception were so excited to see the cows and were very impressed to see his amazing tractors!
Maths
Our focus in maths this week has been comparing quantities. We have developed our skills to look carefully and use the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to describe sets of objects.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Five Little Pumpkins.
click here to watch us recite this week’s poem!
Phonics
This week, the children have learnt the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) h, b, f and l. They have also been practicing writing the graphemes (the written letter).
We learnt the tricky word: the
Please continue to use the ‘Learn at home’ sheets with your child, to review our new sounds each week.
Help at home; blending
Oral segmenting/blending games are great, both if your child is still learning to blend and for those children who are confident ‘blenders’, to revisit their skills. Here’s just one idea to try at home: Dress the Baby (idea taken from earlyimpactlearning.com)
Any toy can be used for this game. Put a baby doll or another toy down with some clothes round it- for example a hat, boots, a nappy, a coat and gloves.
Say one of the pieces of clothing in sound-talk. For example a boot would be a ‘b-oo-t.’ If your child can blend it, then they can put a piece that piece of clothing on the baby/toy. To make it easier, you can say all the pieces of clothing like robots before you start.
Let us know if you try this game at home!
Dates for your diary and reminders
Parent-teacher consultation (PTC) appointments- 22.10.24/24.10.24 (individual times) A zoom link will be sent for your appointment. Please use your child’s name as your screenname. Thank you.
Swimming lessons will begin after the half term break. On your child’s swimming day, please provide a swimsuit/swim shorts, a towel and a pair of goggles if needed. No floatation equipment is required, as we provide these in school. Your child should still come to school wearing their PE kit.
During autumn 1, your child has met our swimming instructor Miss Joicey and has had an opportunity to visit the pool.
Stay and Learn; Number (session 1)- 13.11.24 9am-10am This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school. This session will be focused on maths.
3,4 Class News – Topic and Writing
Should the Elgin Marbles be returned to Greece?
This has been the topic of conversation in our classroom this week! The children have learned all about the history of Elgin Marbles and have used the information to decide whether they think they should be returned to Greece or should stay in Britain.
Today, they practised their debating skills in small groups. They will use this knowledge to write a discussion text next week.
At home ask your child their opinion about the Elgin Marbles.
Science – Electricity
This week in Science we have started our new unit all about electricity. We began by seeing what we could remember about our previous learning and then shared this with our talk partners. We discussed that we would be using electrical components and that we needed to stay safe using equipment such as batteries. We worked together to create a series circuit and then added additional components to see the impact it had. The children drew scientific diagrams of their circuits and used the appropriate symbols. The children also used an app on the ipads to explore this further.
Help at home: Ask your child what a series circuit is and what the components are that make up a circuit.
Rewards, rewards, rewards
Adults give out Choice Chips to children who they spot making good choices around school and children who are following our school rules. In 1,2B we also give raffle tickets for individuals in the classroom who are making good choices. We also work towards a class target where we can all contribute to a reward. The last few weeks we have been working towards not interrupting and waiting our turn. We achieved it last week and went on the adventure playground as our reward. It was fun!
1A addition
Today in 1A we looked at the + symbol. We talked about how numbers in an addition expression are commutative. This means we can swap them around and the total stays the same. Whatever the order, the result is the same. We had a go at placing some conkers into two circles and then writing expressions to represent them. Here’s some of our learning:
Help at home: You could draw two circles and fill them with a number of objects like we did in class today. Can your child write the expression to represent the objects in the circles? Can they write a second expression where the numbers have been swapped around?
1,2B – Bonkers about conkers
Our poem last week was all about conkers. We have collected 657.
All these conkers have helped us count big numbers in 10s and the left over 1s. We also used them to partition 10 in different ways.
We have now returned them to nature on the field now, for the animals to eat and maybe some will grown in to trees themselves!
