Brilliant Buccaneers!
Ahoy, Me Hearties!
What a swashbuckling, super turn out we had on pirate day! THANK YOU to our incredible children and parent crew-mates of the good ships Sunshine and Rainbow, for joining in with your amazing costumes.
We had fun playing buried treasure in our phonics lessons, continuing with our pirate themed activities (making flags, counting treasure, reading pirate stories and role play), listening to pirate songs and going on a QR code ‘treasure’ hunt outside.
We have also been busy with all of these activities this week…
Home-Link Challenge
Next week, we start preparing for the festive season! We will be reading the story of The Jolly Christmas Postman.
Challenge 1- We would like you to either write a letter to Santa/ Father Christmas or to a friend. This can be on any topic you like- it could be your Christmas list or writing to a friend about what your plans are during the upcoming school holidays.
Your child should write independently, recording any sounds they can hear in sequence. They should also record any tricky words they know.
Challenge 2- Now we are in December, we have entered the season of Winter. Talk to your child about what you might see in the environment during winter. You might be able to see these signs of Winter outside. Please take a photo of anything you spot, that we can then share and discuss in class.
Christmas has arrived in Nursery!
You may have noticed, whilst peeping through the waving window, that ‘Christmas’ arrived in Nursery on Tuesday morning. Children have been full of excited talk about what their cheeky little elves have been up to at home and have been busy making toy lists.
Here are a few of the festive things that we’ve enjoyed this week. In the home corner, we have a mini Christmas tree and a selection of decorations for children to use as part of their role play. We also have Santa’s house at the North Pole in our small world area; this has been really popular with everyone and Santa has been flying around Nursery in his sleigh!
During group time, we enjoyed mark making on Christmas tree shapes. Children practised lots of different patterns, using zig-zags for tinsel and circles for baubles. In Nursery, we encourage children to draw and write in many different ways and to experiment with patterns. Some children will have already developed a preference for using one hand, others will swap and draw with both hands. Similarly, some children will still be using their whole hand to hold a pencil in their fist, whereas other children may use two fingers and their thumb and may be developing more control. All children develop differently; the best way to support their writing skills is to have fun drawing together. You could paint, draw pictures in the bath with bath crayons, use giant chalks outside, draw inside a large cardboard box or simply draw or colour in a picture. Talk about the marks you’re making. What do they show? What do they mean?
In our outside area, children have enjoyed playing with the Winter Wonderland small world area and using decorations to decorate trees in our garden. Trying to hang baubles on the branches is a great fiddly fingers activity!
Important reminders
- Please make sure that your child has a festive or brightly coloured top at Nursery for their first session this week. Children will wear them whist we video our Christmas songs, beginning on Monday.
- Packed lunches– We’d like to politely remind you to follow our school’s guidance regarding healthy packed lunches. Packed lunches must NOT contain nuts or products containing nuts – this includes Nutella products. Also, please ensure that you limit sugary treats and leave chocolate bars and sweets for home time. Thank you for your cooperation.
Certificates 3,4E
This week’s certificates go to these wonderful children:
For Great Learning: Dolly – for trying so very hard with column subtraction all week with super progress.
Sport and physical activity: Bobby D – Good attacking and defending skills in hockey – a great effort!
For Great living and learning skills: Georgia – for always taking a safe risk in class by putting her hand up and asking and answering questions.
TTRS – Aaron Ranasinghe for effort and dedication to times tables practice this week.
5/6B Certificate Celebration
Here are our certificate winners this week…
For great living and learning…
Daisy Mae – During mathematics, you’ve shown a real mixture of our 8 R’s for learning. Your resilience to overcome a task is fantastic – you are also the first to recognise and celebrate success for your peers, too. Great work, Daisy!
For sport and physical activity…
Emily – During our latest basketball session, you showed some great movement and catching skills. You played a key roll in your team and supported others regularly. Well done, Emily!
For great learning…
Joseph – Every day, you present yourself as a fantastic role model in our school. You are polite, funny and kind to everyone. Your learning attitude has been particularly fantastic lately – you are sharing all your ideas and taking safe risks all the time. Keep it up, Joseph!
5/6 S Certificate Celebration
This weeks certificate winners are…
For great learning…
Sophie -this week you’ve shown amazing perseverance when multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000. You’ve really impressed me and you need to gain some more confidence now, because you can do it! Well done.
For sport and physical activity…
Daniel- you demonstrated good skill during basketball this week. You showed great control of the ball. Well done.
For living and learning…
Poppy- you showed a great amount of maturity during our Living and Learning (RSE) sessions this week. You joined in discussions well and listened to others respectfully. Well done.
Well done everyone!
3,4O: Marvellous Maths
This week, we’ve been learning / recapping column subtraction. Take a look at this page on our website which tells you all about how we teach calculations in school.
The maths was impressive, but something else impressed me more – our attitude! We were resilient, resourceful and really took responsibility for our learning. In one lesson, Mr Catherall and Mrs Thorn didn’t even need to be there – we were teaching each other, choosing our own challenges and asking for quick interventions from an adult. What an awesome place to learn 3,4O is!
Well done, everyone.
History: How did Ancient Greece influence us?
Today, we continued to be historians by thinking about the ways in which Ancient Greece has influenced us.
We’d already learnt about Greek democracy and how we adapted and improved this aspect of Greek life. And, this week, we’ve been learning about the ancient Olympic games during our reading sessions.
This afternoon, we went on a hunt around the playground to find out loads of interesting facts about how Ancient Greek life has influenced ours.
Ask your child what they found interesting.
At the end of our lesson, we like to reflect on our learning. Here’s what two members of our class had to say:
‘I enjoyed this lesson because we got to go outside and find information out – we helped our friends, too’
‘I enjoyed this lesson because it was challenging’
Christmas recording day – Tuesday 08 December
The Key Stage 1 team are preparing a short compilation video of each class doing something Christmas related.
The video will be posted on the website on Monday 14 December. So we have time to record and edit the videos, please could your child come to school dressed in a Christmas or party-type outfit on Tuesday 08 December.
You do not need to buy anything new – a cheerful or festive outfit that they can be comfortable in all day (playing out and eating lunch in too) will be fine. If you have a Santa hat or reindeer antlers, for example, they can also wear those.
We will use the photo consent that the school office hold. If this is different, or you do not want your child to be recorded, please contact your child’s class teacher by 07 December.
How have the ancient Greeks influenced the world?
Today, we researched how the Ancient Greeks have influenced the world. We looked at sport, democracy, theatre, architecture and more! Watch this space for more pictures of our work.
Science: sound
This week, we carried out a practical investigation to answer our learning objective: Is there a pattern between the pitch of a sound and features of the object that produce it?
First, we used our prior knowledge of sound sources, volumes and pitch to make a prediction:
‘The longer the instrument, the lower the pitch.’
‘The shorter the instrument, the higher the pitch’.
Then, we struck and plucked and range of musical instruments to test out our predictions. We realised that we were right. When we struck the chime bar, we noticed that the shorter the chime bar, the higher the pitch. This happened when we tried out other pieces of equipment like windchimes, tuning forks and elastic.
Ask your child what some of our key science vocabulary means: pitch, volume, medium, sound source.