Connect Challenge
Thursday saw the whole school take part in the Connect Challenge in support of the Rob Burrow Foundation. This event was aimed at rasiing awareness of MND whilst also linking primary schools across Leeds. It promoted the idea of collaboration, physical education and friendship. We were the first school in Leeds to compete in which the children had to complete a challenge linked to the number 7. This was Rob Burrow’s shirt number when he played for the Rhinos. The children had 1 minute to complete 7 physical activities such as passing a rugby ball, hula hooping – all sorts of crazy activities! At the end of all the challenges, we filmed Lilly in year 6 throwing a rugby ball to her left. This will be incorporated into a video in which the next school receives the ball. It will eventually show all the primary schools taking part, linking together by passing the rugby ball. It was great fun and the children loved taking part in the challenge! 
Down on the farm
We’ve had another busy week in nursery, continuing to explore the provision and making friends. Our new small world area, the farm, has sparked a lot of interest. We talked about the different animals that we see on a farm and the sounds that they make. The children enjoyed adding the animal sound effects whilst playing.
As part of our early phonics learning, we encourage children to listen to the sounds that they can hear around them, such as an aeroplane flying above or birds singing in the trees. We also explore the different noises that animals make.
Help at home: If you visit a farm or see some animals in a field, remember to use the animal names and talk about the noises that they make. You might like to play a game where you use some farm animal toys and choose an animal to describe. For example: It has 4 legs, a curly tail and a snout. Can they guess which animal you are describing and make the animal noise? Can they give you some clues? This is a great way to add new words to your child’s vocabulary and to develop their listening skills.
The children have enjoyed retelling this weeks focus story ‘The Three Little Pigs’ joining in with the repeated refrains “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down”.
As the children continue to explore the provision lots of different interests have been emerging, rolling cars down ramps being a big favourite. We experimented with other things that roll in the paint this week and tried our hand at painting with rollers. This up and down motion will help us later when it comes to developing our skills as a writer.
Here are some of the other activities from this week
- bug hunting
- friendship making
- brick house building
- sorting and matching in the maths area.
- imaginative play
Next week, we’ll talk about the changes that we are noticing outside. Look out for a brown bag in your child’s folder – we’d like you to fill it with autumn treasure that you find and return it to Nursery.
Our focus story is the popular story “We’re Going on a bear Hunt” We will be exploring this story using our own puppets and props.
Our Nursery rhyme of the week will be Row, row, row your boat Can you sing along with the rhyme at home?
Reminders:
- Please don’t forget to send a family photograph for our home corner display Please send it to scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
- We play outside in all weather – please remember to send your child with a waterproof coat everyday.
- Please remember to check the school menu each day. School Lunch Menu
The Everywhere Bear
We’ve been reading The Everywhere Bear by Julia Donaldson.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
The story follows a class bear that goes on quite the journey! We’ve been re-telling parts of the story and have used it to introduce our own travelling teddies- Ziggy and Penelope .
We’ve been using a map of our school to find the different places our teddies have visited.
Ziggy and Penelope will be coming home with a child each weekend, along with a book to record their adventures!
Maths; counting principles
In Maths, we’ve been using toys to demonstrate accurate counting. We’ve been reminding our toys to ‘stop at the stopping number’ to find the total amount (cardinality), only count each item once (one-to-one correspondence) and know that objects can be counted in any order (order irrelevance) We’ve been looking at ways to make counting easier. We’ve also been counting things that cannot be seen (such as sounds or actions) and things that cannot be moved, by using a ‘tagging wand’.
Music: Charanga
In our Wednesday afternoon music lessons, we follow a scheme called Charanga
The children are introduced to a wide variety of music, including traditional nursery rhymes. Over the past few weeks they have enjoyed Celebration by Kool and The Gang and Sing by The Carpenters!
During lessons they move in time to the music, identify what they can hear (voices/instruments), discuss tempo and pitch and make comments about how the music makes them feel.
We love our music lessons!
Understanding the World: Nature Study
Did you know that each Friday in Reception, a group of children get to take part in nature study activities? Last week, our first group explored autumn using their senses and made fat ball bird feeders to help the birds in the upcoming months.
This week, our second group also explored autumn, hung out the bird feeders and planted some flower bulbs ready for spring!
Each group will experience 3 different nature sessions this term, with a different focus each week. We love exploring the world around us!
Phonics
This week, the children have learnt the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) i, n, m and d. They have also been practicing writing the graphemes (the written letter).
We have started reading words, by putting sounds onto our phoneme fingers.
Can your child show you how we use our phoneme fingers in class? You could write out the following words for them to try: sat, map, tin.
Please continue to use the ‘Learn at home’ sheets with your child, to review our new sounds each week.
eBooks
Reading records have been sent home today, so please check in your child’s book bag. On the back of the record book, you’ll find login details to access your child’s eBook on the Collins Hub website. Your child has already shared the wordless story in their reading sessions this week. We hope that you enjoy reading and talking about the book together and look forward to beginning their reading journey with you.
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 Breezy Weather
Click here to watch Reception recite this week’s poem
More pictures from this week…
Reminders and dates
Class News
We are biologists!
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been learning how to classify animals and plants using a classification key. We have really enjoyed this work and have created yes and no questions to classify and group animals and plants.
We can’t wait for our classification workshop.
Conker collecting for counting in 1,2B
We are loving collecting conkers in our class. There were audible gasps and squeals of excitement when we passed 100 today – we have 130!
It’s really helping us to see the importance of counting in 10s and counting 10s and 1s.
Help at home by collecting something and counting the 10s and 1s.
Y3/4 Reading
Children in 3/4 have been sharing their love of reading in our Book Club sessions. Each week, children complete one activity in response to what they have read during the week. This past week it was ‘Book Wars’!
Help at home by listening to your child read regularly. Encourage them to discuss with you what they think of their book and why.
The importance of attendance
What did you do today? ‘We just played’…is the answer many parents of Reception children get. But here’s just a few of the things your child would miss if they’re absent for five consecutive days.
Phonics: Children learn four new graphemes and three tricky words each week.
Reading: Children practise reading books that closely match their phonics, plus loads of stories are read aloud and celebrated. We visit the school library once a week to choose a book to take home.
Poetry picnic: There’s a poetry session every day –another valuable activity which helps children learn to read.
Writing: We write every day using the graphemes that we’ve learned.
Handwriting: Children learn how to form letters correctly, otherwise joining letters will be difficult in Key Stage 1.
Maths: We’ve four maths sessions a week, setting the foundations for children to be successful in using and applying numbers in the future.
Alongside all of this, children learn Science, Music and other subjects. Even more importantly, children learn to concentrate in a large group, to share resources, take turns when speaking, answer in full sentences, regulate our feelings and prepare ourselves for future learning.
There’s a lot happening when ‘we just play’!
Family Photographs
As we’re getting to know everyone, we like to talk about our families and home life. To encourage children to tell us more about their family life, please e-mail or bring a photograph of your child with their family to Nursery. These will be displayed in our home corner for children to look at and talk about with staff and their friends. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Reading as a historian
We are using a book to help us learn about the Great Fire of London – Vlad and the Great Fire of London. It is written from the point of view of a flea and a rat! We will be discussing and answering questions about the story and then writing sentences to show our understanding.
Living and Learning- I know that rights come with responsibilities
We have been learning that we have the right to learn but a responsibility to be great learners. Here is a list of top tips we came up with to be great learners:
- be in class on time
- be prepared for all lessons
- take good care of school property
- complete spelling, reading and talk time homework
- be ready
- respect ourselves and others
- listen and react well
- doing our best – every day!
We also talked about Children’s rights in the UK. These include:
Help at home: watch this video and ask your child what their rights are