Living and Learning: rights and responsibilities
This week, our L&L statement was: I know that rights come with responsibilities. This week, our Living and Learning statement is I know that rights come with responsibilities.
We have been learning that rights are the things that everyone deserves (like being safe, cared for and listened to) and responsibilities are the things we should do to make sure we and others can enjoy those rights (like following rules, showing respect and helping others).
We’ve had brilliant discussions about how we all have rights, however these come with certain responsibilities. We came up with some rights we have within school and the responsibilities that come with these:
- We have the right to learn and go to school. We have the responsibility to help others learn while at school and be good learners.
- We have a right to eat lunch but a responsibility to be respectful and polite to the lunchtime staff.
- We have a right to use the classroom equipment but a responsibility to look after it.
- We have a right to playtime but a responsibility to play safely and respectfully.
- We have the right to feel safe and a responsibility to make others feel safe.
We watched this video https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zqgm7yc#zmghp4j and discussed what rights and responsibilities that we have at school and at home.
Help at Home: Talk to your child about their rights and responsibilities at home. For example, they might have the right to play with toys but the responsibility to tidy them away afterwards. Sharing examples together will help to strengthen their understanding.
Dinosaurs
As the children continue to explore the provision lots of different interests have been emerging, this week it has been dinosaurs. We’ve developed a small world dinosaur land to encourage creative play and communication.
“This dinosaurs says roar”
” my dinosaur has sharp teeth”
We enjoyed using the ramps last week. This week we used them to roll some of the apples and conkers that we found in the nursery garden. We counted them as they reached the bottom.
We experimented with other things that roll too. In the paint this week we 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.
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.
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – watch the story hear told by Michael Rosen.
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week will be Baa Baa Black Sheep. Listen to the rhyme together here
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 every day.
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. Journey is our word of the week!
We’ve been re-telling parts of the story using this story map…
and we used the story introduce our own travelling teddies- Ziggy and Buddy.
We looked at an aerial view of our school, to find the different places our class teddies had visited.
Ziggy and Buddy will be coming home with a child each weekend, along with paper 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” and recall the the total amount- cardinality
- only count each item once- one-to-one correspondence
- know that objects can be counted in any order- order irrelevance
We’ve also been looking at ways to make counting easier, such as moving objects or lining them up. We’ve been counting things that cannot be seen (such as sounds or actions) and things that cannot be moved. We introduced the idea of using a ‘tagging wand’ to support careful counting.
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. This week they enjoyed Happy by Pharrell Williams.
During lessons the children 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. The lesson was finished with some familiar nursery rhymes; Pat-a-cake and Row Your Boat.
We love our music lessons!
Phonics
This week, the children have learnt the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) g, o, c and k. 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.
We’ve also learnt a new tricky word; is. Tricky words are those we have to ‘look and say’ because they have ‘tricky’ parts that we cannot sound out.
Please continue to use the ‘Learn at home’ sheets with your child, to review our new sounds and tricky words 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 we look forward to beginning their reading journey with you.
Please let us know if you have any problems accessing your books online.
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 Sunshine Class recite this week’s poem
Did you know…
Your child has their own special place, to display their learning
Next time you’re in class, check out our ‘proud walls’. The children can display learning and creations that they are super proud of, which will later be added to their learning journey books.
And you as parents and carers have a special place too! This week (and whenever you can thereafter) we’d love you too add to our ‘parent partnership’ boards. Tell us what your child is interested in at home and we’ll aim to create learning opportunities that follow their interests in the classroom.
Some pictures of our learning this week…
Reminders
- PE days are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Please send your child to school in their PE kit on these days (school photo days are an exception)
- Library day is Thursday. Please send your ‘love of reading’ library book on Thursdays each week.
- Reading records should be returned to school each Friday.
- We are still finding a small number of un-named and unclaimed items, especially jumpers and cardigans. Please ensure all of your child’s items are named, so that we can reunite them with any that are lost.
- Please note that Reception are not included in ‘Watch us while we work’ (13 October 2:30pm–3:00pm) We will have separate stay and learn sessions throughout the school year.
Diary Dates
Phonics Phase 2 and coffee morning: 06.10.25 9.00am-10.00am
Individual school photos day: 07.10.25 (please send your child to school in school uniform, not PE kit on this day)
FOSP Disco: 17.10.25 3.15pm-4.15pm Please collect from the classroom doors.
Reading
KS1 are really enjoying our novel this half term, ‘The Enchanted Wood’ by Enid Blyton.
Everyone has been really engaged during story time and listened very well.
So far in the story we have been introduced to three children, Joe, Frannie and Beth. They have moved to a cottage in the countryside next to a magical forest called the Enchanted Wood. The children have met lots of ‘peculiar characters’ along the way including a Fairy called Silky, a grumpy elf and an unusual man called Moon Face. I wonder if you can guess why that is his name!
Help at home by asking children to recap stories and encourage them to act out their favourite parts.
Science: identifying the effect of air resistance
Year 5/6 have been conducting an experiment to identify the effect of air resistance. We made three parachutes with different surface areas. We then tested the parachutes 6 times each and took a mean average of the drop time.
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
Thanks
Funky fingers in 1A
In 1A we have been exercising our fingers and strengthening them ready for our writing learning. Each morning we take part in a dough disco. Our challenge this week was to make the first letter of our names using dough. The children did so well!
Art & Crafts club
We had a fantastic first session at Arts and crafts club this week. The children enjoyed painting leaves in Autumn colours and we added glitter on top to make them sparkle! See what we made below!
Class Novel: Podkin One-Ear
Our class novel this term is Podkin One-Ear by Kieran Larwood.
Help at home: ask your child to summarise what has happened in the story so far.
Can they summarise it in one word?
You can check out the author’s page along with information about the book here.
PE – football
We have been developing our football skills so far this half term. We’ve been using our existing knowledge of how to pass a football using the inside, outside toes and laces of out feet/ trainers. The children have worked on improving the accuracy of their passes, over longer distances, with a partner. This week, we introduced the idea of defending. The children worked in small groups and passed the ball between them with a defender trying to intercept the ball. This also meant they had to think about their spacing, accuracy and communication skills.
