Living and Learning – D:side (healthy bodies/medicine education)
We had a visit from D:side this week. They spoke to the Year 1s about keeping our body healthy, making healthy choices and how to stay safe around medicines.
The Year 2s talked about how our bodies work and how they are the same and different.
Home Link – ‘What makes us tick?’
Please complete a post-it note this week when you bring your child to Nursery to add it to our ‘What makes us tick?’ board. There are clips underneath your child’s photograph on the red, green, blue or yellow display boards.
This display helps to tell us all about your child’s current interests and fascinations. We often see common themes between children and they help us to plan exciting and relevant learning activities in Nursery. Common interests often include dinosaurs, a particular animal, a favourite book, song or nursery rhyme.
Making new friends
This week, we enjoyed meeting all of our new children and families in Nursery. It was lovely to see our older children welcoming the new children and helping them to find their way around and settle in.
Whilst there were many happy faces at our waving window each morning, don’t worry if your child wasn’t one of them. It can often take a while for children to settle and it’s also quite normal for children to have a little wobble after a few visits. If this happens, remember to talk to your child about Nursery in a positive way; they’ll soon get used to their new environment and settle into routines.
The medical role play enhancement in our home corner continued to be very popular this week. We’ve lost track of the number of broken arms, bandaged heads and fevers that we’ve treated! Children have been engrossed in their role play; it’s provided lots of opportunities to talk to other children, cooperate and take turns during play.
Following on from an interest that we noticed from the new children’s ‘All about me’ information, we’re looking forward to reading ‘The Three Little Pigs’ next week. Please enjoy reading this story at home together so that your child is familiar with it when they come to Nursery.
Fossil hunting
Year 5/6 have started their new science unit about evolution and inheritance. They have been learning about fossils this week and how they tell us about the animals and plants that existed millions of years ago. Some children were able to look at an image of a fossil and predict where it might have lived and what it would’ve looked like. We also did some research about Mary Anning. Ask your child what facts they can remember about her.
Scholes Peace Cards
In November last year, members of Scholes Parish Council came to visit our school during our Community Week. They worked with all of our children, from Year 1 through to Y6 on a range of creative activities.
They talked to the children about the Scholes Peace Flame and their roles in the community.
The councillors were so impressed with our artwork, and are pleased to announce that six of our children have their peace designs made into cards – Harry, Emilia, Esme, Dolly, Olivia and Archie from Y1/2V.
If you would like to buy a set of 6 peace cards, then they are available from the school office.
Marvellous Maths Stay and Play
pLThank you to those of you who were able to attend the ‘marvellous maths’ stay and play this week. It was great to see so many of you there and the children enjoyed sharing their learning with you.
We focused on the number 5. We focus on numbers to twenty throughout the year to get a depth of understanding of what the numbers represent. We talked about what number 5 looks like – not just the numeral but also what it looks like in our environment. For example, there are 5 sides and 5 corners on a pentagon and star. We also focused on verbally telling number stories using first, then and now. For example, first there was 3 children stood up, then 2 more stood up, now there are 5 children stood up altogether.
If you were unable to attend, your child will have brought home an information booklet about the 6 principles of counting with some ideas of how to support your child at home. The children also enjoy watching number blocks – a great conversation starter about numbers!
PE – gymnastics
There was a buzz of excitement when the children spotted the climbing frame, ropes, ladders, benches and mats were out in the hall. All classes had their first gymnastics lesson of the term and will continue to build their agility, movement and coordination skills over the next 5 weeks.
Golden Star
Well done to our most recent Golden Star.
Run, run as fast as you can!
We loved listening to the story of the Gingerbread Man this week and many children began to re-tell the story in our small world area using some of the repeated refrains. “Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man!” This is one of the skills that we look for when we’re assessing children in ‘reading’ as part of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Children working in the 30-50 months development band should begin to…
- Listen to and join in with stories, one to one and also in a small group.
- Join in with repeated refrains and anticipate key events, phrases in rhymes and stories.
- Begin to be aware of the way stories are structured.
- Suggest how a story might end.
- Listen to stories with increasing attention and recall.
- Describe the story settings, events and principal characters.
We also look out for children looking at books independently, holding them the correct way up and turning the pages carefully and using the illustrations to help them talk about the story.
In our maths area, we’ve been practising our counting skills by counting out the correct number of buttons onto the gingerbread characters and putting a given number (e.g. 4) of gingerbread people onto a baking tray. It was tricky to remember to stop at the given number and not to put any extra on. Please practise this skill at home. Remind children to ‘STOP’ when they reach the stop number. E.g. Can you put 3 carriages on your train? Park 4 cars in the garage. Thread 3 beads onto the string. Build a tower with 5 lego bricks.
Children enjoyed playing this game on the Interactive Whiteboard. Some may just need a little help to read the digits (1-10) so that they know how many buttons they need to put on the Gingerbread person.
Next week, we’ll be reading ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea‘ as some children were talking about this book during the week. Many of them had enjoyed watching the new animated version of the story during the Christmas holidays. In maths we’ll explore repeating patterns like the orange and black stripes on a tiger.
We also look forward to all of our new children joining us for their ‘stay and play’ and first visits during the week. It may be a little busier than usual in the morning; please be patient and help us to welcome our new families. Thank you.
Keeping active – new gym fitness equipment
There was great excitement with the arrival of the new outdoor fitness equipment before Christmas. The wet weather slightly delayed the installation but it is now ready to use. Everyone wants a go!
This is part of our plan to increase physical activity undertaken within school. The UK Chief Medical Officers found that, “the latest evidence shows there is a clear link between physical activity and chronic disease.” We want children to be physically active for at least the Chief Medical Officer’s recommended 30 minutes during the school day, and this will help us to do this.
