Dance performance – KS2 Flex Dance group

The Flex Dance group performed for school and their families on Friday. They have worked hard perfecting their performance. Well done!

Bees

Over the last few weeks, the children have taken an interest in the bees that we have spotted in our outdoor area. On Friday, we invited Andy, a local bee keeper, to visit us. He brought an observational hive for us to look at and explained all about the Queen bee and how the bees make honey. We learnt lots of new facts about bees.

• Did you know that bees have 5 eyes?
• Did you know bees are important in the production of medicines and lots of cosmetic products?
• Did you know that the females bees do all the work? 

At the end of Andy’s talk, he brought lots of bee suits for us to try on. It was great fun. Andy loves bees! He spends lots of his spare time looking after the bees at Temple Newsam where the Leeds Beekeeper’s Association is based.  We really enjoyed meeting Andy and his bees and would like to thank him for visiting us. We hope that we will be able to see Andy and his bees again when we are on our trip at Temple Newsam Farm on the 18th June. Thank you, Andy!

Class photographs Tuesday 11th June

Nursery children will have their class photograph taken on Tuesday 11th June. If your child does not usually attend Nursery on this day, but you would like them to be included in the photograph, please come to the main school office at 9.30am. Children will be collected from the Reception area by a member of Nursery staff and will return shortly afterwards. Parents/carers must remain in the Reception waiting area during this time.  Please let a member of  staff know if you are planning to come along on Tuesday. Thank you.

Busy little bees!

Before the holidays, children were really interested in the bees that they saw in our Nursery garden. As a result of this, lots of our learning and activities have been linked to bees this week.

In maths, we looked at the shapes in a bee hive. Children enjoyed playing with hexagons and arranging them in different patterns. We also talked about the patterns on bees and created our own repeating colour patterns.

The activity in our sensory area was very popular; children loved squeezing the pipettes to suck up the nectar from each flower and drop it into the honeycomb. This activity was great for strengthening their finger muscles.

At snack time, we tasted both set and runny honey and we even got to try some honey comb.  Lots of children weren’t very keen on trying the honey at first but as they saw their friends sampling the honey on toast, they soon joined in. Well done, Nursery. It’s always good to try something new.

At the end of the week, we were really lucky as Andy, a local bee keeper, came to visit us. He brought an observational hive for us to look at and explained all about the Queen bee and how the bees make honey.  We learnt lots of new facts about bees. Did you know that bees have 5 eyes?  

At the end of Andy’s talk, he brought lots of bee suits for us to try on. It was great fun.  Andy loves bees! He spends lots of his spare time looking after the bees at Temple Newsam where the Leeds Beekeeper’s Association is based.  We really enjoyed meeting Andy and his bees and would like to thank him for visiting us. Thank you, Andy!

Living and Learning: I listen to, share with and include others

In 3/4 C, they went to the gazebo to do their circle time.

Living and Learning: Relationships Education

Thank you to those parents and carers who attended the recent relationships education information sessions.

‘A useful session to find out what my child will be learning and when.’

‘Lots of helpful information.’

‘Very helpful to understand what vocabulary the children will be learning.’

These sessions were aimed at making parents and carers more aware of some of the following aspects of our curriculum.

• What is our Living and Learning curriculum?
• What does relationships education currently look like throughout school?
• What is included in our Relationships and Sex Education policy?

Relationships education forms part of our Living and Learning for this half term and if you were unable to attend the session, our progression of learning (pg10) and the terminology (pg6) that may be used as part of this learning can be found in our RSE policy.

Visiting Year 1

We are so proud of the F2 children for starting to come into school independently and getting on with their morning jobs.

This week,  we have also started their transition into Year 1. The children  were very excited about this. We have managed to visit the Year 1 classrooms three times this week. They took their white boards and pens and did a little bit of learning whilst we were there. We will continue with this over the next few weeks.

Science – pea planting 

All the children have planted peas this week and are excitedly waiting for them to start growing. Who will grow the tallest pea shoot?

Maths – hooray for arrays!

The Year 1 children have been laying the foundations for leaning times tables this week – repeated addition, counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and learning about arrays. The Year 2s are trying to learn the times table and division facts too. Help at home by having a times table poster, counting in steps, reciting the times table facts, looking for patterns or talking about how you learnt your tables.

Our new topic: Breaking Barriers

This half-term, Year 5 and 6 are starting a new topic: Breaking Barriers. This topic is designed to help children better understand protected characteristics. It is against the law to discriminate against someone because of a protected characteristic. We have talked about these in school before and your child is aware of them already. However, we feel that this is a really important topic and will be focusing on each of the protected characteristics in more detail. For your information, here are the nine protected characteristics:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

If you would like further information about what will be covered, or have any general questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to speak to your child’s class teacher.