Living & Learning – Drug Safety
Today, we kick started our staying safe themed week by welcoming a visitor from D:Side (Drugs: support, information, drug education). They came to us to educate us about solvents and how they can be misused. Ask your child by asking them what a solvent is.
We started by learning about risk assessing. This is something we do all the time, often without realising. For example, when we decide not to touch a sharp object, we have risk assessed (and hopefully avoided injury).
Then, we thought about some everyday objects and whether there was a risk associated with them. We learnt that even things we may use (like nail varnish, paint, glue and aerosol deodorants) can be harmful to us if they’re used the wrong way. Ask your child what a safer alternative to an aerosol deodorant is.
Importantly, we then learnt what these symbols (which we find on many products) mean…
We looked at some real life examples, too.
Challenge your child by asking them what each symbol means.
Living and Learning Homework-What is a drug?
All the year 1 and 2 classes have had fantastic homework review sessions this week. There were lots of varied examples of what a drug is. We will be learning more about this topic during our Safety Week next week. 
Class assemblies
Thank you to all the parents, carers and family members who came to support the children over the last three weeks. It is very exciting to share what we have been learning and the children were very proud of themselves, as were the teachers.
The slideshows are below if you want to re-live it again!
We s-now how to have a n-ice time outside!
We filled various containers with water on Thursday, hoping it would freeze overnight. We were also hoping for lots of snow but there wasn’t much. We were still excited for the snow flurries and pleased that our water had frozen! We managed to make some mini snowmen and enjoyed playing with the ice we had made.
Living & Learning homework review
This week, we reviewed our talk time homework (I know what a drug is) by discussing the topic as a class.
We began by sharing what we’d discussed at home with our partners. It was great to see that so many of us had clearly had a really useful, informative and important discussion with an adult at home. Those of us that had made notes in our homework books were able to contribute best. Then, we summarised our discussions as a table group.
After some reflection, we discussed some really important points as a class:
- Drugs can be illegal or legal.
- Some drugs make us better – medicines.
- Some ‘bad’ or illegal drugs can also be prescribed by a doctor (for example, cannabis).
- Even ‘good’ drugs (medicines) can be harmful to us if we take too many or take them when we don’t have a medical need.
- If we were to come across drugs or drug paraphernalia we should not touch it. We should leave them and alert an adult.
- If we feel pressured to do something, we should be confident that we can say no. We should also speak to someone we trust if we’re unsure.
Phonics -Pp
Over the last few weeks, we have introduced children to some letter sounds. So far, we have learnt Ss Aa Tt and we’ll learn Pp this week.
We talk to children about the letter names and the sounds that they make. We always use the pure sound, such as ‘sssssss’ rather than ‘suh’ and ‘mmmmmm’ not ‘muh’. If you’re unsure, watch this link of our F2 teachers producing the pure sounds.
We use the Jolly Phonics songs and actions to help us learn each sound. Here’s a video of the songs for the first set of sounds that we will learn. We continue to focus on the sound of the letters at the start of words and are playing lots of games including eye spy. We use objects that begin with the letters that we have learnt so far, like in this video game. You could play your own game using objects that you find at home.
Super Shadow Science!
Last week, we learned what objects makes the best shadow. This week, and building on our learning, we discovered how the size of shadows change when you move opaque objects closer or further away from the light source.
This is easy to do at home.
Why not try making shadow puppets?
Frost, ice and snow
The cold weather didn’t stop us from venturing outside to learn last week! With our hats and gloves on, and our coats zipped right to the top, we enjoyed exploring the garden and found lots of frost, ice and sparkling spider webs.
One of the Prime areas of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage is Physical Development and part of this relates to children’s independence skills and their ability to dress themselves. Please take advantage of wrapping up in the cold weather and encourage your child to put on their own shoes and coat. If they can do this already, can they fasten the zip on their coat or put on their own gloves? These are all great skills to learn – you might just need to get ready 5 minutes earlier to give children some extra time.
Technology home link
As part of our ongoing assessment against the 17 Early Learning Goals, we are focusing on the Technology strand. In particular, this goal can sometimes be difficult to assess purely on what we observe in school. We realise that children are often able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills more readily at home, using the technology that is a part of their everyday life.
Over the next few weeks we will be sending Home Link activities connected to Technology to help us make accurate judgements in this area. We would be very grateful if you could complete the activities with your child, making notes about anything they say, and send it back into school.
EasyPeasy – parent feedback
We hope you enjoyed playing the first game from the EasyPeasy app ‘stepping stones’. If you did not receive a text inviting you to the play the EasyPeasy games, please let a member of staff know.
We would love to hear about when your child plays the games. You can comment on the video on the EasyPeasy app or email us. We really enjoyed hearing about one child playing ‘stepping stones’ at the weekend!
