Living and Learning: I apologise when I need to.
Manners matter!
This week, our Living and Learning statement is all about manners. We’ve been learning about when and how to use good manners. The children have been encouraged to think about situations when they should use their manners in school and at home.
In particular, we’ve discussed how to behave if you accidentally knock or bump into someone in the playground. We all have accidents. It’s important to let the other person know that it wasn’t on purpose, to say sorry and check that they’re okay.
When do you expect your child to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ at home? If there’s an accident, are they expected to say sorry? Manners matter!
We will remember them – Remembrance Day 2018
The children listened to poems and stories, then talked about Remembrance Day this week at school. They made poppies and some wrote messages to the soldiers.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Laurence Binyon
Thank you to Mrs Thorne for her artistic input and Peter Smith, from Lyndhurst View, who made the central piece.
Brilliant Balancing
1K have enjoyed challenging themselves to balance in different ways.
It was tricky on one leg.
I can balance on this foot really well.
Bang! Pop! Whooosh!
There were lots of happy faces in Nursery on Monday morning and lots of excited tales of Halloween parties and firework related fun.
We enjoyed talking about the photographs that some parents and carers sent in from their holidays, but we’d love to see more. They’re a really great starting point for conversations and help to remind children about their activities at home. The ‘Understanding the World’ part of the Early Years Foundation Stage requires children to be able to freely communicate about their home life. Having a stimulus to look at with children, such as a leaflet for somewhere they have visited or a photograph, is a really big help when trying to begin a conversation. Equally, something as simple as you telling us at the beginning of the day or emailing us about something you have done, is a helpful way for us to initiate conversation with your child about their experiences.
Here are a few ideas of things that you can do at home to support your child in the ‘Understanding the World’ and ‘Communication and Language’ areas of the curriculum. They’re taken from a really useful document,‘What to expect, when?’. It breaks down the Early Years Foundation Stage into a more user and parent/ cared friendly version.
As you can imagine, conversations at the beginning of the week were largely about fireworks and Bonfire night parties.
We listened to music with loud firework sounds and talked about the noises they made. We tried to re-create the sounds in our small world area with the moving rocket, whoooosh!
We enjoyed lots of creative activities this week, both inside and outside. Children really enjoyed our large scale firework artwork; they practised some gross motor movements, splattering paint onto a large ‘night sky’. As you can see from the photographs, we try our best to keep messy activities as clean as they can be!
In maths, we’ve been investigating patterns and repeating colour patterns.
We always try to look out for children’s interests to guide our planning and create relevant learning opportunities. This week, children showed an interest in the Gingerbread Man story so we’re looking forward to exploring this story a little bit more next week.
Please read the Weekly Up-date for information regarding our Nursery Parent consultation meetings and lots of exciting Christmas dates. We’ll post them here soon.
Celebrations
This week, we’ve had a busy week of celebrations. We talked about Halloween, Bonfire Night and we learnt about Diwali. We read the story of Rama and Sita and talked about Diwali and how it is celebrated. Some of the children’s comments are below:
- “…because we want to let the special lady (Lakshmi) into our home…they have lanterns to make her feel welcome.”
- “They lit lanterns to get home.”
- “The King won’t let them home.”
We looked at the similarities between Diwali and other celebrations such as Bonfire Night, Christmas and New Year.
- “They clean up and decorate the house.”
- “They give presents to each other.”
- “They put lights up.”
Two children enjoyed sharing their experiences of Diwali with the class.
- “We put decorations on the floor. It was a temple and a flower.”
- “We lit candles on the table so everyone can celebrate.”
Number bonds
We’ve been working really hard learning and using number bonds of 10 (Year 2s – bonds of 20 and 100, too) recently. Following the CPA approach of mastery maths, we use concrete apparatus, visual representations and abstract number sentences to help us to learn them. Help at home by having a go at playing Hit the Button – great for number bond rapid recall. Check out the Learn More/Calculations section on our website, too.
PE kit
This half term the children will start to get changed for their PE lesson. Our PE day is Wednesday. Please ensure your child has a named PE kit (blue shorts and white t-shirt) and a named water bottle in school.
F2 and Y1 Maths Information Evening
Thank you to all the parents and carers who came to the maths information evening. We hope you found it useful and informative. The presentation and information leaflets can be found below.
A Transport Talk from the Past
We had two very special visitors in school yesterday. They were the grandads of two of our pupils, who came to talk to us about transport when they were a child.
Through asking questions and listening carefully, we learned how transport has changed tremendously over the past 50 years.
Interestingly, one visitor had nearly 40 years service working for Leeds Bus Service and he very kindly brought in many model buses and badges for us to look at. We loved his uniform picture!
The other grandad showed us pictures of old cars bought for just £50, horse-drawn milk carts and coal deliveries, and brilliant steam engines that powered up and down our streets many years ago. We also enjoyed listening to some of his poems.
The children loved listening to the stories from the past and had many, many questions.
You can do this at home too! Do you have anyone in your family who could discuss how times have changed? Talk to your child about generations and the similarities and differences that change over time – they’ll be hooked!
Home Link – Half term holiday adventures
Please remember to tell us about your holiday adventures. You could send us some photographs or bring in a leaflet of somewhere you visited during the holidays.
You could tell us about baking, art activities, trips to the park, swimming, visits to farms/ museums or anything else that your child has enjoyed.
Children love to show their photographs on our interactive whiteboard and tell friends about their adventures. It’s a great way to increase confidence and also provides lots of conversation and opportunities to extend vocabulary.
We’ll look forward to seeing your emails in our inbox: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
We hope you’ve had a good holiday and are looking forward to seeing everyone this week.