Class News

Swimming – Summer 2

In Summer 2, swimming will remain on a Wednesday and your child will swim once a fortnight. The timetable below indicates what week your child will swim – depending on their class.

Brownlee Triathalon 

Year 5 had a great morning out at the Brownlee Triathalon. Children commented that they felt inspired by the event. 

Living and Learning – Money, money, money.

KS1 have been discussing where money comes from and the choices we have when we do have some money. What would you spend £5 on? The children maturely spoke about the difference between ‘needing’ to buy something and ‘wanting’ to buy it. 

Super string telephones!

This week, we made string telephones to help us understand that sound travels in a series of vibrations.

We used paper cups and some string, but our investigation would work with empty yoghurt pots if you’d like to try this at home.

Here are a few photos of our successes: 

The children are loving learning about sound!

Walk to School Week 21-25 May 2018

Next week, 21 – 25 May, is Walk to School Week. Today, each child was given a leaflet and raffle tickets. For each day that your child walks to school, they’ll be able to put a raffle ticket into the box in the school office. Tickets will be drawn and prizes will be won! For those that live too far away to walk the full distance, The Buffers have agreed to let parents/carers park in their car park, so children still have the chance to enter the prize draw (scooting or riding a bike also counts). There are spare leaflets in the school office.

Living and Learning – money matters

This week and next, we’ll be talking about money. During our toys topic, we’ve already discussed how important (or not) we think the cost of a toy is. We talked about where money comes from, how to keep it safe and how we cannot always spend whatever we want.

I get money for my birthday or the tooth fairy.

I get pocket money and my grandma sometimes just gives me it.

I keep my money safe in my money box.

I already have my own bank where I keep my money safe.

My mum says I have to save up if I want something big that costs a lot of money.

Home Link – Royal Wedding

We’re sure that there’ll be an interest in weddings, castles and royalty after the events this weekend. On Monday 21 May, can you find something red, white or blue to wear to nursery?

For this week’s home link, please talk about the Royal Wedding. Here are a few things that you could do…

• Make a crown or tiara
• Decorate/paint a wedding dress
• Bake a wedding cake or some buns
• Look at family photographs of weddings. Have you been to a wedding? What happened? How do people celebrate weddings?
• Look at Windsor Castle. Have you been to a castle? Who lives in castles? Do you have any stories with castles in?
• Read a story about a wedding, castle or prince/princess.
• Look for objects that begin with ‘c’ for castle, crown and cake!

There are lots of different opportunities for discussion around this topic! What interests your child?

Worms and minibeasts

Week 5 – Worms and minibeasts

Children enjoyed hunting for minibeasts at the beginning of the week. Some children chose to use the clipboards to write down what they found. Their lists included slugs, snails, spiders, worms and butterflies. Whilst searching for caterpillars on some leaves, we found a group of tiny eggs and little insects. We used the digital microscope to look at them closely; we think that they were ladybird eggs and ladybird larvae.

We’ve enjoyed learning all about worms. On Monday, Miss Backhouse and her group of helpers went outside to create a wormery.  First, they collected leaves, sand and soil and put them into a tank in layers. The next part was the most fun: they went digging for worms!  In group times, we read ‘Superworm’ and we compared the length of toy worms.  Children put the worms in order of length and measured them using Numicon pegs. We talked about which worm was the longest and shortest.

At the end of the week, we had a special ‘wedding’ lunch menu and we began to talk about the Royal Wedding that will take place at the weekend.

Week 6 – What are we learning this week?

We’re sure that many children will watch or see photographs of the Royal wedding this weekend and that some of you may even be going to a party to celebrate.  On Monday 21^st May, we’re going to have a mini wedding celebration in nursery. Children are invited to wear RED, WHITE or BLUE clothes.  We’ll watch some video footage of the wedding and see what the children are interested in learning more about… castles, weddings, kings and queens?

Keep encouraging your child to hear the initial sounds in words by playing eye-spy games. This week’s letter sound will be ‘Cc’ for castles, cakes and crowns! Listen to the Jolly Phonics ‘c’ song and sing a long at home.

What can you find around your house that begins with c?

Ice-cream delight!

Year 6 had a well earned treat this morning, following their week of SATs. Vanilla ice-cream with marshmallows, chocolate or strawberry sauce, wafers, biscuits and flakes were eagerly enjoyed while watching a film. Tomorrow’s training day will be a well earned rest for our hard working and conscientious Year 6s. Well done!

Funky Phonics Stay and Play

Thank you to all the parents/ carers that were able to attend our Funky Phonics stay and play sessions today. The children enjoyed sharing their learning with you.

Many parents/carers have been asking how to support their child when writing. We want the children to be as independent as possible and at school we encourage them to go through the following 5 steps.

When checking their writing we get the children to look for the following:

…as well as ensuring it makes sense.

At this stage your child is using his/her phonic knowledge (phase 2 and 3) to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds.

Here are some recent examples:

“My mum is having a baby”

“Alex do you want to come to my home?”

“Harry M will you come to my house?”

This is exactly what we would hope to see. The children have thought of a sentence, listened to the sounds that they can hear themselves and have written them independently.

Don’t forget to visit these apps and games to support phonics and letter formation at home.