Parent Consultations
We hope that you found our Parent Consultation meetings informative this week. It was good to see so many of you and to be able to talk about how much progress children have made so far this year. If you still haven’t had chance to speak to Mrs Long, please speak to staff to arrange an appointment.
Further to these discussions, here are some links that you may find useful regarding the Early Years curriculum.
- What to expect, When? This document provides an overview of the Early Years Foundation Stage and what type of things children are expected to be able to do at different stages throughout the year. The booklet has been written to help you as a parent know what to expect during these important years by focusing on the seven areas of learning and development which are covered in the EYFS.
- Jolly Phonics songs – We sing these songs in nursery and learn a new letter sound each week. Each song is accompanied by an action.
- Pure sounds – watch a video clip of our Foundation Two staff saying the pure sound with each Jolly Phonics action.
- Segmenting and blending – In nursery, we learn to segment and blend words orally. We teach children to break down (segment) a word into the sounds that they can hear such as ‘p-e-g’ or ‘c-u-p’ and then to stick/join (blend) these sounds together again to make a word. We do this practically in nursery, playing lots of games. It’s quite difficult to find video clips on line to demonstrate – this is an American version of an oral segmenting and blending game
Please speak to nursery staff if you have any questions.
Home Link – Plants and growth
We’ve been busy planting seeds in nursery and talking about what plants need to grow. Children have notcied some changes in our nursery garden; leaves are starting to grow on the trees and we’ve spotted bees visiting spring flowers.
This week, we’d like you to continue learning about plants and growth. You could…
- Go for a walk around a garden or park. What plants and flowers can you see growing? You could take photos or draw some pictures of things you see.
- We’re learning the ‘f’ sound this week for ‘frogs’ and ‘flowers’. What other words can you think of that begin with ‘f’?
- Does your child like gardening? Send us a photo and tell us what they’re growing at home.
- You could try planting some seeds yourselves. Cress seeds grow quickly!
- Make a model of a flower (Junk modelling, playdough or construction toys) How could you make the stem, the flower and the leaves?
- Paint a picture of some flowers. What colours do you need? What are the parts of a flower called?
Peter Rabbit and friends
Following on from children’s interest in the latest Peter Rabbit movie, we introduced some rabbit enhancements to nursery this week. We enjoyed listening to some of the original Peter Rabbit stories written by Beatrix Potter and in the art area, we created our own rabbit paintings. In maths, we counted out carrots for Peter and Benjamin Bunny. We focussed on language that we can use to compare groups of objects. Lots of children were confident at using more/ mostwhen comparing groups of objects, but many children found less/ least/ fewer trickier. Please help at home by using these words in everyday situations. Thank-you for sending in lots of ‘r’ objects for our sound shelf; we enjoyed playing “eye-spy something beginning with r,” in group times. Due to illness, we’ve had to postpone our visit from George the rabbit. We hope to find out the answers to our questions next week.
Week 3 – What are we learning this week?
We were really pleased to be able to get some frogspawn last week and as we hoped, children were really intrigued to find out about the ‘fish’ swimming in the tank.
This week we will learn:
- about the life cycle of a frog
- to make frogspawn prints using bubble wrap – investigating printing with different textures
- about the letter sound ‘f’ for frog. (Listen to the Jolly Phonics f song here)
- to count out a set number of tadpoles and remember to stop when we’ve reached that number. (Eg. Can you get 5 tadpoles from the pond? Remember to stop when you reach 5!)
- Sing ‘5 Little Speckled Frogs’ using the frogs in our water tray.
Living and learning: I can recognise emotions
Over the last two weeks, year 5/6 have been discussing our emotions. We have discussed our ‘gut’ reactions and how these can help us. We discussed situations in which we feel either comfortable or uncomfortable. Can you add to the list and talk about the benefits of being able to recognise emotions in others.
We love to read!
Did you know, that every week in Year 5/6, each class receives 3 copies of First News for the children to enjoy? The children can often be found enjoying the articles, sharing them with friends and having a go at the crosswords and word searches.
We love to read lots of other texts as well, including graphic novels, group reading books, fiction and non-fiction.
We just love to read!
Living and Learning – Identifying Emotions
Our Living and Learning sessions this week involved identifying different emotions through facial expressions and whole body movements, postures or poses. We also talked about how different situations make you feel. Music is a great way that you can help at home. Listen to a variety of classical music and talk about how it makes you feel.
Making switches
Our Year 3/4 children have been making circuits this week, looking at different components and testing switches.
The task today involved making two switches: split pins and paperclip; foil and card.
Here are some pictures of our successes.
Slippery slime and tiny tadpoles
We’ve had a great start to the week. On Monday morning, children helped Miss Backhouse to follow some instructions for how to make slime. They helped to measure out a cup of glue, a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, a tablespoon of a special ingredient and a splash of colour and they mixed them all together in a bowl. The result was a bowl full of colourful slime! It provided lots of opportunities to talk about its texture and properties. Some children realised that they could stretch it and stretch it and stretch it… We talked about the length of their ‘slime worms’ and compared them to find out which was the longest and shortest worm.
If you’d like to make some at home, follow the recipe that we used.
On Tuesday morning, some children noticed that there was a new tank on display in the Quiet room. After closer investigation, they could see that it contained a jelly-like substance and some tiny ‘fish’. We talked about what was in the tank and used some non-fiction books to find out more information. Children were very excited to discover that they’re not tiny fish, but tadpoles! We’re looking forward to learning all about the life cycle of a frog and watching the tadpoles grow and change over the next few weeks.
Elmete Elderberries
Some Year 2 children visited the Elmete Elderberries at St Phillip’s Church today. It was lovely to see the older and younger generations of our village making connections and enjoying each other’s company. The highlight for the children was being serenaded out by the brass band. Thank you for having us, Elmete Elderberries!
Football match
Our Year 4 and 5 players put in a gutsy performance on Friday, playing their first match against Woodlesford. Although we didn’t win, every player showed determination and resilience against a formidable Woodlesford side. Thank you to everyone who came to show their support in the sunshine. Well done, Scholes!
