Pure sounds!
A number of parents have been asking how to pronounce the ‘pure’ sounds when reading with their children. We also teach the children the letter name. However, the ‘pure’ sound helps children to segment and blend words when reading.
Here are the pure sounds pronounced by Mrs Flynn and the actions shown by Miss Eckersley! Can you get your child to show you at home?
We are now working on the Phase 3 sounds which are all digraphs. A digraph is a combination of two letters representing one sound. Can your child tell you any of the digraphs we have learnt so far?
People who help us
Our topic after February half term is going to be ‘People who help us’. We’ve noticed that the children are interested in police, doctor and vet role-play. As part of this topic, we’d like to organise for a visitor to come into school to talk to the children about their job. Examples of the types of people we are looking for are a police-officer, doctor, nurse, vet builder, librarian, paramedic or firefighter. If you, or someone you know, is in a profession along these lines and you would like to come and talk to the children about your job, then please speak to a member of the F2 team.
Home Link – Houses
Children have really enjoyed re-telling the story of The Three Little Pigs and it has led to several conversations about different types of houses.
- What is your house like?
- Can you draw a picture of your house or take a photograph?
Have a look at the different houses on the way to Nursery one day and talk about…
- What are they made from?
- What type of house is it?
- What number is on the door?
- What shapes are the windows/doors?
I’ll huff and I’ll puff…
Week 3 – “I’ll huff and I’ll puff…”
The story of the Three Little Pigs was really popular last week; it was great to hear so many children re-telling the story using the puppets and language from the story. In the construction area, children made houses for the pigs and there was a lot of discussion about houses being ‘demolished’. We looked at some plans for new houses on an iPad and began to draw our own architect’s plans. Mrs Brown enjoyed creating some ‘mixed-up’ fairy tales with children on Tuesday, involving big bad wolves, princesses and giants…Thankfully, they all lived happily ever after!
The cold weather provided more fun learning opportunities; we compared the size of our footprints in the snow and used different coloured paint to investigate what happens when you spray snow. There are some new icy paintings on display in the Rainbow room that we created after looking and talking about the frost. The winter-themed stories in our book corner have also sparked a new interest in penguins! Over the last week, staff have noticed children asking to listen to a story called ‘Tacky the penguin’. We talked about the iceberg that Tacky stands on. Many children hadn’t encountered them before and so we decided to try and make our own mini icebergs. We filled balloons with water and put them in the freezer. We’re looking forward to finding out what happens to them when we get them out at the beginning of next week.
We’d also like to welcome our new children and their families who have joined nursery this week. Everyone has visited nursery for their first session now and we look forward to getting to know all of the new children over the next few weeks. We’re really pleased that they’ve already started to make friends with our older children.
Week 4 – What are we learning this week?
There will be more ice investigations when we take our balloons out of the freezer and create an arctic world for Tacky’s friends in the water tray. We continue to be led by children’s interests, so many areas of nursery have a traditional story theme. We’re going to read another favourite story that has appeared on our interest board – this week we’ll be shouting, “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum!” as we play with Jack and the Giant in his castle outside. In maths, we’ll count beans and golden coins carefully, making sure that we say one number for each object and lining them up to help us count each one once. We will also be talking about rhyming words during group times next week. Try to find some words that rhyme in your bed time stories this week!
Cultural Homework
The standard of the creative homework in Year 3/4 last week was fantastic! The presentation of artwork and handwriting is improving weekly. We saw many different examples of cultural experiences from the children ranging from films, art and sculptures, to holidays, hobbies and books.
Here are just a few examples to show the range and quality of work from our students.
Life Forces
We began our Life Forces big topic this week. Each class has talked about what they would like to find out. There were some very insightful questions including, “How to zebras get their stripes?”
We are looking forward to answering the questions and the children are particularly excited about all the Science this will involve. The BBC Bitesize website has some excellent resources that we’ll be using to support our learning.
Maths, NSPCC and Golden Stars
We’ve been continuing our addition and subtraction focus in maths. There are some examples below of how children use concrete resources and pictorial representations in their books. The Top Marks website is great for fun ways to work on maths skills at home and we particularly like Hit the Button to help with rapid recall of maths facts.
The children listened and contributed well during the visit from the NSPCC with their mascot, Buddy. They told us all about the Speak Out Stay Safe campaign. Ask your child what they learnt.
We also learnt about how there is always someone to talk to at Childline and were shown how to remember the number, 0800 1111, using our hands.
Well done to our Golden Stars from the last two weeks.
Fantastic homework!
Recently, the standard of homework has been high. The pupils’ skills and dedication has been going from strength to strength! We’d love to show some of them to you!
We find them inspiring. They are creative; demonstrate the children’s interests; show research skills (without copying huge chunks from the internet!); maintain the high standard of presentation we expect; and are all relevant to the task set.
Following learning conversations and feedback in class, it’s been very clear that the children have really enjoyed the opportunity to research and present their findings.
They are fantastic – well done, everyone. Keep it up! We can’t wait to see next week’s homework!
Terrific Tessellations
This week, we began our new Life Forces topic with a focus on the key characteristics of mammals and fish. In art, we were inspired by the work of MC Escher (1889-1972) and created our own fabulous tessellations of mammals and fish.
Ask you child to explain how they modified a square to make their tessellating template.
Thank you!
Thank you to those of you who were able to attend the ‘marvellous maths’ stay and play today. It was great to see so many of you there and the children enjoyed sharing their learning with you.
We focused on the number 9. We focus on numbers to twenty throughout the year to get a depth of understanding of what the numbers represent. We talked about what number 9 looks like – not just the numeral but also what it looks like in our environment. For example, 8 flowers and 1 tree – that makes nine!
If you were unable to attend, your child will be bringing home an information booklet with ideas of how to support your child at home. The children also enjoy watching number blocks – a great conversation starter about numbers!
