Parent Consultations
We’re looking forward to meeting with you all next week to talk about how your child has settled into Nursery so far this term. If you haven’t already signed up for an appointment, there’s still time. If you’re unable to make it next week, please speak to Mrs Long or Mrs Ellison and we’ll be happy to arrange an alternative time with you.
During our meeting, we’re hoping to talk to you a little bit about what you can expect your child to be learning as they progress through the Foundation Stage.
Here is a link to a document that can 
be quite helpful for understanding ‘What to expect, when?‘ – but please remember all children are unique and make progress at their own rates and at different times. In this booklet, there are lots of ideas of ways to support your child further at home.
Home Link – Five little men in a flying saucer
For our Home Link activity this week, we’d like you to sing one of the songs that we’ve been learning this week.
Can you sing the song 5 Little men in a flying saucer? You can watch it and sing along at home.
Sing it with your key worker or email us a video of you singing it at home and get a star on your hand print.
Whatever next?
We have had a great time this week using the story ‘Whatever Next’ to stimulate our learning and play. We loved creating our own small world area to retell the story and take Teddy on his adventure to the moon. We made our own moon paintings, colour mixing black and white to make grey. Some children wanted to make things ‘more silver’ so set about using tinfoil to wrap up stones, or should we say ‘moon rocks’.
We had lots of fun investigating in the water tray… Look what happened when we used the funnels to fill the bottles! Children loved watching the water come out of the tiny holes and it provided lots of opportunities to talk about capacity.
During group time we introduced ‘dough disco’. This involves each child having a ball of playdough to manipulate into different shapes following the lead of the adult. Such activities are fantastic in helping develop dexterity, fine motor skills and finger strength.
After singing the rhyme ‘5 little men in a flying saucer’ the children had a great time using the large construction to make space rockets and spaceships to take them to the moon. We practised recognising the numbers 1-5, counting forwards and backwards as the spacemen got on and off the rockets. There has been lots of building, too, with smaller bricks which have resulted in some fantastic language as the children described their tall, short, bigger and taller constructions. We continued to sing lots of different nursery rhymes and used the puppets including a fish, a clock and a moon to play ‘guess the rhyme’. By using the recording pegs, the children were able to independently record themselves as they sang and then played their beautiful voices back for everyone to hear!
What we are learning this week
We’re going to continue with our ‘moon’ theme as we make craters in the sensory area using marbles and ‘moon dust’. We shall be painting onto tinfoil and printing using bubble wrap as we use different textures in our art work. We will be looking at pictures from the story ‘Whatever Next’ and thinking about the order the different events happened. This is a great way to not only stimulate talk but to help develop organisational and sequencing skills. We’ll be trying to remember all the things baby bear took in his picnic by playing different memory games. So we don’t forget, we’ll use different forms of mark making to write our own picnic lists. Once on the moon, we will start to think about who we might bump into! After reading the book ‘Q Pootle 5’, we hope to stimulate the making of some very colourful but friendly playdough aliens!
Reminders
- We look forward to seeing everyone this week for the parents’ meetings. If you can’t attend, please let a member of staff know.
- Save the date! Christmas ‘Stay and Play’ sessions will take place w/c 04 December on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings at 8.30-9.15. More information to follow shortly.
- As we go outdoors in all weathers, please ensure your child is appropriately dressed. Girls in particular really need either tights or leggings to protect their legs.
- Please ensure your child has a full set of spare clothes in their bag. If Nursery clothing is borrowed, can it be returned it to us as we are running low on certain items.
- There is a ‘wish list’ on the notice board in the entrance area. At the moment, we’re looking for a ‘flat screen TV’ type box and other good quality cardboard boxes
- If you would like to share any non-urgent information with us please get in touch using the Nursery email: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Zentangles
We’ve seen some creative artwork from our Year 3/4 pupils this week to complement our Explorers topic. Using a simple coastal template, the children filled in the spaces with repetitive, detailed patterns using black ink. We think they look fantastic! Well done, Samuel W, Ellis W and Daisy B.
By Daisy Beardsley
Year 5 Descriptive Writing
Year 5/6 have been writing their own setting descriptions this week.
Caring and Sharing – Explorers Topic
1,2V were visited by 5,6C this week so we could share what we had learnt during our Explorers topic. It was great having a real audience to share, discuss and reflect on learning.
PE reminder
A reminder that both classes have PE on a Thursday. Please make sure your child has their PE kit: a white t-shirt and blue shorts.
Thank you!
Magic Maths Facts
We’re working really hard learning our maths facts. You can support your child at home by helping your child to learn these facts ‘by heart’. Creating a little quiz, testing each other or using a timer to increase recall at speed can make this fun too.
Well done to our Golden Star.
Fun with Phonics
This week the children have learnt 3 new sounds – g, o, c. You can watch and sing along to the jolly phonics videos at home.
The children have enjoyed playing games such as Cross the River to help them segment and blend CVC words.
We introduced phoneme frames to the children this week. We use phoneme frames to practise the skills of segmenting. For example:
Show your child the pictures below and see if they can segment the words and write them in a phoneme frame.
Don’t forget to tell us about any Wow moments that happen at home!
Armistice Day
On Friday, we talked to the children about Armistice Day. We talked about how it marked the day World War One ended on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.
The children worked together to make poppies (which turned out to be a great fiddly fingers activity) and some children decided to draw a poppy.
