Diwali
Today, we have learnt about Diwali. We read the story of Rama and Sita and talked about ‘the festival of light’. The children have enjoyed colouring and painting Rangoli and Mehndi patterns.
We talked about how Diwali is celebrated and how it is similar to how we celebrate our birthday and Christmas.
Fun with phonics!
This week, we’re focusing on the sounds that we have learnt so far: s, a, t, p, i and n. We’ll be singing the Jolly Phonic songs and listening for words that begin with these sounds. We’ll also be looking at how to form the letters.
Ask your child what sounds the objects in the picture below begin with. Let us know what your child said using a WOW sheet.
Children’s interests
We plan around your child’s interests. Here is our interest board where we write any interests that we could use in the classroom.
For example, some children are interested in Power Rangers and this week we’ll be trying to free the Power Rangers that are caught in elastic bands.
Please write on the bubble if your child has any interests that we could use to plan for an exciting classroom environment. We’ll also be encouraging children to add to this board, too – please feel free to add to it any time!
Has your child been learning their words on their word rocket? To make it more fun you could play ‘Splat’. Using a fly splatter, hit the word as you say it. The children have really enjoyed playing this at school!
Harvest: 13 October 2017
Thank you for the generous donations. The Salvation Army collected the tins and packets for their food bank.
Highlights this week
We enjoyed learning about mindfulness this week and learnt new breathing techniques to help us approach difficult situations in a calm manner.
We’ve been working on our rapid recall of number facts, using dominoes to help. Please practise these at home, too.
Well done to our Golden Star this week. I think she feels proud!
Home Link – Shapes
Can you make a picture using different shapes?
You could make a house, vehicle, pattern… Be as creative as you like!
Remember to talk about the names of the shapes you use.
For this week’s activity, please write any vocabulary your child uses as they make their picture. For example: ‘It’s a circle, like a wheel’ or ‘The house has a triangle for a roof’. This important feedback from home link activities helps to inform our assessments and plan the next steps in the children’s learning.
You could always email us a photograph and any comments to our Foundation One email: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Whoosh!
We had great fun making delicious currant buns, carefully weighing the ingredients and stirring the mixture together. The smell was amazing! They were, of course, decorated with a cherry on the top! The children really enjoyed extending their play into the ‘playdough’ baker’s shop and even into the maths area where they used the balance scales to weigh different ingredients. Last Wednesday, we had a wonderful ‘wellie walk’ around the school field. We collected a huge bag of leaves, sticks and feathers which we enjoyed sorting by shape, size and colour. Some children were sure we would find fairies in the big tree trunks! No luck this time but maybe we need to think about how to attract them into the nursery area… watch this space!
What are we learning this week?
We’ll be extending our play and learning about 2D shapes by going on a shape hunt and using shapes in our creative areas. The children have absolutely loved using props as they sang the currant buns song; this week we shall be using the rhyme ‘5 little speckled frogs’ to develop number and language skills.
The frog theme also links in nicely as we begin to prepare for all things magical at the end of October. Watch out for magic potions, spiders and spells in the water area!
We shall be reading ‘Room on a broom’ by Julia Donaldson in our key person groups. We will use the story as a stimulus for small world play using props to retell the story. There are some fun activities available to download on the Room on the Broom website, including a memory game for you to play. You could also watch the story on line if you don’t have a copy at home.
Autumn walk
Nursery children enjoyed listening to the ‘We’re going on a leaf hunt‘ story before we went on our own hunt around the school grounds. We thought about the things that we might find and took a big bag with us.
It was very muddy so we wore our wellies to walk through the squishy mud. Squelch, squerch, squelch, squerch! We found colourful autumn leaves of all different shapes and sizes, twisted ivy around tree trunks and we spotted a squirrel gathering some acorns. We even found some mushrooms that we knew not to touch!
Afterwards, we took our autumn treasure back to nursery and sorted it using our senses.
Year 6 Bikeability success!
Congratulations to all the year 6 pupils who took part in the Bikeability training over the past two weeks!
Road safety skills can be difficult to master! We’re all really proud of how you represented our school and conducted yourselves. You worked hard, persevered and had a great attitude (even in the pouring rain!).
PE
The children have enjoyed PE in the hall. Over the past couple of weeks we have experimented with different ways of moving – hoping, skipping, jumping and slithering along the floor.
Next week, the children will get changed for PE. Please can you make sure your child has their PE kit (white t-shirt and blue shorts) in school on Monday 16 October.
After half-term, we’ll have a gymnastics coach on a Tuesday afternoon. This will be for Rainbow and Sunshine children.
We will send PE kits home to be washed at the end of each half-term.