Dinosaur Roar
It’s been great to see our new children becoming more familiar with Nursery routines and lots of them have now stayed for their first full day. Well done, yellow group!
Children continue to explore nursery and are independently choosing resources to enhance their play; we’ve created amazing constructions, working together and sharing ideas.
We have also enjoyed finding out about dinosaurs. Digging up dinosaur skeletons in the sand tray, finding out about dinosaurs in our small world area and learning their names.
In the sensory area, we loved playing with the slime in our dinosaur swamp! Ergh.. it’s very sticky!
Mark making always plays an important part of our learning in Nursery and this week the children have been practising their skills in many of our provision areas. In the paint, sand, message centre and making patterns on giant pieces of paper.
In group time, children in red, blue and green group helped Mrs Beesley with her shopping bags. One bag was very heavy and the other bag was quite light. We looked at the different items in each bag and compared them. Children had to find an item that was heavier or lighter than the tin of baked beans. You could try this at home.
Our sounds next week is Oo
Make your mouth into a round shape and say o.
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week next week is Row Row Row your Boat.
Can you sing the rhyme fast, slow, loud or quiet?
Have a happy and healthy weekend and thankyou as always for your continued support.
The Nursery Team.
Penguin Huddle
In our literacy lessons this week, we enjoyed reading Penguin Huddle by Ross Montgomery. In the story, the penguins huddled together during an icy storm but it was so cold that they got stuck together and couldn’t break free!
Our word of the week is: huddle. Ask your child to tell you what it means. Can they use it in a sentence?
Here is some of our super writing from this week.
We also watched a short clip from an episode of BBC Frozen planet to find out more about where penguins live. We located the UK and the Antarctic on a map and found their locations on a globe.
How is the Antarctic environment different to the United Kingdom? After watching the clip, we looked at some photographs of the Antarctic and compared them to the United Kingdom to find similarities and differences.
Focus Artist: Yayoi Kusama
This week, children loved exploring the art of Yayoi Kusama. We found out about her life and why her artwork incorporates so many polka dots! On Tuesday afternoon, we visited a special ‘pop-up’ Art Gallery in the Hub.
When looking at the artwork, we used sentence stems to talk about our opinions.
I like it because…
I don’t like it because…
I love this one because it’s like a domino. Cillian
This one is my favourite because the dots look like they are sparkling. Hugo
This one has lots of bright balls. I like it. Jazmin
After looking at the gallery, we took inspiration from some of the pictures to create our own Yayoi Kusama inspired artwork. We’ve also been exploring colour mixing to find out what happens when you mix two of the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) together.
Maths -composition
This week, children consolidated their understanding of the composition of 5 using the familiar rhyme ‘5 Little Speckled Frogs‘. By singing the rhyme and moving the frogs during each verse, children investigated part–part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 5 can be made of 3 and 2.
There are five frogs on the log but when one frog jumps into the pool, we can see that there are four frogs on the log and one in the pool. 5 can be made of 4 and 1. When another frog jumps into the pool, there are 3 frogs on the log and 2 in the pool. 5 can be made of 3 and 2.
We also used our fingers to show this, first holding up 5 fingers and then putting one down each time.
Poetry Picnic
Our poetry sessions this week have been a little different as we learnt and recited a traditional nursery rhyme.
The children used gestures and expression to recite ‘Jack and Jill’.
Phonics
Spring 1 week 3 has focused on the digraphs ur, ow, oi and the trigraph ear.
We’ve learnt the tricky words; my, by, all. Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.
Help at home:
Each week, we’d like to give you an idea of a game you could play at home to make reading even more exciting.
This week’s game is: Tricky Word Splat
- Write a selection of tricky words on paper/sticky notes.
- Place around the room/floor.
- Say a tricky word for your child to splat. You might jump on the words, splat with a masher or create your own ideas.
PE – dance
Year 1 and 2 are doing dance and yoga in PE this half term. We have started with dance and have talked about moving at a low, medium and high level and using our bodies to make interesting shapes. We are listening to different types of music – from Kate Bush to The Planets by Holst. Dance is just another way of moving our bodies (to music) and we have really enjoyed it!
Watch us while we work 1,2B
We had a very full classroom yesterday. Thank you for coming to see what your children are learning and how you can support them at home.
Orally rehearsing (talking!) is so important and modelling how to make sentences and phrases interesting helps children to implement this in their writing.
Counting, grouping and partitioning everyday objects at home can also help consolidate their understanding of number and patterns.
Geography – Fieldwork
This week 2C went on a trip into the local area. We walked into Scholes village and surveyed 5 locations. Our first stop was the outside of School. We noticed it was very clean and felt safe.
There was no litter outside of school. We also visited the library, St Phillips church, the Peace flame and the village hall. The village hall had the most litter outside of it but there was not much. The litter we did spot, we picked up!
Thank you to our adult volunteers for coming along on this trip!
Living and Learning
Our Living and Learning statement this week is ‘I can assess my own risks.’ This week, KS1 went on a Geography trip into Scholes. We did some fieldwork and collected data about our local area. Before we went on the walk the children discussed what risks we might come across and how we could stay safe.
One of the risks we talked about what cars coming past us. We could stay safe by wearing a high visibility jacket (so that we could be seen), stick with our partner and watch where we are walking (on the path).
We assess our risks every day. Another risk we assess regularly is the safety of our school playground when it has been raining. We know it can be quite slippery after it has rained. To keep safe, we walk and don’t run and we stay off the equipment.
Help at home by discussing what risks children might face and how they can be avoided in order to keep safe.
Lotherton Hall trip
We had a fantastic time at Lotherton Hall on Friday! 2C started off over in the Deer Park. We had a snack and discussed the local woodland and how this is well suited to the deer and their needs.
We then headed over to the Wildlife park and spotted lots of fantastic animals including penguins, capybara, flamingos and wallaby.
After lunch, we looked at the bats, armadillo and cloud rats before enjoying a workshop all about animals and their habitats.
Thank you to the brilliant adults that took time out of their days to join us on our school trip. We wouldn’t have been able to go without you!
We can’t wait for our next school trip already!
Making new friends
We have had a busy week settling yellow group into Nursery and helping them to explore their new environment. They’re all doing really well and are gradually getting to know us and beginning to make some new friends. They have already stayed for lunch and next week will stay for their first full day, what a fantastic start!
This week, in Maths, we have been finding out about number 1. We have been representing 1 in lots of different ways with our fingers, on a five frame and with marks.
Next week we will start some new learning about weight. We will be using words such as heavy, light, heavier and lighter to compare different objects.
Help at home: You could continue this learning at home by asking questions during everyday activities. Which bag from the supermarket is heaviest/ lightest? Which toy is lighter? Can you find something that is lighter than the bottle of milk? Can you find something that is heavier than a packet of crisps?
Our sound next week is Gg
Our nursery rhyme of the week – Ring-a-ring-a-roses
Can you join in with the rhyme and the actions at home?
We will continue reading Dinosaur Roar next week. Can you remember all of the different types of dinosaurs in the story?
“Dinosaur weak, dinosaur strong, dinosaur short or dinosaur very, very long”
We look forward to finding out more about dinosaurs.
Have a happy and healthy weekend and thank you as always for your continued support.
The Nursery Team
Lotherton Hall- 1A
1 A and the whole of KS1 have had a tremendous time at Lotherton Hall today! We all enjoyed our Science workshop, learning about animals and their different habitats. We especially enjoyed finding the animals on our scavenger hunt list.
We saw every single one of the animals on the above list. We were thrilled to find each one.
The children’s behaviour was exemplary. We are so proud of them all. The highlights for the children were: the animals, eating lunch and the park!
A HUGE thank-you to the adults who came with us on the trip. We could not have done it without you.
Spring 1, Week 2
Spring 1 is our Fire and Ice theme. Over the past 2 weeks, nature has provided us with so many opportunities to explore freezing and melting! Take a look at our snow-filled tray, with snow collected from our garden:
“the snow has turned to ice- it’s rock hard!”- J.A
““the snow feels so freezing when I pour it on my hands!… now it’s melting”
Lost and Found
We’ve continued to focus on the book Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.
We’ve been linking the story to topic work. We looked at a world map to see how the boy and penguin would travel from where we live (The United Kingdom) to The South Pole in Antarctica. We recalled what we know about the world map from our previous learning.
We’ve also been comparing our weather to that in the continent of Antarctica. Our word of the week is: climate.
We’ve been writing ‘Missing’ posters, describing the penguin from our story.
Penguin observations
We’ve been zoologists this week- observing the livestream of the penguins at Edinburgh Zoo
We’ve been making notes on how the penguins move and interact with each other.
We noticed that the penguins were busier on the colder days of the week and discussed why this might be.
Ice painting
We made ice paintings by freezing paint mixed with water and creating art tools with them.
We noticed the difference in how well the tools painted, as the ice began to melt.
Charanga Music; Lullabies
“Mummy sings ‘You Are My Sunshine’ – Miley“My Mummy sings ‘Twinkle Twinkle” – Mila“When I was a baby my Mummy cuddled me and sang to me”- Harlow“My Mummy lets my baby go to sleep with a light that changes colour”- Olivia“It’s where you rock someone to sleep” (a lullaby)- Mila“We tell stories with Daddy at bedtime”- Grace“He needs a drink” (what does the baby need at bedtime)- Charlie
Phonics Phase 3 Stay and Learn
Thank you to the parents and carers who were able to join us for another Stay and Learn session this week.
We hope you enjoyed watching a lesson, getting to spend time in the classroom and hopefully getting some more ideas and information for the next steps in our phonics journey.
As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Scan the QR code to leave your views!
Maths; the staircase pattern
In Maths, we’ve been looking at counting and ordinality- specifically, the ‘one more’ relationship that creates ‘the staircase pattern’.
We were introduced to the concept by the Numberblocks, before moving on to create our own staircase patterns in small groups.
In provision, we’ve been using Frayer models to explore numbers- counting the corresponding amount of cubes/teddies, finding the Numicon and representing it on a tens frame.
Phonics
Spring 1 week 2 has focused on the digraphs oo, oo, ar, or
We’ve learnt the tricky words; was, you, they
Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.
In provision, we’ve been playing roll and read.
Help at home; Tricky words
Each week, we’d like to give you an idea of a game you could play at home to make reading even more exciting.
This week’s game is: Tricky Word Bingo
- Enter the list of tricky words you want to focus on into an online ‘picker’ (pickerwheel.com is an easy to use option) or write them down onto strips of paper, to be picked at random.
- Ask your child to choose 4-6 tricky words and write them down (they can copy these from a list), you should do the same and you could even ask a sibling to play along too!
- Pick the tricky words at random or by clicking the wheel- who will be the first to cross off all of their words and shout BINGO?!!
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called I can build a snowman
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
Reminders/ Dates for your diary
