Christmas lunch
We had a lovely lunchtime yesterday. We visited the ‘Mrs Pennock inflatable display Christmas grotto’ and then had a lovely Christmas lunch together in the hall!
Exhibiting our sculptures
This half term, we have created our own sculptures inspired by Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man (1970) – a sculpture we saw on our trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
https://ysp.org.uk/art-outdoors/the-family-of-man
We were able to mix colour effectively to create the effect of patina found on The Family of Man (this is the green or brown colour created on bronze and other metals after weathering over time).
We were inspired by her use of negative space and included this in our artwork, too!
Help at home: See if your child can remember the following pieces of vocabulary from our topic and what they mean: negative space, sculpture, modern art and classical art.
Christmas in 2C
This week we have been very excited about the run up to Christmas. We’ve done lots of lovely activities such as made cards, calendars and crafts. We’ve done 2 Christmas productions for the adults, seen some special Christmas decorations and today we had a lovely Christmas lunch. See what we’ve been getting up to!
We can’t wait for our Christmas party tomorrow (9am)! Remember to send your child in their own clothes, some snacks for after the party and a bag to send all of their bits and bobs home!
Art: creating patina
Inspired by the work of Barbara Hepworth, Year 5/6 have been creating sculptures and thinking about how to add texture through the use of patina.
Help at home: Take a look at some more pieces of art from Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Which ones inspire you? How could you use some household items to create a project in the style of a favoured artist?
Christmas in KS1
The children have been enjoying a lovely festive week in school this week. They performed their little socks off and displayed their singing and dancing talents at both of the Nativity shows. WELL DONE YEAR 1 AND 2!!!
Today, in all classes, we received a mysterious phone call to tell us that we had been sent a very special email. The big man himself, Santa Claus, had sent us an email with a video to watch. It turns out he had been to our school when we were at home last night and he had delivered some gifts to our classrooms for us. We were SO excited and searched for the presents in class. There was one for everyone. We’re even more excited now for the Christmas dinner tomorrow and for the party on Friday.
Merry Christmas everyone from all the KS1 staff.
Help at home: by taking some time to relax and recuperate after a long term and by enjoying some wonderful family time together.
Reception learning updates and home-learning resources
Today (Wednesday 20 December), your child will be coming home with their second learning update of the school year.
Alongside this, we are sending a phase 2 GPC (grapheme-phoneme correspondence) mat. On this mat, sounds that your child was not secure on in their most recent phonics assessment will be highlighted. If no sounds are highlighted, your child was secure in recognising all of them.
We have also included a phase 2 tricky word mat, to re-read and re-visit at home.
Some children will have additional resources in their pack. This may include flashcards of words to blend, and/or some pattern flashcards for mathematical subitising. This will link to How can you support your child at home? targets on their learning update sheet.
Please let your class teacher know if you have any questions regarding the learning update or resources sent home.
Finally, your child’s pack will include some very special Christmas crafts that they have been working on over the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!
British Library Visit
We were lucky enough to be visited by the British Library yesterday, who are based in Boston Spa. This is a research library that holds books, newspapers and documents.
The children had the opportunity to read a book called “The Phoenix of Persia.” The book contains a range of different Persian instruments, such as the Daff – a type of drum.
The children used percussion instruments to compose music for different pages in the book. They used instruments such as: castanets, egg shakers, bells and wooden blocks.
KS1 Science
For our final piece of Science learning this half term, KS1 have learning about the word ‘absorb.’ We did a comparative test where we used 4 different types of material to soak up the same measurement of water.
We found that cotton wool absorbed the most water, foil absorbed the least water and the carboard absorbed some but not all of the water.
Christmas
We had such a busy week learning the songs and rehearsing for our ‘Santa’s Hat’ production. We can’t wait to share it with you on Monday and Tuesday and hope you enjoy watching.
During group time, we enjoyed drawing some decorations onto a giant tree and learning about the letter ‘n’. We could hear the ‘n’ sound at the beginning of the words nurse, nose, nut and net.
Outside, we decorated trees, used chalks to draw snowmen and we aimed red balls (noses!) at a giant rudolph on the wall to practise our throwing skills.
We also made Christmas cards for our families; children can’t wait to bring them home so please remember to check their folder on their final day in Nursery next week.
Next week:
We will consolidate the letter sounds that we have learnt so far – s, a, t, p, i and n.
Reminders:
- Our Early Years Christmas performance will take place on Monday 18 December at 1.30 – 2.15pm and on Tuesday 19 December at 9.45 – 10.30am.
- Thank you to everyone that has replied to say which ‘Stay and Decorate‘ session they would like to attend. If you haven’t returned the slip yet, please let us know if you’re able to join in with one of the sessions. They will be on Wednesday 20 December 9.00- 9.45am or 2.00 -2.45 pm and Thursday 21 December 9.00-9.45am.
- Our Nursery Party will take place on Friday 22 December from 10-11.15am. Children can attend Nursery wearing their party clothes. Please remember that we will still take part in Nursery activities (which can be messy) and we’ll also be outside so footwear needs to be sensible.
- A pot for your £1 party contribution will be available in Nursery all week. Thank you in advance for your donation towards the cost of treats for our party.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
This week, children are writing about one of the statues at Yorkshire Sculpture Park coming to life. It was such a fantastic trip that we had to share some of our best moments.
