Peace at Last
We loved reading ‘Peace at Last‘ this week. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip).
We especially enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrains in the story (e.g. “I can’t stand this!”) and adding our own sound effects. BRRRRRRRR, NEEEEEOOOOW, TICK TOCK, SNUFFLE SNUFFLE!
Help at home: What noises can you hear around your house or in the garden? Go on a listening walk and talk about the sounds you hear. Can you make the sound? If your child has a favourite bedtime story, try adding some sound effects to different parts of the story.
In the story, Mr Bear moves around the house to try and find somewhere that is quiet to sleep. As we were reading, we talked to children about night time. We talked about what they can see out of their windows at night and about some of the animals in the story that are awake when we’re sleeping.
In the fiddly fingers area, children had to carefully pick up buttons to place them on an owl outline. We talked about the different colours on their wings and about when they like to hunt for food. In the dough area, children used different star cutters to make big and little stars.
We learnt a new sound this week – p for penguin. During group time, we looked at a selection of objects beginning with ‘p’ and we tried to say the phoneme (sound) without adding an ‘uh’ to the end. (Please see our earlier web post and video about using pure sounds.)
Here are a few other photos from this week’s learning – you can see that the space rockets and learning about night time is popular.
Outside, we enjoyed practising our throwing and catching skills using balls and beanbags.
Next week’s learning:
Next week, we’re going to read another of our favourite stories written by Jill Murphy. It’s called ‘Whatever Next‘ and this time, it’s Baby Bear that goes on an adventure to the moon. We’ll continue to learn about night time so that children can talk about some of the differences between day and night.
Nursery rhyme of the week –Hickory Dickory Dock and we’ll also be singing a number rhyme 5 Little Men in a Flying Saucer
Sound of the week – a (a for astronaut)
Reminders
- We have our Parent Teacher Consultation evenings on Monday and Wednesday. Please check your emails for the Zoom link. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for no technical difficulties!
- The weather has certainly got colder towards the end of the week. Please make sure that your child has a warm coat, a hat and some gloves to wear every day. We play in our garden throughout winter, so children need to be wrapped up to keep warm and enjoy learning outside in all seasons.
- It’s the final school open session on Friday 01 December 2023 at 9.30am.The sessions are a chance to find out more about our school, visit some classrooms and talk with some of our pupils and staff.
- Wish List – thank you to everyone who has helped contribute items from our wish list so far. It’s really appreciated. We’ve added a few more items, so please take a look and if you’re able to help out, take the post-it note from the display. Thank you
3,4B Class News
A very busy week in 3,4b this week as we have been preparing for our class assembly. The children all worked really hard and we spent time working on projecting our voice and using intonation and tone when speaking. The children all had great ideas of how to showcase all of the learning that has taken place since September and it was lovely to see so many adults in the audience.
Alongside this, we have been enjoying learning about our two artists for this half term – Wassily Kandinsky and Martha McDonald Napaltjarri. We explored Kandinsky’s ‘Concentric circles’ and created our own versions with an emphasis on using complimentary colours.
In Science we have investigated different types of rocks. We used scientific vocabulary to describe them and then identified similarities and differences between them.
Help at home by regularly listening to your child read and discussing it with them.
Thank you for your continued support!
We’re bananas about sandwiches!
On Monday, Year 2 used their food preparation skills to create a banana sandwich.
This forms part of our Design and Technology food learning which involves following a recipe to create a product each term.
Here are some pictures of us preparing our sandwiches!
Here are some pictures of us eating them!
Next week we will be writing some instructions about how to make a banana sandwiches.
Children in Need
A huge thank you to everyone that donated money last Friday for Children in Need. The Junior Leadership Team were out in the playground with collection buckets before and after school – they did a great job! We managed to raise a whopping £436.98 in total. Thank you so much!
1,2B’s trip to the Hepworth Wakefield
We also enjoyed our trip yesterday. The galleries were inspiring and we made our own artwork and prints too. It really brought our art topic to life!
School trip – 2C!
We had an absolutely fantastic school trip at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield today. We got there via coach (the children were super excited about this and sang most of the way there).
We started the day looking around the the different galleries in the art museum. We saw lots of different pieces of art and sculptures.
We had some brilliant discussions about the art works including how they changed in appearance as we changed our position in the room. Our discussions included texture (without touching the art) and the patterns we could see. Next, we had a go at drawing some of our own art, inspired by the art in the gallery. We used some small objects to help us do this, including shells, pine cones and plastic stencils.
After lunch (which we thoroughly enjoyed) we took part in a workshop.
The workshop included looking at some Barbara Hepworth sculptures and finding inspiration from them. We talked about how Hepworth was inspired by nature to produce her own art. After this, we looked at some of the repeated patterns in nature and produced our own art, using tracing paper and a black frame.
We then took part in a printing workshop where we made some 3D stencils and used them to make some colourful prints on our paper using primary colours.
Art topic – colour mixing
As part of our art topic, we have been learning about primary and secondary colours. After identifying colours in paintings, we had a go at mixing them ourselves.
James Mayhew author visit
We had a wonderful virtual visit with author, James Mayhew, who wrote the Katie and … books. In the stories, Katie visits art galleries and has amazing adventures inside famous paintings. We are reading Katie and the Mona Lisa as part of our topic learning.
James told us some stories while he was demonstrating how he illustrates. It was very inspiring.
Help at home by talking about your favourite pieces of art or sharing some of the Katie books together.
1,2B DT – making banana sandwiches
All the year 1 and 2 classes will be or have been using their food preparation skills to create their latest product, a banana sandwich.
This forms part of our Design and Technology food learning which involves following a recipe to make something each term.
Help at home by encouraging your child to be involved in food preparation at home.
1A-A lot of learning!
We too have been following our excellent curriculum and learning about M
materials in Science. Here we identified different materials and discussed some of their properties.
Our rocks were closely inspected, organised and sorted into different groups. The children were really trying to grasp the concept of dull, shiny, rough and smooth.
Help at home- by sorting household objects by material (plastic, wood, metal, glass).
In Art, we were comparing and contrasting the work by Leonardo Di Vinci and Paul Klee. We also articulated our likes and dislikes about their work.
Leonardo’s work is more realistic- William
I like Paul Klee because his paintings are colourful-Mollie
Library- To encourage a love for reading, all of KS1 visit our school library on a Friday. Here are some book worms.
Help at home-by reading with your child daily. Ensure children read their homework ebook and write a comment in their reading records by each Friday. If your child comes home with extra word and sound cards please be diligent and help your child to learn them.
AUTHOR VISIT-We had a very exciting virtual visit with the author James Mayhew. We know him so well for his series of books based on his sister Katie.
James shared with us how he begun to draw and paint as a child and this developed into writing also. As we watched James he, cleverly, illustrated a picture whilst telling us a story. James allowed us to ask questions. We were impressed by the fact that he has had over 70 books published! He also writes about 2 books a year!
Finally, we have all enjoyed our non-uniform day to support Children In Need. KS1 have been happy in a sea of yellow, ears, spots and trainers. Thankyou for all of you donations for this incredible charity.