School Council Film Night
What a fabulous film night we had yesterday!
With your support, we raised over £500 for the Dog’s Trust.
The film last night was so good!
I liked eating the popcorn.
It was great because I got to sit with my friends.
I hope it becomes a regular event.
Phase 3 Reading Meeting
Thank you to those of you who attended the reading meeting on Thursday 23 January . We hope you found the information useful in continuing to support your child on their exciting reading journey.
Reading regularly at home plays an important role in your child’s reading development. Support at home will help foster your child’s love of reading and your child’s reading development.
Chinese New Year
This week, we began reading our new Literacy book called My Granny went to Market. We focused on her trip to China as this weekend it is Chinese New Year.
To begin, we looked at a map of the UK and how it is made up of four countries – England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. This children spoke about times they had visited these parts of the UK. We then looked at a map of the world. We found out that China is approximately 5000 miles away from the UK and it would taken 10 and half hours to travel there by aeroplane.
In the story, Granny visits China and buys a lantern with a Mandarin symbol which means double happiness. Some children had a go at drawing this symbol. We also learnt to say hello in Mandarin (Ni hao).
We challenged ourselves to write our names using the Mandarin alphabet and had a go at painting numbers in Mandarin.
Next, we looked at how Chinese New Year is celebrated and read the story about Jade Emperor to find out how the animals for Chinese New Year were chosen. We found out that this year is the year of the rat.
Home-link – 3 challenge cubes
Can your child tell you something they have learnt about China/ Chinese New Year?
Please email quotes from your child. This will support us in our assessment by providing evidence towards the understanding the World strand of the EYFS.
Children talk about past and present events in their own lives and in the lives of family members. They know that other children don’t always enjoy the same things, and are sensitive to this. They know about similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities and traditions.
Marvellous Maths Stay and Play
pLThank you to those of you who were able to attend the ‘marvellous maths’ stay and play this week. It was great to see so many of you there and the children enjoyed sharing their learning with you.
We focused on the number 5. We focus on numbers to twenty throughout the year to get a depth of understanding of what the numbers represent. We talked about what number 5 looks like – not just the numeral but also what it looks like in our environment. For example, there are 5 sides and 5 corners on a pentagon and star. We also focused on verbally telling number stories using first, then and now. For example, first there was 3 children stood up, then 2 more stood up, now there are 5 children stood up altogether.
If you were unable to attend, your child will have brought home an information booklet about the 6 principles of counting with some ideas of how to support your child at home. The children also enjoy watching number blocks – a great conversation starter about numbers!
Writing Warriors
Wow! Some children have had a very exciting start to the term. They have been sent a letter from Wiz. Wiz is a Writing Warrior. A Writing Warrior is somebody who solves missions by writing.
These children have been chosen by Wiz to be Writing Warriors! The Writing Warriors in our class will be sent missions by Wiz and will have to complete these by writing.
If your child has received a red exercise book labelled Writing Warriors, your child has been chosen to be a writing warrior. When your child has completed a mission at home please put their Writing Warrior book in Wiz’s tray – your child will be able to show you where this is!
Stop and read!
To encourage a love of reading Foundation 2 take part in ‘stop and read’ time every day. At ‘stop and read’ time the children can choose to sit on either rainbow or sunshine carpet – the children really enjoy having this choice and find it exciting sitting on a different carpet!
To choose the books read at ‘stop and read’ the children vote for the book they would like to listen to. Each child can place a lego brick alongside the book they would prefer. The tallest tower wins. We talk about the front cover and how it can give us an idea about the book. We also talk about the blurb at the back of the book and how it can give us a clue about the book and help us decide if we would like to listen to the story.
If your child has a book at home they would like to put on the voting table for ‘stop and read’ please bring it in to school – it would be great to share their favourite stories!
Zipping up our coats!
Our outside area is open in all weathers and at the moment, there’s certainly no playing out without a coat. It’s just too cold and wet!
Please encourage your child to practise zipping up their coats independently. We’ll be looking out for children that can fasten their zips and we’ll give out challenge cubes to those who achieve it.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…lunch!
We all enjoyed a delicious Christmas lunch today prepared by our wonderful kitchen staff. The lunchtimes supervisors did a fantastic job (especially Mrs Pennock) decorating the hall too. Thank you!
An alternative story
The children have enjoyed re-telling the story ‘We’re going on a bear hunt.’ We have drawn story maps to help us re-tell the story. We have also thought of our own story actions to sequence the story.
Then, we decided to be authors ourselves and change the story. The children decided to change what we were going on a hunt for. We then thought of alternative words for the word big – to make our story more exciting. Here are some examples of the children’s alternative stories.
“We’re going on a dinosaur hunt. We’re going to catch a ginormous one!”
“We’re going on a snake hunt. We’re going to catch a slithering, long one!”
“We’re going on a monster hunt. We’re going to catch a humungous one!”
The children then drew their own alternative story and used the story actions to retell their stories to their friends.
Challenge – 3 bricks
Can your child re-tell their alternative story? Can they use the actions to help them or draw a story map? Please email photos or videos.