Pancakes and Books
We’ve had another exciting week at Nursery with lots happening. On Tuesday, we talked about ‘pancake day ‘and the reasons why some people celebrate Shrove Tuesday. We read ‘Mr Wolf’s Pancakes’ and found out how to make our own pancakes. We enjoyed smelling them as they cooked and we enjoyed eating them even more!
Outside, children have started to notice some changes in our garden; they spotted snowdrops, crocuses and other plants and flowers starting to grow.
We LOVE reading in Nursery and we’re always excited to join in with celebrations for World Book Day. Thank you for bringing some of your favourite stories for us to share together in Nursery. The children from Y5/6 came to nursery to read our stories to us. We had a lovely time sharing the stories together.
Next week, we’ll continue with our ‘growing theme and will listen to ‘Oliver’s Vegetables‘ by Vivian French. We’ll be talking about the different foods that we eat and where they come from.
Nursery Rhyme of the week Hey Diddle Diddle
Sound of the week Hh
Thanks to everyone who sent in a photo of their child as a baby. We have really enjoyed looking at these and talking about how we have changed. If you get chance come in and have a look at our baby photo gallery in Sunshine room.
We hope that you have a happy and healthy weekend and thankyou for your continued support.
Railways, Reading and Rockets!
The National Railway Museum
On Monday, the children had a fantastic time at The National Railway Museum. They were very excited to go on their first ever school trip – especially travelling there by coach! We were super impressed with how well-behaved the children were. Well done, Reception class.
The children enjoyed looking at different trains and making comparisons of old and new. They had lots of fun watching the miniature railway and it led to lots of great discussions about trains, tunnels and transport. The children especially enjoyed sitting on the Japanese Bullet train.
To end our wonderful visit, we drew our favourite train of the day!
Literacy
We’ve been reading The Hundred Decker Rocket, by Mike Smith.
This story is about a girl called Ivy who sets off on an expedition to space- expedition is our word of the week! On the way, she meets some very messy aliens. When her rocket breaks down, the aliens help to fix it and make their own deck.
The story inspired lots of discussion around keeping our planet clean and why this is important.
In our writing, we designed our very own rocket deck that we will be making next week- this is where we need your help…
Please send your child into school with an empty shoebox next week. The children will be creating their very own deck, based on their designs.
Computing; Beebots
We’ve continued exploring Beebots. Beebots are a fun, early coding resource. We program the bee using directional buttons. The children had to pre-plan the algorithm they needed to enter, to successfully get the bee to its intended location (for example, a specific spot on the carpet)
Living and learning; Celebrating differences
Our living and learning statement this week is: I know we’re all the same and we’re all different.
On Wednesday, were were visited by Lindsey from Diversity Role Models.
The children listened to the story Mixed by Arree Chung
a charming and thought-provoking picture book with characterful illustrations and humour. Follow the colours as they overcome their differences in this sweet tale of acceptance and celebrating difference.
The children loved the story and it introduced us to some new, important vocabulary; diversity, harmony, vibrant.
The children had some thoughtful answers to Lindsey’s questions:
Why is being different good? “’cause we all like different things”-Lola
What would happen if we were all the same? “it would be confusing”- Robyn, “it would be boring”-Delilah
World Book Day
Thank you to the parents and carers who were able to join us for our stay and read session on Thursday, for World Book Day.
As part of our celebrations, the children enjoyed talking about their favourite books from home.
Another highlight of the day was when our friends from years 5/6 came to class to read with us!
On Tuesday, the children took part in a live story and draw-along with the author (Swapna Haddow) and illustrator (Aditi Kakade Beaufrand) of The Night Before Holi
As well as an opportunity to enjoy a new story, the children learnt about this Hindu festival, which welcomes the arrival of springtime.
Phonics
This week, the children have reviewed air, er and longer words that contain double letters.
Help at home; phonics challenge
Write these words on paper and ask your child to underline the double letters before reading them.
hammer shimmer cannot chatter muffin
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practise tricky words. Here’s another you could try…
Secret password
Write different tricky words on paper and stick them next to different doors around the house.
Each time your child enters or leaves a room they must press and say the tricky word password.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we learn a new poem and we recite this poem every 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 was Pancakes by Christina Rossetti
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm. Can your child re-tell this week’s poem to you?
We hope you enjoyed watching the children recite this week’s poem aloud, in LIVE ACTION during our stay and read on World Book Day!
Dates for your diary
Reception’s Class Assembly- Thursday 13 March, 2.45pm
Stay and learn: Number Session 2- Tuesday 18 March, 9-10am This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school. This session is our second with a focus on maths.
These dates are also stuck to your child’s classroom door or window to view whenever needed.
World Book Day – shared reading with 1,2B and 3,4C
We had a lovely time yesterday afternoon sharing books with children from different classes. 3,4C visited 1,2B and we partnered up to read to each other. There were lots of lovely conversations and some new friendships made whilst reading together.
Year 3,4 Class News – World Book Day
World Book Day 06.02.25
Yesterday, we enjoyed celebrating World Book Day by:
- reading extracts of our favourite books
- sharing books with each other
- designing a new book cover for our favourite books
- reading and sharing stories and books with Mrs Latham’s class
- joining in the BBC World Book Day assembly
- listening to our class novel ‘The boy at the back of the class’
Well done to everyone who has completed their reading record challenge at home this week! Help at home by continuing to read with your child regularly.
World Book Day in 1A
Wow-what a day! 1A have set themselves the challenge of reading every Julia Donaldson book that we can find and we think that we have found a lot! The class have read one of their favourite JD books and created their own front cover for it. We took our JD book and school reading book to join up with 3/4A and read with them. Such a pleasure to enjoy books together!
1A have joined in a live web chat with the author Laura Baker in which we got to listen to her book ‘The full stop that got away’. In the session we even go to join in an art session to create her main character. We did this with 2C which was great!
Lots of reading, lots of fun and lots of sunshine! A perfect world book day.
I know we’re all the same and we’re all different…is our Living and learning statement this week .
In Living and Learning this week, we’ve been focusing on self-image, especially body image. This has involved identifying our own positive qualities and understanding that media portrayals don’t always reflect reality. The children enjoyed discussing positive body image and finished the session by recognising something positive about their peers.
Help at home: Ask your child what they’ve learned from these discussions.
World Book Day
In 5/6, children have been designing a new edition of their favourite book. We have also read some extracts of our favourite books, thought about what makes a good character and even had a zoom talk with one of our most popular authors: Pamela Butchart.
Reading – Ollie’s magic bunny
We are using Ollie’s Magic Bunny by Nicola Killen as a focus for our reading and writing this half term. It’s helped us use our retrieval skills (answering questions about what happens in the book) and inference skills (thinking about character’s thoughts and feelings).
You can listen to the story here.
(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.)
Y2 Maths – divide
Our focus in Maths at the moment is divide. Divide means to share equally. Equal means the same.
This week we are dividing by 5. We have been looking at lots of number stories and discussing exactly what each number in our equations represent.
‘The 15 represents all of the eggs.”
”The 5 represents the eggs in each nest.”
”The three represents the number of nests.”
We drew part-whole models to show how many fives make up a number. When we are thinking about multiples of 5, we know that the ones column must have either a 0 or a 5 in it.
”54 is not a multiple of 5 because even though it has a 5 in it, it is in the tens column. It needs to be in the ones column to be a multiple of 5.” (BC, 2C)
Help at home: by writing out dividing equations and really discussing what each number represents!
Remember – We always put the ‘big’ number at the start of a divide equations. This is the number we are dividing/ sharing.
Living and learning : strong emotions
We watched this story called Beegu. It is all about an alien who
(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.)
