Flavoursome Fruit Salad
What a welcome back to school! Yesterday, Class 1A spent the afternoon working on the latest DT project. We made fruit salad… and delicious they were too!
We started the same as we always do with a food project – by washing our hands and making sure that they’re nice and clean. Bye bye germs! The children then worked in groups to prepare fruit for a tasty fruit salad. We thought about the word ‘ingredients‘ and looked at the selection that we had… bananas, oranges, kiwi fruit, strawberries, grapes, tinned pineapple and tinned peaches and orange juice. Mrs Brown demonstrated how to slice the fruit safely and then we used the bridge hold to slice our own pieces of fruit. We also used other skills such as peeling by hand and segmenting fruit.
Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the process and we shared the resources respectfully. Nearly everyone devoured their fruit salad giving a huge thumbs up. Others gave new fruits a lick to see if they liked it. Mrs Brown was very proud of them all!
Well done for great careful listening Class 1A!
Help at home – under careful supervision, you could give your child experiences of helping to prepare their own foods for breakfast, lunch or dinner. They could help to measure out liquids that you need for a recipe for the family. They could use child appropriate knives to prepare fruits and vegetables for meals or snacks. Perhaps they could begin to help to prepare their own healthy snack to bring to school?
Nursery Coffee Morning
Swimming Spring 2
Lunar New Year
We had a great final week of half term; children loved reading a book about the Lunar New Year and we watched some short video clips to find out how people prepare for the festival and celebrate with their families.
To join in with the celebrations, we painted ‘good luck’ banners in the creative area and we danced and played instruments to a Chinese dragon song.
We enjoyed decorating a lunar lantern with some patterns that we’re learning (circles, zig-zags, waves and lines) to help improve our pencil control.
In group time, children in red, blue and green group learnt about the number 2. We looked at a domino that had one spot on one end, and one spot on the other. When we looked at the spots together, there were two. Children knew that they had 2 eyes, 2 ears and 2 feet. We jumped twice and counted two claps.
Help at home: Have a look around your house and surroundings – What can you find two of? You might see two wheels on your bike or 2 eggs left in the box. Can you spot any number twos on doors or number plates? Send us an e-mail to let us know how you get on – you could send a photograph to show us what you find. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Learning after half term:
We’ll be reading Jack and the Beanstalk and beginning our ‘growing’ theme. If you have a copy of the book at home, please read it together to help familiarise your child with the story. We’ll be looking for signs of spring in the garden, too. When you’re out and about over half term, see what ‘signs of spring’ you notice – it could be flowers beginning to grow or birds singing.
Nursery rhyme of the week – Baa Baa Black Sheep
Sound of the week – ‘e’ for elephant
Have a happy and healthy half term and we look forward to finding out about your holidays when we return to Nursery on Monday 19 February.
The Magic Paintbrush
This week, our focus book was The Magic Paintbrush.
We began by listening to the story for enjoyment. After becoming familiar with the story, we were then able to discuss the main events and characters.
The children then explored what they would do if they had a magic paintbrush.
After reading, we also learnt about the Lunar New year and how it is celebrated.
They put up lanterns. Libby
They have fireworks. Violet
They have a new animal every year. Austin
Special dinner. Melissa
They clean the house. Sienna
Stay and Learn
On Tuesday, it was great to welcome adults into the classroom to share different ways to develop our fine motor skills.
Lots of activities can be done with items you already have a home!
Maths
During our lessons, we have explored weight using lots objects made from different materials and of various sizes.
We have focused on using mathematical vocabulary to compare different items.
heavy heavier heaviest
light lighter lightest
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. This week’s poem is Mrs Bluebird.
Phonics
We use the chunking method to read words with more that one syllable. We have also spotted words containing double letters (e.g. rabbit) – these are diagraphs too!
Ask your child to chunk and read these words.
sunset chicken carpet carrot
Your child will have come home with a grapheme mat and a tricky word mat. If any sounds are highlighted on the grapheme mat, these are those that your child is not yet secure on. Please keep practising these at home.
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! In Little Wandle phase 3, we learnt lots of new words. The children will continue to learn new tricky words fairly rapidly over the Spring 2 and Summer terms. We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words. Here’s another you could try!
Musical tricky words
- Write the tricky words on individual pieces of paper, lay them out on the floor
- Play your child’s favourite song for them to dance around to
- When the music stops, your child should pick a word to quickly run to and stand on
- Your child reads the word they have landed on
- Remove that word and repeat until there are no words left!
Internet Safety
On internet safety day and throughout the week, the children have discussed ways they use the internet and how to stay safe online.
Here is a link you may find useful to help and support staying safe online.
More learning
Living and Learning – Internet Safety and harms
On Tuesday this week it was ‘Safter Internet Day’. This special celebration, which takes place in February of each year, aims to raise awareness of a safer and better internet for all, especially for children and young people.
We spent the morning off timetable learning about all of the different ways we can stay safe online and what to do/who to speak to if anything we see, hear or receive online makes us feel uncomfortable.
We looked at:
- the risks of online relationships with strangers
- understanding that everything you see online is not true
- the importance of keeping personal information (such as full name/address/school) private
- ensuring a balance of online and offline
The children engaged really well during these sessions and had lots of great ideas about how to stay safe online.
Leeds United Primary Choices
This half term, Year 6 had a workshop from the Leeds United Foundation about Choices. The workshop covered a range of subjects: antisocial behaviour, being aware of apps, moving on to high school, making friends and legal ages.
Two children were also lucky enough to win two tickets each to watch Leeds vs Leicester. What a fantastic prize!
Safer Internet Day
This week at school has been our online safety week and lots of our learning has linked to being safe online.
Internet safety day
Yesterday was Safer Internet Day.
We spent most of the day off timetable in order to look closely at how to stay safe online and how to be responsible users.
I know that some things online may not be true.
We discussed ‘fake news’ and what this means. We decided that if something is ‘fake’, it is not real and ‘news’ is information that is important. Fake news can be misleading and can give people the wrong impression or information.
We also talked about the importance of not sharing our personal information online, especially to strangers. We know we can’t trust what people say online and we should never plan to meet up with people we don’t know.
Personal information can include our name, age, address, contact details, school or clubs we go to. If we ever see something we are unsure of, or are not sure a website is safe, we must ask a trusted adult.
We read ‘Chicken Clicking’ by Jeanna Willis (one of our favourite authors). The story can be found online and has some brilliant talking points about internet safety.
Running, jumping and climbing!
Children were really excited to be able to use our outside area again, as you’ll no doubt see from their faces! They loved running, jumping and climbing up the wall to the slide.
In group time, we read ‘Dinosaur Roar’ and looked carefully at the patterns on the dinosaur illustrations. We created our own dinosaurs, adding horns, sharp teeth and some spikes. This helped us to practise our pencil control by drawing lines, circles and zig-zag patterns.
We also explored what happened when we put different objects on the balance scales. We talked about going to the park to play on a see-saw and what happens when someone sits at each end. Children are becoming much more confident using the words ‘heavy’ and ‘light’.
Next week’s learning:
We will learn about the Lunar New Year and will find out about how some people celebrate this festival.
Nursery rhyme of the week –Jack and Jill went up the Hill
Sound of the week – ‘c’ for cat and ‘k’ for kite