Walk to School Week 21-25 May 2018
Next week, 21 – 25 May, is Walk to School Week. Today, each child was given a leaflet and raffle tickets. For each day that your child walks to school, they’ll be able to put a raffle ticket into the box in the school office. Tickets will be drawn and prizes will be won! For those that live too far away to walk the full distance, The Buffers have agreed to let parents/carers park in their car park, so children still have the chance to enter the prize draw (scooting or riding a bike also counts). There are spare leaflets in the school office.
Living and Learning – money matters
This week and next, we’ll be talking about money. During our toys topic, we’ve already discussed how important (or not) we think the cost of a toy is. We talked about where money comes from, how to keep it safe and how we cannot always spend whatever we want.
I get money for my birthday or the tooth fairy.
I get pocket money and my grandma sometimes just gives me it.
I keep my money safe in my money box.
I already have my own bank where I keep my money safe.
My mum says I have to save up if I want something big that costs a lot of money.
Home Link – Royal Wedding
We’re sure that there’ll be an interest in weddings, castles and royalty after the events this weekend. On Monday 21 May, can you find something red, white or blue to wear to nursery?
For this week’s home link, please talk about the Royal Wedding. Here are a few things that you could do…
- Make a crown or tiara
- Decorate/paint a wedding dress
- Bake a wedding cake or some buns
- Look at family photographs of weddings. Have you been to a wedding? What happened? How do people celebrate weddings?
- Look at Windsor Castle. Have you been to a castle? Who lives in castles? Do you have any stories with castles in?
- Read a story about a wedding, castle or prince/princess.
- Look for objects that begin with ‘c’ for castle, crown and cake!
There are lots of different opportunities for discussion around this topic! What interests your child?
Worms and minibeasts
Week 5 – Worms and minibeasts
Children enjoyed hunting for minibeasts at the beginning of the week. Some children chose to use the clipboards to write down what they found. Their lists included slugs, snails, spiders, worms and butterflies. Whilst searching for caterpillars on some leaves, we found a group of tiny eggs and little insects. We used the digital microscope to look at them closely; we think that they were ladybird eggs and ladybird larvae.
We’ve enjoyed learning all about worms. On Monday, Miss Backhouse and her group of helpers went outside to create a wormery. First, they collected leaves, sand and soil and put them into a tank in layers. The next part was the most fun: they went digging for worms! In group times, we read ‘Superworm’ and we compared the length of toy worms. Children put the worms in order of length and measured them using Numicon pegs. We talked about which worm was the longest and shortest.
At the end of the week, we had a special ‘wedding’ lunch menu and we began to talk about the Royal Wedding that will take place at the weekend.
Week 6 – What are we learning this week?
We’re sure that many children will watch or see photographs of the Royal wedding this weekend and that some of you may even be going to a party to celebrate. On Monday 21st May, we’re going to have a mini wedding celebration in nursery. Children are invited to wear RED, WHITE or BLUE clothes. We’ll watch some video footage of the wedding and see what the children are interested in learning more about… castles, weddings, kings and queens?
Keep encouraging your child to hear the initial sounds in words by playing eye-spy games. This week’s letter sound will be ‘Cc’ for castles, cakes and crowns! Listen to the Jolly Phonics ‘c’ song and sing a long at home.
What can you find around your house that begins with c?
Ice-cream delight!
Year 6 had a well earned treat this morning, following their week of SATs. Vanilla ice-cream with marshmallows, chocolate or strawberry sauce, wafers, biscuits and flakes were eagerly enjoyed while watching a film. Tomorrow’s training day will be a well earned rest for our hard working and conscientious Year 6s. Well done!
Funky Phonics Stay and Play
Thank you to all the parents/ carers that were able to attend our Funky Phonics stay and play sessions today. The children enjoyed sharing their learning with you.
Many parents/carers have been asking how to support their child when writing. We want the children to be as independent as possible and at school we encourage them to go through the following 5 steps.
When checking their writing we get the children to look for the following:
…as well as ensuring it makes sense.
At this stage your child is using his/her phonic knowledge (phase 2 and 3) to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds.
Here are some recent examples:
“My mum is having a baby”
“Alex do you want to come to my home?”
“Harry M will you come to my house?”
This is exactly what we would hope to see. The children have thought of a sentence, listened to the sounds that they can hear themselves and have written them independently.
Don’t forget to visit these apps and games to support phonics and letter formation at home.
Fun-filled days!
Although the year 2 children are currently doing their end of key stage 1 assessments (SATs), they’ve enjoyed a variety of other activities too! They worked together to create games in PE, looked carefully what was growing in the allotment, created pictures using 2D shapes and were building fluency in maths using Top Marks : Hit the button. Help at home by having a competition – they might beat you!
A very busy, sunny Monday!
We enjoyed talking about wriggly worms today. In group time, we measured worms and ordered them by length. Outside, some children helped Miss Backhouse to make a wormery. We talked about where worms live and what food they need to survive and be healthy.
Sadly, some of our bean plants haven’t germinated so we talked about why this might have happened. We have planted some more beans and have also taken some selfies to create ‘cress heads’!
There was also a lot of excitement when some of the children realised that one of the tadpoles was no longer a tadpole! It had front and back legs and its tail had shrunk. We carefully caught the froglet and have released it back into the pond.
Finally, we have been busy looking for minibeasts all day! We found slugs, snails, ants, worms, spiders, butterflies… and the last thing we found was really exciting!
We found some little eggs that were surrounded by tiny creatures. It was quite difficult to see them so Mrs Long got the digital microscope to look at them more closely. We counted six legs and looked at the shape of their body. We think that the eggs were ladybird eggs and that the tiny insects were very young, ladybird lavae. When we looked on Google for more information, Daksh noticed that the matching picture on the Ladybird Lifecycle picture said ‘June’ so we could be right!
Sound around us!
Our new topic, Sound, has kicked off with a sound survey walk around school this afternoon. We predicted that our Nursery area would be the noisiest and the field would be the quietest. But, after our sound walk we discovered that Nursery was one of the quietest areas in school!
We are learning that vibrations make sounds.
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The children discussed the most important sounds that we hear and and prioritised them using a Diamond 9 grid. Many children said that fire alarms and sirens were the most important sounds. Parent voices and teacher instructions were thankfully not too far down the list!
Home Link – Technology
As part of the Early Years Foundation Stage, children need to be confident using a range of technology. Please write a few things down and return this sheet to nursery to let us know what technology your child likes to use at home. You could also e-mail us a photograph of them using it: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Here are a few examples of technology that your child may enjoy using at home…
- Toys with buttons, switches or remote-controls
- iPads, tablets, computers, phones – What are their favourite apps or games
- CD/DVD players
- TV with remote control
- Cameras