Living and Learning – Dside visit
This week we had a visitor in our school from D:side. D:side often visit our school to talk to us about a number of things, such as how we can be healthy. This week, D:side spoke to us about how to look after our bodies.
Science – animals
This half term in KS1, we are learning about animals in Science. We started the topic last week by discussing what a mammal is.
‘A mammal is an animal that has fur or hair and gives birth to live offspring.’
Examples of mammals include: dogs, cats, elephants, whales and bears.
This week we have been learning about fish and birds. We labelled the features of both types of animal so that we know how to identify them. We also know what these features are for.
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”Most birds have wings to fly, but not all birds can fly, like penguins.’ (2C)
” Fish have fins and a tail to help them swim in water” (1A)
Living and learning: I know that some drugs can be harmful.
We were lucky enough to have D:side visiting us this week. The children got to learn about the different types of drugs including legal, illegal and medical – they learnt about the impact these have on our bodies. Caffeine was even talked about and that this is in the energy drinks that children often consume. They also contain a huge amount of sugar. Smoking and vapes were identified as very harmful and the children now understand the harmful chemicals that are in just one cigarette – there are 4,000.
This was an incredibly informative session and the children engaged brilliantly. They recalled previous learning well and asked some great questions to deepen their knowledge. Some children even applied their learning about peer pressure from our living and learning lesson last week.
Living and Learning: drug education
In this week’s and last week’s Living and Learning sessions, we have been learning about drugs.
We’ve learnt the difference between medical and non medical drugs. Within non-medical drugs, we also learnt about legal and illegal drugs.
A drug is a substance that changes the way the body or the mind works.
We learnt that medicines are drugs that can be prescribed and given to us to help us feel better – for example, Calpol, which contains paracetamol.
We’ve also learnt about being safe and only using the specified amount of a medicine and only when supervised by a trusted adult.
This week, we had a visitor from d:side and we learnt more about legal, non-medical drugs such as nicotine, alcohol and caffeine.
Did you know that an energy drink such as Monster contains around four times as much caffeine than a single shot of espresso? It also contains the equivalent of 13 teaspoons of sugar!
Help at home: See if your child can remember how to safely use medicine.
Well done, Y5 & 6!
Welcome to Nursery – Yellow Group
We enjoyed meeting all of our new children and families at their home visits and we’re looking forward to getting to know you more next week.
Here is a reminder of some of the important information that we discussed during the home visit.
- Your child will need a drawstring bag with a full change of clothes. Please make sure that you write their NAME in everything.
- We play outside in all weathers so a warm, waterproof coat is essential. Please also send gloves and a hat during winter. Children need a pair of wellies at Nursery. Remember to name their coat and wellies!
- Please put your child’s water bottle in the yellow basket in the entrance. You’ll need to collect it at the end of their session each day. Again, please remember to write their name clearly on the bottle.
Registration and end of day
- Nursery opens at 9am and we close registration at 9:10am. If you arrive after this time, please go to the main office.
- When you come into Nursery (main entrance via the path from Morwick Grove) you’ll be asked who is going to collect your child and for their lunch option.
- If you change who is collecting your child, please inform the office. If we haven’t met somebody before, we will ask for your password.
- Once you’ve put your child’s belongings on their peg, you’re welcome to settle them somewhere to play before you say goodbye.
- Nursery closes at 3pm but you can collect your child from 2:50pm onwards. Please make sure you arrive promptly and collect your child on time.
- At the end of the session, parents and carers are able to come into Nursery to collect your child’s belongings and check their folder for artwork.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask a member of Nursery staff. We look forward to seeing you next week!
Bog Baby
This half term, KS1 are reading Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis. In the book we meet a cute creature called the ‘Bog Baby’. The Bog baby is discovered in a Magic pond, by two young sisters. The children decide to take the Bog Baby home to look after him and keep him as a pet. At first he is very happy, He has his own home, gets to eat cake crumbs each day and even gets to go to school. But then he starts to feel scared and homesick, and wants to go back home. This week, Year 2 wrote some sentences about how the Bog Baby might be feeling. They used their inference skills to draw information from both the illustrations and text. Some of the children even used conjunctions such as ‘because’ to explain their answers. Here is some of their work.
3,4 C Class News
What a great first week back!
The children have started to learn about the Romans and Anglo Saxons in our new history topic. Using a timeline, they have located when the Romans invaded Britain. The children have learned about what life was like in Britain before the Romans invaded.
In Science, the children enjoyed learning about fossils and shared facts in our class discussion.
Well done to everyone who remembered their reading book and reading record today.
Help at home by continuing to read regularly with your child and regularly using Numbots/TTRS.
Lost and Found
We began our learning this week by looking at the story Lost and Found. This will be our focus story for the next two weeks.
In the story, a boy finds a penguin at his door and goes on an adventure to try to find his home, as he thought he was lost.
Just like the boy, we explored and learnt about where penguins live and extended our vocabulary by learning a new word: iceberg.
It’s ice in the water. Violet
A big chunk of ice. Frankie
It’s a big thing of ice that goes under the sea. It can ruin a ship. Kitson
It was wonderful to hear children using this new vocabulary in our small world area.
Let’s make the penguins dive off the iceberg!
This penguin is swimming around the gigantic iceberg.
Using props, we were able to retell the story.
Phonics
We have begun learning our Phase 3 sounds. This week, we have learnt four new digraphs/trigraphs ai,ee,igh,oa.
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. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Let’s Put on Our Mittens.
Click here to listen to Reception recite the poem.
Music
Our song this week was We are Family by Sister Sledge.
This was very popular as lots of children had heard the song before when watching the film Trolls.
The nursery rhyme was Wind the Bobbin Up. As the children knew this one very well, they were able to perform confidently!
Check out our other learning
Dates
Tuesday 16 January 9- 10 Stay and learn
Our Stay and Learn sessions are a chance to find out more about your child’s journey through Reception. You can observe some teaching and learning, and pick up some tips to support your child at home.
Science
We are being chemists this half term. We are investigating different materials and their properties. The children were introduced to their new vocabulary which they will be learning. 
We investigated which materials were electrical conductors and insulators. The children made circuits and inserted different materials to see if they let electricity flow through them – if they did, they were a conductor. we were ably to use the skill of comparing, classifying, grouping and predicting.
Help at home: Can you help your child learn the new vocabulary?
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Happy New Year! Welcome back everyone! We hope you’ve had a lovely, restful break and that you’re full of energy for another busy and exciting half term at school.
A New Topic For Key Stage One.
This half term is all about History and we will be looking at how shopping has changed for people over time. We will be looking at Briggate High Street and we have an exciting trip to Abbey House booked to support our learning in school.
Our new Topic was kicked off this week by thinking about the past and by introducing timelines. We thought about the things that have happened in our past and thought about the order in which they happened. In groups, we sequenced events from our own lives and discovered that a timeline can be different for different people depending on the order things happen to individual people.
Help at home: by talking about the past and the present. You could talk about your childhood and how it may be similar or different to now. What was your house like? Which TV programs did you watch? What kind of toys did you play with? What kinds of foods did you eat? Can you compare the things that are in your child’s living memory, your living memory or even the living memory of the oldest generation in your family?