Day and Night
This week in our light and dark topic, we’ve been learning about day and night.
Night Monkey, Day Monkey
We’ve been reading Night Monkey, Day Monkey by Julia Donaldson.
The story follows two monkeys who find themselves awake at their opposite times of day. They are very confused by what they see and need help understanding everything! Our word of the week is: nocturnal. We know that nocturnal means “active at night”
We’ve been writing about nocturnal animals and features of day/night.
Science: shadows
We’ve been making further investigations into shadows, by spotting them outside and by using our dark tent. We know that to make a shadow, we need a source of light. When that source of light is blocked, it casts a shadow. We explored using mirrors to reflect lights differently and used colour paddles to change the colour being projected onto the tent wall.
Outside, the sun is light- Albie S
The shadow is made ’cause I put my hand there- Reggie
When the torch is closer to my hand it’s bigger (the shadow) … it’s smaller far away- Dawson
Look- yellow (colour paddle) makes it look like the sun!- Heidi
Maths; part-whole
In Maths, we’ve been looking at the ‘parts’ that make the whole of something. For example, the parts of us that make our whole body. Our head, eyes, legs etc. are the parts, our body is the whole.
This leads on to understanding the composition of number; the parts that can be added together to make a whole number.
The children were introduced to a part-part-whole model and how objects can be used with it, to explore the parts of a number.
PE; Gymnastics
This half term, Friday PE sessions are gymnastics. We are exploring movement and balance, developing fundamental skills and learning how to demonstrate our skills to others.
Living and learning; e-safety
This week’s living and learning statement is: I know how important it is to make careful choices when online
The key message in Reception is to tell a trusted adult when something happens online that feels unsafe or unusual. Also, that internet use should be monitored by an adult. We also spoke about why we should limit screen time, for our health.
We watched and listened to the story of Smartie the Penguin
The story gives examples of different scenarios that could happen online and has a song that runs throughout, that reminds children what to do:
Before you tap and click,
You need to stop and think,
and TELL SOMEONE!
Phonics
Autumn 2 week 3 has focused on the single letter phoneme z and digraphs zz, qu, ch
We’ve learnt the tricky words; go, no, to, into
Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.
In provision, we’ve been playing what’s in the box and writing the words to match pictures we find.
In the reading area, we’ve been tricky word detectives. We’ve been finding a ‘tricky word of the day’ in books and taking a picture of them with an iPad.
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 Shoes
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
Click below to watch Reception recite this week’s poem!
Help at home; Stars
Next week, we’ll be looking to the skies again! We are learning about the night sky and stars.
We know this is a topic of interest for many children in Reception. If you have any books or resources to share that are linked to this topic, we would love to see them.
Christmas production
We’ve had a few questions about our upcoming Christmas production. The dates of which can be found on the school calendar (homepage).
This week, the children have chosen the part they would like to play. There are some speaking and some non-speaking roles. Children had the option to choose from either of these.
We will shortly be sending home the parts they have chosen, costume suggestions and lines to learn (for those who have them)
Let the festivities begin!!!
Peace at Last
We loved reading ‘Peace at Last‘ this week. (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).
We especially enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrains in the story (e.g. “I can’t stand this!”) and adding our own sound effects. BRRRRRRRR, NEEEEEOOOOW, TICK TOCK, SNUFFLE SNUFFLE!
Help at home: What noises can you hear around your house or in the garden? Go on a listening walk and talk about the sounds you hear. Can you make the sound? If your child has a favourite bedtime story, try adding some sound effects to different parts of the story.
In the story, Mr Bear moves around the house to try and find somewhere that is quiet to sleep. As we were reading, we talked to children about night time. We talked about what they can see out of their windows at night and about some of the animals in the story that are awake when we’re sleeping.
In the fiddly fingers area, children had to carefully pick up buttons to place them on an owl outline. We talked about the different colours on their wings and about when they like to hunt for food. In the dough area, children used different star cutters to make big and little stars.
We learnt a new sound this week – p for penguin. During group time, we looked at a selection of objects beginning with ‘p’ and we tried to say the phoneme (sound) without adding an ‘uh’ to the end. (Please see our earlier web post and video about using pure sounds.)
Here are a few other photos from this week’s learning – you can see that the space rockets and learning about night time is popular.
Outside, we enjoyed practising our throwing and catching skills using balls and beanbags.
Next week’s learning:
Next week, we’re going to read another of our favourite stories written by Jill Murphy. It’s called ‘Whatever Next‘ and this time, it’s Baby Bear that goes on an adventure to the moon. We’ll continue to learn about night time so that children can talk about some of the differences between day and night.
Nursery rhyme of the week –Hickory Dickory Dock and we’ll also be singing a number rhyme 5 Little Men in a Flying Saucer
Sound of the week – a (a for astronaut)
Reminders
- We have our Parent Teacher Consultation evenings on Monday and Wednesday. Please check your emails for the Zoom link. We’ll keep our fingers crossed for no technical difficulties!
- The weather has certainly got colder towards the end of the week. Please make sure that your child has a warm coat, a hat and some gloves to wear every day. We play in our garden throughout winter, so children need to be wrapped up to keep warm and enjoy learning outside in all seasons.
- It’s the final school open session on Friday 01 December 2023 at 9.30am.The sessions are a chance to find out more about our school, visit some classrooms and talk with some of our pupils and staff.
- Wish List – thank you to everyone who has helped contribute items from our wish list so far. It’s really appreciated. We’ve added a few more items, so please take a look and if you’re able to help out, take the post-it note from the display. Thank you
3,4B Class News
A very busy week in 3,4b this week as we have been preparing for our class assembly. The children all worked really hard and we spent time working on projecting our voice and using intonation and tone when speaking. The children all had great ideas of how to showcase all of the learning that has taken place since September and it was lovely to see so many adults in the audience.
Alongside this, we have been enjoying learning about our two artists for this half term – Wassily Kandinsky and Martha McDonald Napaltjarri. We explored Kandinsky’s ‘Concentric circles’ and created our own versions with an emphasis on using complimentary colours.
In Science we have investigated different types of rocks. We used scientific vocabulary to describe them and then identified similarities and differences between them.
Help at home by regularly listening to your child read and discussing it with them.
Thank you for your continued support!
We’re bananas about sandwiches!
On Monday, Year 2 used their food preparation skills to create a banana sandwich.
This forms part of our Design and Technology food learning which involves following a recipe to create a product each term.
Here are some pictures of us preparing our sandwiches!
Here are some pictures of us eating them!
Next week we will be writing some instructions about how to make a banana sandwiches.
Children in Need
A huge thank you to everyone that donated money last Friday for Children in Need. The Junior Leadership Team were out in the playground with collection buckets before and after school – they did a great job! We managed to raise a whopping £436.98 in total. Thank you so much!
1,2B’s trip to the Hepworth Wakefield
We also enjoyed our trip yesterday. The galleries were inspiring and we made our own artwork and prints too. It really brought our art topic to life!
School trip – 2C!
We had an absolutely fantastic school trip at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield today. We got there via coach (the children were super excited about this and sang most of the way there).
We started the day looking around the the different galleries in the art museum. We saw lots of different pieces of art and sculptures.
We had some brilliant discussions about the art works including how they changed in appearance as we changed our position in the room. Our discussions included texture (without touching the art) and the patterns we could see. Next, we had a go at drawing some of our own art, inspired by the art in the gallery. We used some small objects to help us do this, including shells, pine cones and plastic stencils.
After lunch (which we thoroughly enjoyed) we took part in a workshop.
The workshop included looking at some Barbara Hepworth sculptures and finding inspiration from them. We talked about how Hepworth was inspired by nature to produce her own art. After this, we looked at some of the repeated patterns in nature and produced our own art, using tracing paper and a black frame.
We then took part in a printing workshop where we made some 3D stencils and used them to make some colourful prints on our paper using primary colours.
Art topic – colour mixing
As part of our art topic, we have been learning about primary and secondary colours. After identifying colours in paintings, we had a go at mixing them ourselves.
James Mayhew author visit
We had a wonderful virtual visit with author, James Mayhew, who wrote the Katie and … books. In the stories, Katie visits art galleries and has amazing adventures inside famous paintings. We are reading Katie and the Mona Lisa as part of our topic learning.
James told us some stories while he was demonstrating how he illustrates. It was very inspiring.
Help at home by talking about your favourite pieces of art or sharing some of the Katie books together.
1,2B DT – making banana sandwiches
All the year 1 and 2 classes will be or have been using their food preparation skills to create their latest product, a banana sandwich.
This forms part of our Design and Technology food learning which involves following a recipe to make something each term.
Help at home by encouraging your child to be involved in food preparation at home.
