Relationships Education
For the last few weeks, our Living and Learning lessons and circle times have been all about happy and healthy relationships between our friends, peers and families.
Here we thought about different words that we associate with families and we read some texts about how not all families are the same and that is ok. The children enjoyed sharing special members of their family.
We have already learnt about consent in terms of permission seeking when online but here we thought about it when we are with others. We practised showing how we give and don’t give consent and how we can also change our mind if we want to.
Finally, you will have seen the children have brought home the NSPCC Pants Underwear rule. We revisit this important learning every year.
DT – baby bear’s chair
This half term we have been working towards making a freestanding chair that is suitable for ‘baby bear’. We have been trying to find out which 3D shapes are strongest for the legs of a chair. As part of the design process, we experimented with playdough as well as card and tape to research which structure was the strongest. The structures we made were cuboids, triangular prisms and cylinders.
After experimenting how many books can be balanced onto our structures. We even managed to get a child to balance on the structure.
Here are some of our finished products!
For the final part of our design process, we will be evaluating our chairs. We will be discussing what went well and what we would do differently next time.
Living and learning: I make healthy choices
As part of Being Healthy week, we welcomed Dave in from D:side. he ran a brilliant, informative workshop about the dangers of smoking and in particular, the potential risks of vaping. He began by asking the children what they already knew about these products and discussed how widely available they are.
They talked about the health risks that are posed from using these items and how it can hinder a child’s development.
The children engaged brilliantly and maturely in the discussions – well done!
Living and Learning (Being Healthy week) : Soggy Sport Roundabout
A big THANK YOU to everyone who came to support our rather wet Sport Roundabout afternoon today.
We all still had fun, despite the rain. The winning team was France – but check out where your team came.
Another THANK YOU for sending children in fantastic coloured clothes to match their country team too.
1st France
2nd England
3rd Nigeria
4th Spain
5th Italy
6th Portugal
7th Germany
8th Colombia
9th Norway
10th Netherlands
11th Argentina
12th Brazil
The Snail and The Whale
The Snail and The Whale
We’ve been reading The Snail and The Whale. Another book by one of our favourite authors, Julia Donaldson.
We’ve been retelling the story in our own words and writing special blackboard messages, just like the snail trail messages in the story!
The book had some fantastic adventurous words to describe landscapes and actions. Our word of the week was humongous. We discussed the meaning of lots of other words too.
Can your child tell you what each of these words mean? They could use the images to remind them.
Maths; composition
This week, we’ve re-visited the composition of 5 in various ways.
We also made matching patterns on butterfly wings and used the symmetrical patterns to explore doubles (as we had added the same amount of shapes on both sides). We worked with a partner to create our own matching pictures and to find the double we had created.
Transition
Thursday morning was full of excitement and a few little nerves, as the children visited their year one classrooms and spent some time with their new teachers. When they returned to class, the children were excited to share what they had been doing. Those little nerves had flown away and in their place was a super positivity for the big move in September. Well done Reception superstars!
The dancing raisin experiment
Phonics
Summer 2 week 5 has focused on:
root word ending in: –er, –est
longer words
In provision, we’ve been reading words ending in –ed and sorting them by
the sounds that –ed makes:
‘t’ final sound: jumped, helped, screeched etc.
‘id’ final sound: boasted, painted, printed etc.
Help at home; Sentence Substitution Throughout the school year, we’ve suggested lots of practical ways to explore phonics at home with easily made resources and games. There are also some great quality online phonics games. Sentence substitution is a great way to practise both reading and comprehension. The goal is to replace one word in the sentence, whilst ensuring that the sentence still makes sense. This is a free to access game on ‘Phonics Bloom’ Click here to play at home!
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 Sliced Bread
Help at home; Poetry videos This week, we’d like to mix it up a little. We’d love for you to record your child retelling this poem or another ‘poetry picnic’ poem of their choice at home. We will make a special video of their performances to be featured in next week’s class news post! You can send your videos to the usual email address (below)
More of our learning this week…
Reminders and Dates
Sports Roundabout- Monday 10 July 1.15pm Please remember to come in your sports kit/team colours on Monday and PE kit for the rest of the week. Thank you.
Learning journey drop-ins- Week commencing 10 July
An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them. We would like to welcome you into the classroom on one of the following sessions:
9.00 – 9.30 Monday 10 July
9.00 – 9.30 Tuesday 11 July
3.30 – 4.00 Thursday 13 July
Swimming
Rainbow- 19 July
Sunshine- 12 July
Transition to Reception
Over the last few weeks, as part of their transition to Reception, our oldest children have enjoyed visiting their new classrooms to play. For their first visit, they visited when the classrooms were empty. They had a look around with a member of Nursery staff and enjoyed a story time. This week, they’ve been visiting with a few friends and getting to know their Reception teachers.
Living and Learning : Being Healthy week launch
We launched our Being Healthy themed week today with a whole school assembly. We talked about physical and mental health. We also did some mindfulness (belly breathing).
We’re looking forward to a happy and healthy week next week.
Living and Learning
Our Living and Learning statement this week is ‘I know that people I see in the media don’t always reflect real life’.
In KS1 our Learning Objective is ‘I understand ways in which we are different from each other.’ For our activity, we placed a smiley face on one side of the room and a not so smiley face on the other side of the room. We asked the children to stand in an imaginary line somewhere between the two faces depending, on how much they liked an activity such as swimming, gymnastics or karate. During the session, children moved frequently. We then discussed how everybody is different and we each have different interests. Some children like martial arts whereas some children have never tried it. Some children dislike playing football whilst others love it.
We know that:
- We enjoy different things.
- We each have different opinions.
We then talked in small groups about what we appreciate about one another. Each child had a turn telling somebody in the class what they like about them.
Design Technology: construction
We have continued to construct our cars this week. Groups have been working so hard, looking at their diagrams and putting their illustrations into reality. The aim of the week was to measure and cut the pieces of dowel for the frame of their cars. Then came the tricky part of attaching them onto the base of the vehicle. The children decided small nails would be the strongest method for their designs. This involved lots of hammering and holding tightly to very small nails. I think I nearly lost a few fingers!
The children will continue to construct their designs next week. Then comes the exciting part where we test our vehicles!
Science – sorting food into groups
In our Science lesson today, 2C have been sorting food into different groups.
The first idea we had was to sort food into liquids and solids. We had some great discussions about why some foods can be seen as a solid or a liquid depending on their state or consistency. For example single cream is a liquid, but whipped cream is a solid. We have drinkable yoghurts, and yoghurts that require a spoon.
We also sorted the food into green and non-green foods.
Other ideas we had about how to sort food was splitting them into healthy and unhealthy foods or fruit/vegetables and ‘other’. We are really looking forward to continuing our investigations. Next week we will be focussing on the types of food we should eat and different food groups.