Residential Day One
What an action-packed day we’ve had: night line, crate challenge, archery, dungeon, giant swing, climbing and trapeze. Lunch was a happy and healthy pizza, crisps and Kit Kat and dinner was a chicken curry or fish fingers and chips.
It’s been a fantastic day with plenty of smiles, fears conquered and encouraging chants.
Zog theatre trip – Year 2
Year 2 had a fantastic day at The Carriageworks theatre today watching a performance of Zog, the classic story by Julia Donaldson. We have used the story to work on our reading fluency, reading with prosody and also writing. It has also shaped discussions about resilience – keeping on trying even when things are tough.
Zog theatre trip – Year 1
Year 1 had a fantastic day at The Carriageworks theatre today watching a performance of Zog, the classic story by Julia Donaldson. We have used the story to work on our reading fluency, reading with prosody and also writing. It has also shaped discussions about resilience – keeping on trying even when things are tough.
Living and Learning
This term, year 5 and 6 complete their relationship and sex education lessons. These allow the children to learn about growing up and puberty. We ensure that the classroom continues to be a safe, respectful environment in which the children can ask appropriate questions. We will be discussing how their bodies change – using the correct biological vocabulary. We will also be discussing how puberty can affect their emotions and how to deal with this. We make sure the children are clear of where to get help if needed.
Help at home: Talk to your child about what has been discussed each week. Do they know the correct vocabulary and do they have a good understanding of what has been discussed in class?
Science: we are biologists
Our new science unit is about animals and humans. This means we are being biologists as we are studying living things. Our first lesson was looking at our new vocabulary. We then focused on gestation periods – the length of time a baby is in the womb. We particularly looked at babies developing in a woman’s womb. We used secondary sources of information to research this.
Here is our new vocabulary.
Help at home: Can you help your child learn our new vocabulary. Have some fun with it and play some games. What about Pictionary!
Butterflies!
The sunny weather was perfect for releasing our butterflies this week! Children enjoyed watching as their wings opened out and they began to fly around in the butterfly net. After a few days, we released them into the sunshine and loved seeing them fly away.
We talked about the symmetrical patterns on butterfly wings and in the creative area, we tried making our own butterfly prints by folding the paper in half to print the same pattern on each wing.
This week, we’ve also been learning about shapes. We’ve made shape patterns, talked about the properties of different shapes and named some of them. We used lots of words to describe shapes including curved, straight, sides, edge and corner.
Outside, we enjoyed passing the ball to each other as we practised our throwing and catching skills. We also made a car wash role play area and loved washing the wheels on our trikes. There was a lot of conversation and turn taking involved.
We hope that you all have a fantastic half term holiday and we look forward to hearing all about your adventures when we return to Nursery on Monday 05 June. If you’d like to send us a photograph of a holiday highlight, please send us an e-mail and we’ll share them in Nursery. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
My body
We have finished our topic ‘Life on Earth’ by exploring human bodies.
Using Non Fiction books, we were able to share our known facts as well as learn new ones.
In writing, we wrote our facts.
Science
This week, we have explored how to keep our teeth healthy by using eggs and different liquids we might drink.
We started by putting toothpaste on half of each egg and then putting them in milk, water, cola, and fresh orange juice. When looking at the sugar content, the children were able to make sensible predictions as to which drink might be the healthiest for our teeth.
It’s stained. (cola) Jack
On one side it’s dark and one side it’s light. (cola) Alyzah
It had too much sugar. (orange juice) Zachary
We also discussed the benefits of some of these drink for our whole body.
Milk is good for your bones and teeth. Ellie
Milk has calcium. Keira
Maths
We have continued to develop our subitising skills using familiar images and objects while introducing a new piece of equipment (Rekenrek) that allows us to explore the structure of small numbers and deepen our number sense.
Butterflies
Everyone was very excited to see the newly hatched butterflies on Monday morning. Throughout the week, the children have observed them closely and looked at the details on their wings and bodies.
On Thursday, it was time to release them outside. It was wonderful to watch them fly around our garden and even on one of the children!
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 Monkey Babies.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
PE; Foot-Tech Academy
A big thank you to Food-Tech Academy for the donation of new balls. We can’t wait to use them to develop our skills next half term!
Click here to see Rainbow class enjoying using the new balls.
Reminders
Sun cream – Now that it’s hot, please remember to bring in a labelled sun cream. As your child will need to independently apply their sunscreen, please practise this at home.
Swimming
Rainbow -7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July
Sunshine – 14 June, 28 June, 12 July
Living and Learning-Physical Health
3,4 have been thinking about the importance of our physical health and how this impacts our mental health too. We discussed how exercise can improve our mood and physical strength. It turns out that we are an active bunch and participate in lots of physical activity throughout the week. In school, we have lots of opportunities to get our heart rate pumping. We enjoy our daily WUSU sessions, daily mile, active play times and PE sessions. What healthy habits can you adopt at home to make sure you are participating in ’60 active minutes’ per day?
Here are 3.4 B enjoying their tennis session.
Topic-Heroes
Our topic this half term has been heroes. We have been looking at two in particular-Nelson Mandela and Leonora Cohen.
The children have learnt about their lives and beliefs.
They have been using vocabularly such as apartheid and suffragette to describe what these two historic people stood up for and the difference they made to others.
The children have enjoyed dressing up as real life heroes and sharing why they are real life heroes.
Living and learning: I know the importance of 60 active minutes
Our PE lessons have had a specific focus on being active for the whole of the 60 minutes. This week, we have played some fast-moving warm-up games that have got our hearts racing and made us out of breath straight away. We played games using the skills of basketball in which we had to score points, defend and attack. The children improved their communication within their team to make them more efficient.
Help at home: How active are you at home? Could you do more exercise? Now the weather has improved, could you be more active? Go for a walk in the evening, a bike ride or even visit a local playground. Enjoy the fresh air!