Christmas Disco
We all had a blast at the Christmas Disco last week.
Please consider joining FOSP (Friends of Scholes Primary) – they’re always looking for new recruits to help organise special events like this!
Christmas is coming!
We had such a busy week learning the songs and rehearsing for our Christmas sing a long. We can’t wait to share it with you on Monday and Tuesday and hope you enjoy watching.
We’ve enhanced many of our areas of provision to provide lots of opportunities to learn about Christmas and talk about the traditions that some families join in with at this time of year. Here are a few photos from this week. You can see that we have been very busy…
- Using our fine motor skills to decorate the Christmas trees using tweezers.
- Using our number skills to count the decorations on the trees.
- Making paper chains, it took lots of concentration to thread the paper carefully.
- Wrapping presents in the Elf workshop.
- Making Christmas cards for our families.
- Exploring our sensory Christmas scene.
Next week:
We will consolidate the letter sounds that we have learnt so far – s, a, t, p, i and n.
Help at home: In group time, our sound bag had lots of ‘n’ objects including a nest, a net and a nurse. What can you find around the house that begins with the ‘n’ sound? What other ‘n’ objects could we have put in our sound bag?
Reminders:
- Our Early Years Christmas Sing a Long will take place on Monday 16 December at 1.30 – 2.15pm and on Tuesday 19 December at 9.45 – 10.30am.
- Our ‘Stay and Decorate‘ sessions take place next week on Wednesday 18 December 9.00- 9.45am or 2.00 -2.45 pm and Thursday 19 December 9.00-9.45am. We can’t wait to welcome you all.
- Our Nursery Party is on Friday 20 December from 10-11.15am. Children can attend Nursery wearing their party clothes. Please remember that we will still take part in Nursery activities (which can be messy) and we’ll also be outside so footwear needs to be sensible.
The Jolly Christmas Postman
Literacy
This week we enjoyed the story, The Jolly Christmas Postman.
The children loved seeing the different letters, gifts and cards inside each envelope.
Inspired by the book, we wrote our own postcards with special messages. We learned about the journey of a letter from the post box to our front door and can’t wait for our own letters to be delivered!
Maths
We have named and described 2D shapes. We enjoyed searching for these shapes around our classroom. In provision, we created shape pictures by rotating and manipulating shapes to match a picture.
Art
The children developed their observational skills by carefully looking at a Poinsettia before drawing it with wax crayons. As they examined the plant, they noticed details like the veins running through the leaves. Using these observations, they coloured with intention and choose colours purposefully.
Check out our other learning…
Class News – We’re artists!
This week, we have closely observed building designs and drawn pictures of them freehand using sketching pencils and white charcoal. We’ve worked with care and precision.
Living and Learning – mental wellbeing
Over the last three weeks, our Living and Learning lessons have focused on mental wellbeing. We have discussed:
- the different feelings and emotions we may experience
- how we can deal with these feelings and emotions
- who we can ask for help (including trusted adults, the safeguarding team at Scholes and Childline)
- self-care techniques that we can use
- the importance of looking after our mental health as well as our physical health
Help at home by discussing the importance of looking after our mental health and how we can do this.
Drop down morning
This week we had a great morning during ‘Drop Down Morning.’ The children worked through a range of lessons that helped them to recall their previous learning. Geography allowed the children to test their knowledge of capital cities, main cities in the UK and four of the longest rivers. They were able to accurately place these on to their maps. The history sessions helped the children to remember their learning about Ancient Greece and the Romans. Year 6 had to consider arguments for and against the Elgin Marbles being returned to Greece. D&T helped the children to recall their learning they did on sewing and we talked about the design process when designing a new product. It was a very but productive morning.
Stick Man
We’ve started to get festive in Nursery this week. We all helped to put up the Christmas tree, we hope that you like it!
We made paper chains to decorate nursery, it was a bit tricky to thread them together but we did it.
In the home corner, children enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree and re-creating some experiences from home.
We’ve enjoyed listening to Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and helping to recreate it using our story props. The children loved exploring our Christmas sensory tray, finding objects that “made a noise”, some to “sprinkle”, some that were “soft” and some that were “stretchy”
Outside the children loved decorating our winter trees with baubles and tinsel.
We made Christmas trees in the dough, carefully decorating them.
We’ve also been busy learning our Christmas songs, maybe you’ve been hearing them at home? We can’t wait to sing them at our Christmas sing- a long.
Help at home
Can you find some long and short objects around the house? Which is the longest piece of tinsel on your Christmas tree? Which is the shortest?
Let us know what you find.
Next week’s learning:
We’ll continue with our Christmas themed learning and will find out about the Nativity story.
In maths, we continue to learn about length so will be using the words long, short, longer and shorter to compare different objects.
Nursery rhyme of the week – We’ll be busy learning songs for our sing – a long, so please keep singing your favourite rhymes together at home.
Here is a reminder of the Nursery rhymes we have covered this half term
Wind the Bobbin up.
Hickory Dickory Dock.
1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive.
Twinkle twinkle Little Star.
Sound of the week – N n for net
Open your lips a bit, put your tongue behind your teeth and make a nnnnnn sound.
Reminders:
- Please send your child’s costume to Nursery by Monday 09 December. Remember to write your child’s name on all items of their costume and the bag. Thank you for your support.
- If you haven’t already returned your reply slip for the ‘Stay and Decorate’ sessions, please do so this week.
Owl Babies
This week we’ve been reading Owl Babies by Martin Waddell.
We’ve been following a story map and rehearsing actions to retell the story from the beginning to the end.
Take a look at our story actions!
In our writing, we had a go at writing a dictated caption ‘Bill is sad’ and had a try at writing our own sentences to match our action photo.
Science; Nocturnal animals
We’ve continued exploring nocturnal animals this week.
Ask your child if they can explain what a nocturnal animal is and if they can name any!
Maths; counting, ordinality and cardinality
In Maths, we’ve revisited careful counting. Making sure we say our numbers in the correct sequence (ordinality) and stopping ‘at the stopping number’ (cardinality)
In provision, we’ve been using dice with both standard and irregular dot patterns on. We’ve been subitising the number we roll and then matching it by counting out and placing the correct number of objects onto a tens frame.
Art; festive projects!
We’ve been busy making some festive masterpieces! We want to keep them a surprise but here are a few snapshots of us busily creating.
Learning journey drop-ins
Thank you to parents and carers who were able to join us for the first look at you child’s learning journey book. We’ll be inviting you back in to look at these again on specific dates in March and July but they are also available at all times in the classroom, should you wish to take a peek.
Don’t forget, each child also has their own special wall space to collect their independent learning examples throughout the current term. We call these our ‘I feel proud’ walls.
Phonics
Autumn 2 week has focused on words with s /s/ added at the end (hats, sits), words ending s /z/ (his) and with s /z/ added at the end (bags)
We’ve learnt the tricky words; we, me, be
Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.
In provision, we’ve been spotting and circling our focus tricky words.
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.
We are currently rehearsing for our Christmas performance, so will be concentrating the three poems below. There will not be recordings of these as to not spoil the big reveal on our show days!
Help at home; The Journey of a letter
Next week, we’ll be reading The Jolly Christmas Postman and learning about the journey of a letter when it has been posted.
To help with our discussions, we’d love to share some photos of your child at their local post box.
Send your photos to: scholesreception@spherefederation.org
We are also asking you to send in one stamp for your child, to support our learning next week.
More learning this week…
Diary Dates
Friday 13 December 3.15-4.15 FOSP Christmas Disco (bring named party clothes in a bag to change into at the end of the school day)
Monday 16 December 1.30pm / Tuesday 17 December 9.45am Early Years Christmas Performance
Thursday 19 December Christmas Dinner
Friday 20 December Non-uniform day. Christmas Party Day.
We have been learning about materials this half term in Science. We know lots of different materials in their properties.
‘Fabric is usually soft and smooth.’
‘Wood is usually hard and strong. It comes from trees.’
‘Glass is a man-made material but it comes from sand which is a natural material.’
This week we conducted an experiment. We collected lots of recycling materials from home and built houses out of the materials. We then dropped a wooden brick on our houses, to see which materials were strongest.
Take a look at what we’ve been up to!
Art: block printing
In art this week, children have been inspired by the work of William Morris and Orla Kiely. They have produced some prints using a styrofoam block to show a repeated pattern. We looked at adding more detail to our blocks and changing the colour.
