Railways, Reading and Rockets!
The National Railway Museum
On Monday, the children had a fantastic time at The National Railway Museum. They were very excited to go on their first ever school trip – especially travelling there by coach! We were super impressed with how well-behaved the children were. Well done, Reception class.
The children enjoyed looking at different trains and making comparisons of old and new. They had lots of fun watching the miniature railway and it led to lots of great discussions about trains, tunnels and transport. The children especially enjoyed sitting on the Japanese Bullet train.
To end our wonderful visit, we drew our favourite train of the day!
Literacy
We’ve been reading The Hundred Decker Rocket, by Mike Smith.
This story is about a girl called Ivy who sets off on an expedition to space- expedition is our word of the week! On the way, she meets some very messy aliens. When her rocket breaks down, the aliens help to fix it and make their own deck.
The story inspired lots of discussion around keeping our planet clean and why this is important.
In our writing, we designed our very own rocket deck that we will be making next week- this is where we need your help…
Please send your child into school with an empty shoebox next week. The children will be creating their very own deck, based on their designs.
Computing; Beebots
We’ve continued exploring Beebots. Beebots are a fun, early coding resource. We program the bee using directional buttons. The children had to pre-plan the algorithm they needed to enter, to successfully get the bee to its intended location (for example, a specific spot on the carpet)
Living and learning; Celebrating differences
Our living and learning statement this week is: I know we’re all the same and we’re all different.
On Wednesday, were were visited by Lindsey from Diversity Role Models.
The children listened to the story Mixed by Arree Chung
a charming and thought-provoking picture book with characterful illustrations and humour. Follow the colours as they overcome their differences in this sweet tale of acceptance and celebrating difference.
The children loved the story and it introduced us to some new, important vocabulary; diversity, harmony, vibrant.
The children had some thoughtful answers to Lindsey’s questions:
Why is being different good? “’cause we all like different things”-Lola
What would happen if we were all the same? “it would be confusing”- Robyn, “it would be boring”-Delilah
World Book Day
Thank you to the parents and carers who were able to join us for our stay and read session on Thursday, for World Book Day.
As part of our celebrations, the children enjoyed talking about their favourite books from home.
Another highlight of the day was when our friends from years 5/6 came to class to read with us!
On Tuesday, the children took part in a live story and draw-along with the author (Swapna Haddow) and illustrator (Aditi Kakade Beaufrand) of The Night Before Holi
As well as an opportunity to enjoy a new story, the children learnt about this Hindu festival, which welcomes the arrival of springtime.
Phonics
This week, the children have reviewed air, er and longer words that contain double letters.
Help at home; phonics challenge
Write these words on paper and ask your child to underline the double letters before reading them.
hammer shimmer cannot chatter muffin
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practise tricky words. Here’s another you could try…
Secret password
Write different tricky words on paper and stick them next to different doors around the house.
Each time your child enters or leaves a room they must press and say the tricky word password.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we learn a new poem and we recite this poem every 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 was Pancakes by Christina Rossetti
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. Can your child re-tell this week’s poem to you?
We hope you enjoyed watching the children recite this week’s poem aloud, in LIVE ACTION during our stay and read on World Book Day!
Dates for your diary
Reception’s Class Assembly- Thursday 13 March, 2.45pm
Stay and learn: Number Session 2- Tuesday 18 March, 9-10am This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school. This session is our second with a focus on maths.
These dates are also stuck to your child’s classroom door or window to view whenever needed.
KS1 – A little early World Book Day treat
Today, all three KS1 classes had the amazing opportunity to experience a zoom call with the renowned author Julia Donaldson and the talented illustrator Axel Scheffler.
The session started with Axel Scheffler reading us the story ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’. He then drew Bill and Janet from the story. We had a go at drawing along… but it was very fast!
Julia Donaldson then read us her story ‘Tiddler’. It was really lovely to hear for ourselves how she had imagined the voices would sound in the story. We listened attentively before Axel Scheffler then showed us how to draw Tiddler and Little Johnny Dory.
What a great start to the week!
Help at home: There are so many Julia Donladson stories, perhaps you could share some of them together at home. You can also find animated versions of the stories that we heard today a on BBC iplayer.
The Smeds and The Smoos
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001gncf/the-smeds-and-the-smoos
Tiddler
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0026dm6/tiddler
1A – Our Geography Journey
Learning about the streets around our school has been lots of fun. We have carried out fieldwork, presented data around our findings and written persuasive letters to Miss Hague.
During our fieldwork in Scholes village, we noticed that there wasn’t a safe place for people to cross the road safely near the Peace Flame and we saw how an older gentleman took a while to cross over to the bus stop. Another of our observations was that there was a lot of litter around the school gates. We really weren’t happy about that! Especially as there was not much litter elsewhere in Scholes! We decided to investigate further and carried out some more fieldwork. This time it would be on the school grounds.
During this fieldwork, we counted how many pieces of litter we could see on the KS1 playground, KS2 playground and the adventure playground. We weren’t happy to find that there was a lot of litter on the school grounds and we discussed how we could help the situation. Miss Hague often goes litter picking into Scholes village with some KS2 children and we wondered if she’d buy some litter pickers for KS1 too. We wrote some persuasive letters to her to try and convince her that it would be money well spent for school.
We eagerly await her decision…
A very busy week
This week, as part of our Expressive Arts and Design curriculum, we’ve re-visited learning to draw ourselves. We used mirrors to look at our faces and talked about what shape we needed to draw on the paper first. We then looked at our features and tried to add more details to our drawings such as hair, ears and eyes. Some children added eye lashes and eyebrows.
Have a go at home together. Can you draw each other? Start with a circle shape for your face and then add in some features
Tuesday was our Internet safety Day at Nursery. We talked about ways to stay safe whilst using technology at home such as always making sure that we are near a grown up. Only using apps and games that our parents and carers have said are ok for us to play. We also agreed that we’d tell someone if we saw anything that we didn’t like pop up on our screens.
We also followed an interest in magnetism this week. The children found the magnetic boards outside and wanted to find out more. We began exploring to find out which things were magnetic.
“It sticks to the cake tin, look”
“Metal, it sticks to the metal leg”
We found a construction kit that we could make models that used magnets to hold the parts together.
Learning after half term:
We’ll be reading Jack and the Beanstalk and beginning our ‘growing’ theme. If you have a copy of the book at home, please read it together.
Nursery rhyme of the week – Mary, Mary quite contrary.
Sound of the week – ‘Uu’ for Umbrella
We’re also learning about growing up and looking at how we change as we get older.
It would be great if we could look at some photographs of children when they were babies and toddlers. If you are able to, please send us an email with one photograph of your child as a baby and one photograph of them as a toddler. We’ll use these in group time sessions and will also be adding them to our Home Corner family display.
scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Reminder – World Book Day
It’s World Book Day on Thursday 06 March. This year, we will celebrate by bringing our favourite book to nursery to share with our friends. Please make sure that your child’s name is in their book. If you can stay a little bit longer at drop off on Thursday morning, we’d love for you to share a book with your child or to join in with some of the World Book Day activities that will be in provision. It’s always a day that we really enjoy at nursery, so please join in if you can.
We hope that you all have a happy and healthy half term and we’ll see you on Monday 24 February.
Nursery Coffee Morning
Following the half-term break we will be holding another Nursery coffee morning.
Living and Learning: I know that people should treat others respectfully when online
Safer Internet Day is the UK’s biggest celebration of online safety. Each year, Safer Internet Day covers online issues or themes that speak about the things young people are seeing and experiencing online. It’s a chance to think about any worries we might have about using technology and the Internet, but it’s also about celebrating all the fantastic things technology can help us with.
The 2025 Safer Internet Day theme is: ‘Too good to be true? Protecting yourself and others from scams online.’
We had a visit from d-side to discuss the importance of staying safe online. It’s important to remember:
- use a strong password with characters, numbers and capital letters
- always ask a trusted adult if you’re unsure about something online
- always check the PEGI ratings for games and if they’re suitable
- NEVER share personal information online
- always question if everything you see online is true
We talked about what is trust and can we trust eveything we see online. Here’s a reminder to think about if you’re being scammed.
Help at home: Discuss online websites that you use at home and if they’re trustworthy by answering the following questions:
– Who is it by?
– What else have they created?
– Do they have a good reputation?
– Is it high quality information?
– Does it look real and does it feature on other websites?
Feed the birds
It’s been a busy week in Nursery. The children love exploring the outside area, especially looking for worms and bugs under the logs. This week they began to notice that they couldn’t find many. Where they had gone?
We talked about the cold, frosty weather and how the ground had been very hard. The children then began to think about the birds in our garden and wondered what they were eating? We decided to make them some food. Cutting up lard very carefully, we mixed it together with bird seed, it was “sticky” and “gooey”
We pressed it into cups, added string, and then hung them in our Nursery garden. We took some home too, so that we could watch the birds at home. Let us know if your bird feeder attracts the birds into your outside space. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Some other activities from this week in Nursery.
Self-help skills are very important as the children develop. At lunchtime we are developing our skills of independence by learning how to use a knife and fork. We have been practising this skill in our dough area too.
In group time, children in red, blue and green group learnt about the number 2. We looked at a domino that had one spot on one end, and one spot on the other. When we looked at the spots together, there were two. Children knew that they had 2 eyes, 2 ears and 2 feet. We jumped twice and counted two claps.
Help at home: Have a look around your house and surroundings – What can you find two of? You might see two wheels on your bike or 2 eggs left in the box. Can you spot any number twos on doors or number plates? Send us an e-mail to let us know how you get on – you could send a photograph to show us what you find. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Next week’s learning:
Sound of the week- “e” for elephant.
We will be choosing some of our favourite Nursery rhymes to revisit this week. Which is your favourite?
Pat a cake, The Grand old Duke of York or Jack and Jill?
The Nursery Team
School Trip to Magna!
Supertato
On Monday morning, we welcomed in the new week with another stay and learn. We invited parents and carers into class to explore all things fine motor and early writing, or as we like to call it- Funky Fingers!
Thank you to those who could join us for another fun and hopefully informative session.
As always, we would love to hear your feedback. Please use the QR code below to tell us how we did and to make suggestions of what you might like to see next time!
If you missed the session or would like to look back on the presentation, please click the link below.
Literacy
On Tuesday, there was a vegetable-based mystery… Who had captured the vegetables and why were they trapped?
It could only be one thing… The EVIL PEA!
After reading the story Supertato by Sue Hendra, we read and answered some true or false statements to check our understanding of the story.
We’ve been making Wanted posters to warn everyone who to look out for! We’ve also been writing about a picture from the story.
Our new word of the week is: mischievous. A perfect word to describe the small, green villain in our story!
We’ve enjoyed lots of activities linked to our focus story.
Maths
In maths, we’ve been exploring and comparing weight. Using the correct vocabulary (light, heavy, lighter, heavier, lightest, heaviest, balanced, equal), as we investigated.
In provision we’ve been weighing different vegetables, using the balance scales.
PE; Yoga
Last week, we started our yoga unit in PE. We are learning that yoga is meditation through movement. It is taking a lot of balance and control to move in and out of our yoga positions.
At the end of each session, we finish with a visualisation that focuses on our breathing and creating peaceful images in our minds.
Ask your child if they can demonstrate some of the yoga poses we have practised.
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 Mrs Bluebird
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.
Phonics
Spring 1 week 5 has focused on reading longer words, by using the chunking method (segmenting and blending longer words one syllable at a time, i.e. “s-u-n, sun, s-e-t, set, sun, set, sunset”)
Ask your child to show you how they ‘chunk-it-up’
Each week, we’d like to give you an idea of a game you could play at home to make reading even more exciting.
This week’s game is: Tricky Word Splat
- Write a selection of tricky words on paper/sticky notes.
- Place around the room/floor.
- Say a tricky word for your child to splat. You might jump on the words, splat with a masher or create your own ideas!
More photos of our learning this week…
Dates for your diary
Parent-Teacher Meetings- Tuesday 11 February/Thursday 13 February (pre-booked appointments)
Class Trip- York Railway Museum- Monday 3 March (details sent home)
World Book Day- Thursday 6 March, 9am-10am Join us in class, to share in reading time with your child. They can also bring in their favourite book to share with the class later in the day (please name the book)
The Magic Paintbrush
This week, our focus book was The Magic Paintbrush.
We began by listening to the story for enjoyment. After becoming familiar with the story, we were then able to discuss the main events and characters.
The children then explored what they would do if they had a magic paintbrush.
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been using the song ‘five little aliens’ to explore one less within 5. We’ve been using Hungarian 5 frames (or ‘die’ frames) to represent and subitise numbers.
Later in the week, we used the aliens and frames to explore ‘5 and a bit’ We started with 6, then 7 aliens and noticed what each are ‘made of’ by subitising what we could see across the frames, for example:
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. This week’s poem is A Little House.
Phonics
Spring 1 week 2 has focused on our final sounds of phase 3: air, er
We’ve learnt the tricky words; are, sure, pure
Tricky words are words that should be read by sight
Help at Home
You can support your child with tricky words through lots of fun games and activities. Here is one you can try this week.
Musical Tricky Words
- Write the tricky words on individual pieces of paper, lay them out on the floor
- Play your child’s favourite song for them to dance around to
- When the music stops, your child should pick a word to quickly run to and stand on
- Your child reads the word they have landed on
- Remove that word and repeat until there are no words left!
Living and Learning
As part of our learning this week, we have being listening to a very catchy song about PANTS.
The NSPCC have created some fab resources for us, and you, to use when teaching our children how to keep themselves safe. Ask your child about the PANTS rule and sing along to the song!
Lunar New Year
The children have enjoyed learning about Lunar New Year and engaging in activities around the classroom and outside.
Diary Dates
Mon 3 Feb 2025- Fine Motor Control, Stay and Learn Coffee Morning
This session is all about Fine Motor Control and Writing. It’s followed by a chance to meet up with other parents/carers and your child’s class teacher.
Tue 11 Feb/Thurs 13 Feb 2025- Parent-Teacher Meetings (pre-booked appointments)