This week in Foundation, the F2 children explored one way in which we use technology with purpose; to find information on our topic. The children came up with their own questions about the royal family and with the support of an adult, used a search engine to find their answers. As one of their writing focuses, they recorded their answers. Be sure to check out your child’s writing progression book, on the parent shelves, to see what they asked.
A big well done to our Star Writer this week, Christian, who asked:
“How often does the queen wear her crown?”
The answer he found also introduced us to a new ‘wow’ topic word: Coronation.
Later in the week, we mixed writing with technology again! After some AMAZING descriptive sentence writing about fairy tale characters, the children used the ‘doodle’ app to draw an illustration that matched their words.
Our technology work leads us into our learning next week, when we will be thinking about online safety.
In maths, we have been using our play ‘shop’ to work on our counting and addition skills. We have also been practising verbalising number sentences and have been introduced to doubling.
We have enjoyed exploring our new ribbons and large elastic in the movement play area to stretch our muscles and make large movements.
Well done to the children who completed their home-link challenge this week and stood at the front of the class to talk about their favourite castle-based story. We loved hearing your ideas in talk time.
Home-Link Challenge
Last week, we had a circle time where we spoke about how it feels inside our bodies when people are kind to us and how it feels when they are not. We then chose five kind things to say about each friend. The ‘friendship hands’ will soon be on display in the classroom.
Foundation is a crucial time for developing communication and socialisation skills. All of the children are learning through their first experiences with friends, how to manage and how to respond to both positive and negative interactions. The Early Years Team focus on personal and social development (as one of the prime areas) in everything we do. We focus on addressing issues positively through lots of emotion exploration and activities that help us to see the good in each other. We know that for parents, it can be distressing to see our children upset or having concerns about their friendships. We are thankful that our parent partners work so well with us to support their children, by letting us know about any concerns they may have. We see beautiful, kind moments from all of the children every day in our class. We are proud to see the steps the children are making towards building emotional resilience and confidence in their relationships.
With this in mind, we would like to join the rest of the school this week by focusing on mindfulness as our home-link challenge.
It is super-tricky to get our youngest children to sit still for thinking and breathing time but we have found a lovely short video with ‘Mindful Ozzy’ that perfectly explains mindfulness and why it helps us:
To watch the video with your child, click here
Please use the video as a way to open a discussion with your child on their feelings about themselves, school and their friends.
Parents Evening Appointments
Next week, our appointment times will become available to sign up for at the school office. To make places available for all of the children, we have appointments:
Until 5pm on Tuesday 11 February.
Two slots only on Wednesday 12 February (3.30pm and 3.40pm)
Between 5pm and 6.40pm on Thursday 13 February.
If possible, we would like for F1 pupil appointments to be made either on the Tuesday or Wednesday so that Miss Feldman can be present at the meetings. For this reason, we would like for F2 parents (if possible) to opt initially for appointments on the Thursday. We appreciate that our recommendation may not be suitable for all parents and you may of course sign up for any available slot you would like. These are allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Thank you.