Author: Mr Roundtree

Week 4 – Supertato

This week our focus book is Supertato! We have been learning more about different fruits and vegetables and how they can help us to follow a healthy diet. We really enjoyed listening to the story and then adding actions for the different characters. In the classroom evil pea had been busy and had trapped lots of different fruit and vegetables onto our writing table. We wrote speech bubbles so they could get some help.

We decided that we would like to create our own Supertato. We carefully choose different materials and thought carefully about how we could make them stick to a potato!

The evil pea was causing so much trouble in the classroom we decided  to build some traps so we could catch the pea! It was a tough job but we worked together and made some amazing traps.

This week we have learnt more about primary and secondary colours. We investigated what happened when you mixed two primary colours together.

 

Dates for your diary:

Friday 3 February –  funky fingers stay & play. We hope you can all join us in the classroom to discover more about how we build muscle strength in out hands.

W/B 6 February – early years writing zoom. A pre recorded zoom presentation will be sent out to all families discussing writing in the early years setting.

As always please keep reading at home. The children love sharing their e-books with you all.

Mrs Payne

This week’s message (Friday 27 January 2023)

I can’t believe we’re almost into February already! Safer Internet Day is coming up on Tuesday o7 February. What’re you doing at home to help your child stay safe?

Is your child a gamer?

Check out this guide to keep safe whilst using online software and games. from SWGfL. With advice on reporting and blocking, online socialisation and the considerations on online gaming, the pamphlet can be a useful basis for a conversation about staying safe online when gaming.

Is your child a fan of Fortnite?

Since its release 2017, Fortnite has had a mass appeal for children. This means children are exposed to multi-player chatting with strangers, and financial exploitation via the game’s spend-to-gain-advantage operating style – this allows children to use real world money to gain perks and costumes.

Fortnite has the potential to lead to criminal blackmailing and coercion of nude exchanges by online ‘friends’ posing as children. Internet Matters has published a guide to understanding the game and its terms.

Is your child connected to virtual reality?

Research has shown that two thirds of the UK public lack confidence that child safety is a priority in the metaverse, with 71% of adults expressing doubt in tech companies prioritising children’s safety. However, the study also revealed over a fifth of adults would buy their child a VR (virtual reality) headset if they could, despite these concerns.

To help you understand this new, fast changing issue, the NSPCC has published a guide to both the Metaverse and VR headsets.

Is your child happy and healthy online?

It’s become more and more common for people – including children – to talk to strangers online. A small amount of these relationships turn out malicious – we need to be aware of the dangers if they do.

Children and young people may find it difficult to understand when an online relationship turns out to be a bad one. The Information Commissioners Office, the UK’s information rights agency, has published guidance on what to look for when online relationships turn sour.

And finally, remember some advice from last week, too:

  • check devices regularly alongside your child – doing this means that your child can moderate their own behaviour and have regular opportunities to talk about things that might be concerning them
  • keep the devices downstairs – the more ‘public’ space means that children make the same good choices they would do in ‘in real life’ and have plenty of opportunities to talk about what they’re doing and seeing

Maths: What is perimeter?

Today, in maths, we’ve learned about perimeter.

We firstly experimented using Magformers to create rectilinear shapes (shapes shaped like a rectangle) and counted the distance around the edge in squares. We then took our learning up a level and created more complicated shapes.

Ashton, Noah, James, Kamile and Summer were especially brilliant at working out the area by counting the squares but the whole class did a super job too!

Take a look at some of the children’s reflections the children noted at the end of our maths lesson…

27 January 2023

This week’s Talk Time has a moral theme.

Who’s responsibility is it to keep me safe?

Safety covers so many areas; your discussions could centre around these forms of safety as well as any others that you know of:

  • Online safety (e-safety)
  • Fire safety
  • Road safety
  • Electrical safety
  • Water safety

For each type of safety, talk about different settings and examples of when you might be faced with risks and how your adult or you would safely deal with them. For each situation, think about who’s responsible for evaluating the risks involved. Is it solely your adult at home/school or do you hold some of the responsibility in keeping yourself safe? Does your age impact on your responsibility?

Here are some examples…

  • My adult lets me have a social media account and regularly monitors it to make sure I am safe but it’s also my responsibility to keep myself safe by telling my trusted adult if something happens that I do not feel comfortable with.
  • My adult lets me walk to and from school on my own but it’s also my responsibility to keep myself safe by walking on the footpaths, using crossings to cross the road safely and not talking to strangers.

Here are some R2s (Remember tos) to help you stay safe:

  • Think before you act.
  • Assess the risks. Is it safe?
  • If something goes wrong, again, think before you act.
  • Who can help you and how can you reach them?

Geography: Mount Vesuvius

Today, we’ve learned about yet another volcano – Italy’s Mount Vesuvius…

…but it’s not the geography learning I was massively impressed by (although the geography learning was fab, too!).

I’ve been blown away by the children’s HANDWRITING! It’s been great tracking back to September to see how much we’ve all improved.

We often think that handwriting is something to only think about when we first learn to write but now it’s more about our general presentation, formation of letters and personal style that’s at the forefront.

Some children are coming home with a copy of their handwriting to show off at home! Great job, Year 4!

Living and Learning: I know how to seek help.

This week in our living and learning session, we have been thinking about knowing how to seek help.

We listened to an NSPCC assembly learning all about the work they do and we learnt actions to help us remember the Childline phone number. (08001111)

We thought about the word seek and practised our seeking skills – looking for the shapes that Buddy (the speechmark character from our NSPCC assembly) had lost.

We thought about who could turn to if we needed help. We discussed who could turn to if we needed help and who our safe adults were both at home and at school.

Week 4 – The Magic Paintbrush

Happy New Year!

This week in Reception we have been learning more about the Lunar New Year. We discovered how people across the world will be having new year celebrations and that 2023 is the year of the Rabbit! We were particularly interested in how dragons featured not only in our focus book but in lots of the celebrations. We created our own dragons and even learnt to dance like a dragon in our own parade.

We wrote good luck messages for the year ahead and build great walls to show our representations of the Great wall of China!

Bex Rayner

Thank you to everyone for all of the amazing sponsorships which allowed this great visit to take place. we were so excited to meet Bex and to learn more about what it is like to be a football player. We loved taking part in the circuit training and even our very own Mrs Walton showed her football skills in the assembly.

As you all know we love reading in Reception and love sharing stories with others. On Wednesday Yr 5& 6 came down to share some special stories with us. It was so nice to hear other people read and we even showed off our new reading skills to them!

 

Ways to help at home:

  • Phase 3 phonics flashcards have been sent home. Please keep reading together to gain confidence
  • Writing words together
  • Daily reading using e-books. If anyone is having any problems logging in please let me know.

Mrs Payne

Friday 20th January 2023

This week’s spellings focus on prefixes – the bit at the start of a word…

OR this spelling list…

The spellings your child needs to learn ready for our weekly spelling test is clearly shown on their homework sheet given each Friday.

Every week, we complete a weekly spelling test. This is used to monitor your child’s progress, their ability to practise words at home and as a helpful hint to inform our conversations at parents’ evenings and later in the year, school reports.

As always, be sure to chat to us if your child is finding this learning tricky!

 

Geography: A case study of the Icelandic volcano

This week during our topic lessons, we’ve been learning about the Icelandic volcano that reeked havoc throughout the world when it erupted in April 2010.

We’ve thought carefully about how the erupting Eyjafjallajokul affected life on a local, national and international scale… but it’s pronouncing the name of this dormant stratovolcano that’s proved tricky for us..! Jacob, Jayden and Lilly gave it a really good go but weren’t quite right…

Have a go at learning how to pronounce this volcano…

Can’t wait to hear how you get on!