Virtual Santa Visit

The Christmas Sing-a-Long

We hope you enjoy the show as much as we did performing it!

Merry Christmas!

This week in Foundation…

We filmed the Christmas show on Monday and the children all looked fabulous and did some amazing singing. Make sure you check out the Foundation Class News Page on Tuesday – you don’t want to miss it!

This week has been another busy week full of lots of great learning.
Here are some of the things we’ve been up to this week…
We made and decorated salt dough baubles. The children will be bringing them home next Wednesday. The children enjoyed navigating the Bee-Bots around the mat to different Christmas pictures. They had a go at drawing some maps to show how the Bee-Bot got to one of the pictures.

This week, our focus story was The Christmas Story. The F2 children drew a picture of their favourite part and retold the story using the finger puppets in the reading corner. Some of the children made a stable using the outdoor construction resources.

Getting messy in the sensory area!

Click here to watch a snapshot of what we do when we are learning in the areas.

Next week is a going to be another hectic week.
We have lots of fun activities planned for the children.
Don’t forget it’s our Christmas party next Friday. The children can come in their party clothes.

Home-Link Challenge

Christmas celebrations

As we approach the final week of term, it’s time to get Christmassy, but as you know, it’s going to be very different.

We can’t invite you in to share any Christmas celebrations so instead we’re going to share Christmas with you in a different way. From Tuesday 15 December, there will be a video posted on Class News of your child’s class taking part in some Christmas celebrations. We know that this doesn’t compare to what we normally do but we hope that it helps in some way.

During the final week of term, there will be a virtual pantomime performance that children will be able to watch at school. Thanks to the PTA who have paid for this.

Christmas lunch will be on Tuesday 15 December and all children will get a Christmas cracker!

On Friday 18 December, there will be Christmas parties in classrooms. Children can come to school in non-uniform. There will be some goodies coming home which have kindly been bought by the company who provide and maintain our photocopiers and printers.

It’s a very different Christmas this year but we’ve worked so hard to stay safe that we don’t want to spoil it now.

We hope that you have a happy and healthy, enjoyable and restful time with your families over the Christmas holidays.

Foundation Parents

In the most recent guidance that has come out this week, it specifically mentions that schools in Tier 3 shouldn’t perform in front of an audience.  Even though we had planned to sing outside to parents/carers, we feel we should follow this guidance in the strictest way.

We will still send you a video of our Christmas performance taken place in school that you can share with family members.

Thank you for your understanding.

The Christmas theme continues…

Foundation have been very excited for Christmas this week. I think it is because we got to start opening our Class Advent Calendar.
On Tuesday, Beau opened the first door for coming into school with a big smiling face.
On Wednesday, Vinnie opened the second door. He was chosen because he is trying really hard in phonics.
On Thursday, Mrs Small chose Amelia for working hard all day.
Today, Bobby opened the fourth door. He is trying really hard to be independent at home time.
Gabriel and Jacob were chosen to open the 5th and 6th doors for trying really hard in maths.

On Tuesday, the F1 children got to decorate the school Christmas tree. Mrs Small said, “They are were really sensible and helped each other when putting the baubles on the tree.”

Phonics
The F2 children finished learning all of the phase 2 sounds last week! So, this week we’ve been recapping all of the sounds in our phonics sessions. The children love phonics and are all phonics superstars! After Christmas, we will start phase 3.
Here are some of the phonics activities and challenges the children have been doing this week…           SPLAT the phoneme!
Playing phase 2 Snakes and Ladders with our friends. The children needed to blend the words they landed on.

Musical Blending – The children danced around to the music. When the music stopped, they jumped on a word and blended it. This is an easy game to do at home.

Tricky Word Twister – The same rules as Twister. However, each coloured spot had a tricky word on for the children to read. The children were also encouraged to practise writing the tricky words on the chalkboard wall.

Finding phoneme baubles in the tinsel and making cvc (consonant, vowel, consonant) words with them. F1 Group Time
On Wednesday, the F1 children made up silly rhyming stories about their puppets. Mrs Small started the story and paused at different points to see if the children could think of a word that rhymed.
For example,
Are you poorly Lizzy? Oh dear.
Fizzy, Wizzy, Lizzy is feeling sick and dizzy.
Bob is very excited. Today he is going to be a builder. Hob Tob Bob has got a new job.

Home-Link Challenge

While poking, rolling, and squishing playdough, children develop the small muscles in their fingers and hands to help them become amazing writers! When you play with the playdough at home with your children, you’ll discover the most important reason of all: it’s fun!
F2 Parents – Please encourage the children to segment the sounds independently. Remember, it is okay for things to be spelt phonetically. It is important your child grows into an independent learner. Encouraging your child to write the words as they sound encourages them to use their own skills – rather than copying an adult.

 Have a lovely weekend!

Virtual after school clubs

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

This week, we have started to get into the Christmas spirit.
We wrapped presents for under the tree.
A group of children decorated the Christmas tree.

We wrote Christmas wish lists in the home corner.
We’ve made our calendars. The children will be bringing them home at the end of this half-term.
Next week, we will continue to get into the Christmas spirit. The home corner will turn into Santa’s Workshop and we will be making our Christmas cards.  On Monday, we will also be doing a dress rehearsal of our Christmas sing-a-long. Foundation are fabulous singers and dancers! The video will be posted week commencing Monday 14th December.

Maths 
We’ve started to learn all about the number 4. This week, the children learnt that the number 4 is a square number. We watched the Numberblock Four video and played a game with the cubes. At the start of the game, the children made a square using four cubes. When Miss Marsden shouted change, the children had to change the shape of their cubes.  Occasionally, Miss Marsden shouted square and the children had to make their cubes back into a square.

• We also sorted 2d shapes that show four and don’t show four. The children were really good at using the correct mathematical language when explaining.
  “This is a square. It has four sides and four corners.”
  “It has one round side.”
  “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. This shape has six sides and six corners.”
  Literacy
  Our new focus story is the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The F2 children drew a story map and remembered what happened at the beginning, middle and end. Outside, the children made a bridge and acted out the story with their friends- we saw some great acting skills!
  The F1 children made bridges in their group time on Monday.
  In the maths area, the children used cubes to measure and compare the size of the goats hooves.  They also had a go at measuring the length of their own feet.
  On Thursday, the F1 children measured their feet.  They carefully drew around their shoe and counted the cubes to measure the length.
  Some more great snapshots of the week…
  F2 Parents
  Today, your child will have brought home a learning pack. The pack has lots of resources we use in school on a daily basis. The pack includes: a whiteboard pen, wipe, number line, ten frames, part- part whole model, phase 2 sound mat, handwriting practise and phoneme frames. Please use your pack on a weekly basis to support your child’s learning.  Send photos of your child using the pack to stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org.

Home-Link Challenge

Our New Role-Play Area

Christmas has definitely arrived in Foundation!
Check out our new role-play area. The children were so excited when they saw it this morning.

Nursery Rhyme Week

We’ve had so much fun this week celebrating Nursery Rhyme Week.
Take a look at all the things we’ve been doing…

Singing Five Little Ducks and Five Little Monkeys with our friends.

We sang twinkle, twinkle when painting Starry Night pictures in the style of Vincent Van Gough’s famous paint.

At the sensory table, we made cups of tea and sang I’m a Little Teapot.

At the playdough table, we sang Pat-a-Cake and pretended we were bakers.

We used ‘cement’ and wooden blocks to build a wall for Humpty Dumpty.

Literacy
Our focus story this week was Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. It is a fantastic book with simple rhyming text. It also has engaging illustrations encouraging children to look at the book carefully to find the next fairy tale and nursery rhyme character. Some of the characters we found in the book were Mother Hubbard, Cinderella and Tom Thumb.
We went on a ‘ I Spy’ hunt looking for illustrations from the book which were dotted around the outdoor area. We had lots of fun remembering the characters names and using the language from the story.

The F2 children also went on a hunt around the classroom for other nursery rhyme characters. They picked a character to draw and wrote a sentence describing where the character was in the classroom. E.g. I spy Incy Wincy Spider on the wall. This writing activity also linked nicely to the prepositional learning we did last week in maths.
Maths
In maths, we continued learning about the number 3. We learnt all about ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd). To help us learn about this, we played racing games and handed out medals to our friends.

We also played the ‘Three Billy Goats’ game. The children made three goats out of cubes. The little Billy Goat was one cube tall, the medium-sized Billy Goat was two cubes tall and the biggest Billy Goat was three cubes tall. They then took turns to roll the dice (1-3). The children were encouraged to subitise* the dots on the dice and work out which Billy Goat needed to cross the bridge.

F1 Group Time
This week, the children drew their own versions of some famous nursery rhyme characters. At the start of every group time, we ask the children to find their name in the middle of the circle – they are getting very quick at recognising their names!

Odd Socks Day
It was lovely to see almost all of Foundation in odd socks on Monday!
Home-Link Challenge
Next week, our focus story is The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We will be talking about size and learning all about measuring. To help your child get a head start, have a go at these challenges at home.

* The ability to instantaneously recognise the number of objects in a small group without the need to count them.

Finally…
Thank you to all the parents who do the home-link challenges with their children at home. It is always lovely to receive so many emails of amazing home learning!

PS – I have seen so many Christmas decorations up already and I’m sure some of your will have already put yours up! Send me pictures – I love CHRISTMAS!!