Stay and Play Reminder- Marvellous Maths
Please join us on Thursday 24th January, 3.15-3.45 pm to take part in maths activities with your child, be given information about the development of important counting principles and to get ideas of how to support maths learning at home.
Please return the slips sent home this week, to confirm your attendance.
Thank you.
Ice Art!
The most important consideration in Early Years, is the Characteristics of Effective Learning. The children are experts at playing and exploring with purpose, as they are so naturally inquisitive.
When the world gave us sub-zero temperatures this week, we used our “senses” to “explore” what was all “around us”; ICE!
We were excited to discover that the water tray had frozen overnight and left us a lovely deep ice canvas! Take a look at our artwork…
Role-play Ready!
Foundation 2 have been putting the finishing touches to the new role-play area today, by working together in their Literacy time to create a travel map of destinations! ‘Destination’ has become a wow word this week, as we have been thinking about the purpose of vehicles and their journies.
We have everywhere on our map, from Wetherby to Egypt and the North Pole to the moon! All decided by the children and written using those important phonics skills. The map looks fab on our new chalk board wall!
The role play area will give the children the opportunity to create their own vehicles for their journey, add signs and numbers, buy tickets and become the driver or passengers. We can’t wait for all of the amazing adventures we will go on!
Living and Learning: I know Love is important.
We had a wonderful start to 2019 by discussing this weeks living and learning statement: “I know Love is important”.
We tried to define ‘love’ and created a mind map of all the words that came into our heads when we simply said ‘love’. We realised all the words we came up with were positive and then thought about how all the words we associate with hate are negative.
During circle time we shared how we show love to ourselves, other people, God and the world.
“I show love to my friends by always being there for them”. Erin
“I show I love to my family by caring for them and helping them”. Harvey
We talked about how important it is to not only show love but to feel love. This makes us feel valued and accepted, no matter what our beliefs.
The nicest comment of the day came from Hannah:
“Love is free. It doesn’t cost anything so it doesn’t matter if you are poor you can still show love”.
What’s the matter?
This week, we tested which materials are soluble and insoluble. We sorted sand, salt, sugar and many more into these two groups.
After that, we investigated if the temperature of water affects the speed of dissolving. We had to test this several times to make sure our results were reliable. Then we calculated the mean time taken for sugar to dissolve in different temperatures.
Our results showed us that the higher the temperature of water, the faster the sugar dissolves. Therefore, the temperature of water does affect the speed of dissolving. I wonder why? Can you find out?
Welcome back Foundation!
We hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year break with your families. It has been great to see Foundation children return to school happy and ready to learn!
We have some new faces in both F1 and F2 and would like to welcome our new children and parents/carers. We are also welcoming our new class teacher Mrs Valentine. Mrs Valentine will be teaching foundation Monday-Wednesday and Mrs Allen-Kelly will be teaching Wednesday to Friday.
This week we have been introducing our new topic- Transport and Journies. Next week, we will start by looking at non-fiction books and fact finding, as well as creating props and signs for our upcoming role play area.
If you have access to any bus or train timetables, car manuals, old travel tickets or anything else relevant to our new topic that you could add to our role-play area, they would be much appreciated.
Home-Link Challenge- F1 and F2
We would love to hear more news from home this week, so we have attached our ‘Time to talk’ and ‘Learning at home’ sheets to the weekly update sent home this evening. Don’t forget to keep sharing learning at home on our parent whiteboard as you enter the classroom. Our sheets are always available to tell us about the wonderful things your child has been doing at home. We would especially like to see anything linked to our topic; does your child role play with transport toys at home? Do you have a photo of you travelling together on public transport?
You can email photos and learning at home to; stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
Parent reminder
PE will continue to take place on Thursday afternoons. Please return or bring in PE kits. Please also remember to have book bags and reading books in school each day. Books are usually changed on a Monday and Thursday or Friday. Thank you.
Living and Learning: I know love is important
Living and Learning: I respect my community and other communities
Today we talked about the living and learning statement ‘I respect my community and other communities’.
We talked about what a community is and how we can show respect to our community and to others. Jack told us that we can respect the community by keeping it tidy and throwing rubbish in the bin. Brooklyn and Willow told us that we have to look after the things in the community and not break them.
We talked about needing to respect people in our communities and in other communities. Leah told us that some communities might have a different language to ours and that we need to respect their language. We made posters about how to respect or community and other communities.
Christmas Countdown
Amongst the fun and chaos of Christmas, Foundation have still been working hard in the classroom. This week F2 have learnt three new diagraphs; ng, ai, ee and Sid has also brought them the rocket word ‘was’. We’ve rounded up our learning on our focus number 6; demonstrating what we know pictorially, through number stories and through different ways of showing the same value. Don’t forget, you can see our work on our ‘Fabulous Focus Numbers’ in the maths area, within the classroom.
F1 have enjoyed some festive song circle time which had a counting focus. They’ve been working on their personal, social and communication skills with their key worker, discussing happiness and sadness and the things that can make us feel that way.
We’ve looked closely at the Christmas Story and written about the people and scenes within the Nativity.
As part of our Living and Learning focus, we’ve been thinking about our school community and appreciating all of the people who work here. The children thought of some interesting questions to ask Mrs Walshaw (who works in our office), Mrs Philip (our cook) and Mr Atkins (our site manager) who came to talk to us in class. Mr Atkins also let the children help him PAT test ‘Henry the Hoover’, which led to some great discussions about electrical safety and general safety of the school, being part of his role.
On Thursday we joined our whole school community and had a lovely Christmas dinner and dance party in the hall. Check out our happy faces!:
Christmas Performance- It’s a Party!
We’re super excited to show off all our hard work in the Christmas performances this week. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday 2-3 pm or Wednesday 6-7pm.
We understand it is difficult with the younger children but please do try to bring your children back to Wednesday’s later performance, so that the children, parents and carers at this showing can have the same experience.
Thank you for your support.
Home-link challenge
Please keep practising rocket words and reading at home. If your child has lines to say in our Christmas Production, please practise these at home.
Reading Books
Reading books were swapped on Friday and two were sent home for over Christmas (as long as previous books have been returned) If you have not returned book bags and reading books, please do. We will not be reading next week. You will only need to bring book bags on Friday, in order to take home any special learning from this term.
Christmas Stay, Play and Decorate
Don’t forget to join us on Thursday 20th December, 8.30-9.45am to look at learning journeys and join your child in some Christmas Craft fun! A letter about the session has been sent home. Please let one of the Early Years team know if you need a replacement.
Applications for F2 places- September 2019
You must apply for a school place, even if your child currently attends our setting in F1. Please see the details below:
(This poster is also available to view in the classroom)
Festive homework
We have had some great creative homework this week, where children have researched a festival or created their very own festival.
Some of the festivals presented include: Christmas, Snow and Ice festival, Eid, Leeds festival along with many more.
