Living and Learning
Our Living and Learning theme this week: I know what a drug is.
In Years 5/6, we have been discussing different influences which could make us want to smoke or drink. We sorted images from various forms of media to recognise what a positive influence looks like and what a negative influence looks like.
We realised it isn’t just media that can influence us. After group discussion and an organising activity, we all agreed that friends could possibly be the biggest influence on the decisions we make.
We thought about why somebody would want to avoid smoking or drinking alcohol. Some of the suggestions were religion, health, money, against the law, and not wanting to get into trouble with parents.
We came up with different ways people could respond if they wanted to avoid smoking.
“It’s not good for me, I’m trying to be healthy.”
“I don’t like the taste or smell of smoke.”
“It’s against my personal belief.”
Then, we shared our thoughts by doing a conscience alley.
Thank you…
To the parents and children who came to our Marvellous Maths Stay and Play this afternoon.
The children did a great job of showing their maths skills in lots of different ways and it was lovely to catch up with our parent partners about learning both at school and at home.
EasyPeasy
You should have received a letter and information booklet introducing you to the new and FREE educational app called ‘EasyPeasy’.
‘EasyPeasy’ is going live this Saturday 26th January. If you have not opted out you will receive a text message inviting you to access the many educational game ideas that you can do at home.
Each week, you will receive a text message with a new game that you can play in any location with everyday items that you’ll already have at home. EasyPeasy is designed to support learning through play!
This week the activity will be ‘stepping stones (F2) or lunch time (F1)’. Let us know how you get on by commenting on the game. Look out for our comment with suggestions of how to adapt the game!
Snack-time learning!
In Foundation, we like to make sure our day is full of fun learning at every opportunity. This includes tidy-up times and snack times.
At snack time we often have a maths link. We take part in counting activities to see how many pieces of fruit have been handed out, work out which snack was most popular and what the difference is between them.
After visiting another school last week and ‘magpieing’ this fab idea, we had a go at writing Rocket Words on our banana skins for our friends to guess. The children loved ‘having a go’ at writing on such an unusual material and showing their friends what they know! A quick 2 minute activity that used both our reading and our writing skills 🙂
Parent Reminder
Please join us in the classroom tomorrow, for our Marvellous Maths Stay and Play, 3.15-3.45pm.
Our class novel
We have now begun our new big topic based around our class novel – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. From what we have read so far, we are all completely hooked by the odd characters and vivid descriptions. We are all eager to see what happens to Charlie and the other wicked children. During the topic we will: conduct science investigations, make collages, make chocolate bars and write all about Charlie’s adventures.
Of course, the book is written by the wonderful children’s author, Roald Dahl. It would be well worth a visit to Wetherby Library to choose more books written by Roald Dahl. You may even discover another children’s author whose work you enjoy.
Super Mathematicians
This week, year 2 are learning all about their times tables.
We have learnt how to work out our 2 times table, 5 times table and 10 times table.
Now, our challenge is to know these off by heart! Without thinking or working out the answer!
A game we enjoy playing to help us do this is Hit the Button. Click on the name of the game to play. It’s free and will help us with our learning!
How can we clean water?
In science, our task was to clean some very dirty water by sieving, filtering and evaporating. The water had a range of materials in it: sand, salt, mud, leaves and twigs.
Once we had sieved and filtered the materials from the water we still needed to remove the salt. We use evaporation to separate the salt and the water.
Living and Learning: I can make things better.
This weeks living and learning statement is ‘I can make things better’. We talked about the different things that this might mean.
Jack suggested that, “We can try and help school be better by tidying up after ourselves”.
Brooklyn said that, “We can make school better by not throwing rubbish on the floor and by making good choices”.
Harley thought that we could make other people feel better by asking if they are okay or asking them to play.
Dexter felt we could make learning better by making good choices.
Leah said, “We can make arguments better by trying to calm them down”.
We discussed how to make things better when we have had an argument or upset somebody. Eliza said, “You can tell them you don’t want to fall out”. Dexter said you could say sorry. We then talked about how you have to show that you are sorry as well as saying that you are sorry. This might be by doing something nice for that person or as Harley suggested – “Not doing it again”.
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…
