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.
Musical stars!
Yesterday, we played music all day long – it was fantastic!
We learnt how to play different chords on the guitar and keyboard so we could play along to various pop songs. At the end of the day, we performed to the rest of the school and to some of our parents.
This was a music project supported by Leeds Artforms.
“It was fun and I loved playing along to the Christmas song- Last Christmas!”
“I enjoyed playing the keyboard because I could play the music. I liked playing the Taylor Swift song.”
Living and Learning: I respect myself and others.
Our Living and Learning theme this week was all about Respect. When we hear the word what does it mean to us? We began by filling pieces of paper on the things we already know. By the end of the session we filled in the ‘gaps’ with the things we had learnt.
After our ‘silent statement’ circle activity, we discussed some of the things that arose.
How do we show ourselves Respect?
“By looking after our body, doing things that keep us healthy”. Emily
Would you ever respect someone who is unkind to others?.
“No because that would mean their behaviour is ok. People should treat other people how they wanted to be treated”. Lily
Should we only show respect to living things?
“No. We should respect our things, things at school and the environment”. Hannah
As usual, another mature and sensible session. Well done 3/4!
Our smells poems
Here are is a selection of some of the wonderful poetry work we have composed this week based on the poem ‘Smells’.
We all started the poem in exactly the same way as the poet and then added our own ideas from then onwards.
Why is it that the poet tells
So little of the sense of smell?
These are the odours I love so well
The smell of oranges freshly ripe – Erin
Apples sunset red and juicy – Oliver
The fragrance or a rich chocolate cake – Hannah
Melon mouthwatering and sweet – Jessica
Let’s investigate!
This week, we’ve been investigating air resistance in our Forces topic.
‘The bigger the parachute, the slower it will fall.’
In groups, we investigated if this was true or not.
We discovered that the bigger parachute fell to the ground slower than the smaller parachute. We concluded that the bigger parachute had a larger surface area, therefore there’s more air resistance. The more air resistance there is, the slower an object will move.
Funky Phonics!
Thank you to the parents who came to our ‘Funky Phonics’ Stay and Play. We’re so proud of how far the children have come already in their phonics and pleased that they had the opportunity to share their learning with you.
Our next Stay and Play is our Christmas Stay and Decorate! A chance to look at your child’s learning journey and make some lovely Christmas crafts to take home with you. It is taking place on Thursday 20 December, 8.30-9.45 am.
As always, you’re welcome to stay for the whole session or a little while.
We hope you will join us for some festive fun 🙂
Smells and tastes
After finishing our work on diaries based on our class novel ‘Friend or Foe’, we’ve been enjoying a poem called ‘Smells’ by Christopher Morley. In it, he talks about all of the smells which he loves, freshly ground coffee and campfire embers to name just two.
So we could write our own version, we sampled lots of different fruits with distinctive smells: apples, oranges and melons. We recorded a huge amount of vocabulary that could be made into expanded noun phrases and then played around with the words to fit into the style of poem we were writing.
And of course we got to eat the fruit afterwards!
Living and Learning: I respect myself and others
Cricketing superstars!
Year 1 and 2 have had an experience of cricket: they enjoyed a cricket workshop from Chance to Shine.
The children learnt new skills from their coach including how to catch and how to hit a ball using a cricket bat.
Here are some pictures of our workshop in action.
