Forest School
The children have been enjoying their Forest School sessions on a Friday.
So far, they have enjoyed den building, peeling a stick and decorating using coloured wool and using flint and steel to start a fire on a cotton wool bud.
Help at home: Talk with your child about how to keep safe while at Forest School. For example listen to the adult instructions, only light fires with a flint under adult supervision.
We are geographers
Year 1 have been learning about the countries that make up the United Kingdom and their capital cities.
Help at home
Quiz your child on their knowledge of capital cities. Can they tell you the four capital cities of the countries in the United Kingdom?
Today, the children have been locating and naming the seas that surround the United Kingdom.
Help at home
Using the images below, ask your child to match the body of water to the correct location. The children have really enjoyed using Google Earth to explore scale and size of different locations. Why not go on an exploration at home? By zooming in on planet Earth slowly, the class were amazed by the amount of water there is on our planet.
Finally, we spent some time looking at an atlas. Some of the children were able to locate the UK and the surrounding seas.
Spellings for the first half term
Below are the 40 spellings for this half term. Please continue to learn these at home. There will be a test every Friday on 8 random words from the list. If your child is finding it difficult to learn the words, have a look at our Super Spelling Strategy document on the school website – it’s got some great ideas!
Loving Latin
The children have really enjoyed learning Latin this week and discovering that many words we use today are heavily influenecd by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Here are some examples:
Tele (far away) – television, telephone, telescope
Micro (small) – microphone, microscope, microbe
Tri (three) – triangle, triplets, tripod
As a class, we enjoyed learning, collaborating and then sharing our thoughts and findings.
At home, see what your child can remember.
The Everywhere Bear
This week we have loved listening to our class story The Everywhere Bear by Julia Donaldson. We have enjoyed remembering all the different place he visited. We made some story maps to help us re-tell the story.
We even went on our own journey around school and found the slide! It was great fun having a little play on it! We have talked about maps and made some of our own.
“I’ve made a map of Wetherby, Mrs Kendrew you are the blue spot.’
‘I have made a treasure map!’
‘My map has a big hole; it goes all around the classroom!’
Phonics
This week the children have learnt the phonemes (the sound a letter makes) g, o, c and k. The children have been listening to and saying words that begin with these phonemes (the sound a letter makes). They have also been practicing writing the graphemes (the written letter). We have also learnt our new tricky word ‘is’ the tricky bit in this word is the ‘s’ phoneme because it sounds like a ‘z’.
You may choose to play an I Spy game at home using these new phonemes (the sound a letter makes).
Today we also visited the school library, the children really enjoyed picking a book to bring home. These books are our reading for pleasure books, we hope you enjoy reading them. Please can they be returned on Thursday with reading records so they can be changed and updated. Thank you.
Poetry Basket
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite the poem each day. By saying the poem out loud we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line.
This week or poem was Pointy Hat
A little old lady with a tall pointed hat,
Knocked on my door with a rat-a-tat-tat.
I peered through the window to see who was there,
And off on her broomstick she flew through the air.
Maths
This week we have been focussing on our counting skills – to find out ‘how many’ objects there are.
We have explored how all sorts of things can be counted, including sounds. By singing rhymes, we have enjoyed developing our knowledge of the counting sequence.
Help at home phonics sheet
Today, your child has come home with a new ‘learn at home’ phonics sheet. The sheets link to our current learning in phonics. Please support your child by practising their new sounds and reading skills at home.
Home-Link
Autumn is here and the children have enjoyed exploring acorns and conkers. If you have chance, go on an autumn walk and collect, draw or discuss all the signs of autumn. You may choose to collect items to bring into school or email pictures.
Reminders
We will be doing PE on Monday, so please send your child to school wearing their PE kit and trainers. They will stay in this all day. Please can we also remind every to only put water inside water bottles, thank you.
Stay and Learn Sessions
This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child Learning in school.
Phonics Phase 2- 12.10.23- 8.50am-9.30am
Maths- 15.11.23 2.20pm-3.00pm
Phonics Phase 3- 16.1.24 2.20pm-3.00pm
Early Writing- 05.02.24 2.20pm-3.00pm
World Book Day 07.03.24 -8.50am-9.20am
Learning Journey Drop In’s
An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’ learning journal with them.
Times- 8.45am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm (Tuesday and Thursday)
Week beginning 11.12.23
Week beginning 25.03.24
Week beginning 08.07.24
Don’t forget to email your pictures from home stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org thank you, have a lovely weekend!
Mrs. Kendrew, Mrs. Rippon and Miss. Feldman
I’ll huff and I’ll puff!
Nursery have had a busy week of learning. The children have been engrossed in purposeful play within our circle time’s and within provision. As we’re getting to know everyone, we like to talk about our families and home life.
To encourage children to tell us more about their family life, please e-mail or bring a photograph of your child with their family to Nursery next week. Our email is: stjamesnursery@spherefederation.org
We will use these to create our own family trees to display in the classroom.
Our focus story this week has been The three little pigs. The children really enjoyed listening to the story and thinking about what might happen next. We used our themed tuff tray to role-play the story in provision.
Just a little reminder…
Have a happy and healthy weekend!
Miss Ward
Maths: Place Value
This half term, we’re focussing on Place Value in Maths. Numbers are very important so it is important we know everything we can about numbers 0-100. We have been using base ten, place value charts and part-part-whole models to recognise which number represents the ‘tens’ and which represents the ‘ones’. We’re now thinking about how a number can be partitioned flexibly and we’ve used base tens and part whole models to show this practically.
Help at home: draw a part whole model and partition numbers to 100. Use the stem sentence to consolidate the learning.
Topic: Seas surrounding the UK and maps
We’re really enjoying our Geography topic. We’ve enjoyed using an atlas to locate and name the four seas surrounding the UK.
Help at home: Can your child name the four seas surrounding the UK? (Irish Sea, English Channel, Atlantic Ocean and North Sea)
We’ve also used Google Earth to help us understand what a map is and we’ve looked at some examples of maps to help us learn how to read a map key.
We looked at a map and used the key provided to answer the questions. We then added some of our own symbols to the key and thought about why maps are useful.
Help at home: Talk with your child about how maps are useful to help us to keep safe? What should you do if you were lost and you didn’t have a map? Here are some of the responses we talked about in class.
“They show you where to go to keep you safe. Like where the hospital or fire station is.”
“They help you if you are lost!”
“You could ask someone around you for help (if there is someone to ask).”
“You should stay where you are and your grown-ups will come and find you.”
RE – The Creation Story
This half term, we are reading, learning and thinking about The Creation Story (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip).
In our lessons so far, we have ordered the Creation Story and thought about the following questions:
We’ve also looked at two pieces of art by artists who used The Creation Story as inspiration. Thinking about the following questions together:
‘Breisheit’ (In The Beginning) by Jackie Olenick
‘Premordial chaos’ by Judy Racz
“It’s all the days of the story in one painting. I can see the sea, the sky and the land”
“I like how the colours are nice and bright”
“I can see the different days from the story in each picture”
We then created our own piece of art.
Help at home – Ask your child to retell The Creation Story to you. What do they think the story tells us about God?
How can we look after our world?
This half term, we are thinking all about The Creation Story. We have been learning what happened on each of the seven days that the world was created by God.
This week, we thought about how it feels when people do not respect things we have made. This led us to consider how people do not always look after the world God created. We looked at pictures of pollution and thought about rules God might have for his world.
We then made some fabulous posters about how we should look after the world.
