Writing money as decimals
Year 4 have been learning how to write a given amount of money in decimal notation. The children explored the use of pounds and pence notation and this helped to develop their understanding that the digits following the decimal point represent part of a pound.
Help at home
Next time you go shopping keep the till receipt or use the ones below.
Ask your child some of the following questions.
- Which is the most expensive item?
- Convert £1.99 into pence.
- How would you write 13p as a decimal?
- Which item has the most tenths?
- What is the total cost for two pizzas?
- Which item has no tenths and no hundredths?
- How many pounds and pence in 474p?
Summer Term 1 – Week 1 The Bad Tempered Ladybird
Welcome back!
We hope you all had a wonderful Easter break and enjoyed the sunny weather! This term our topic focuses on ‘Life on Earth’. Our focus story is all about a ladybird who isn’t very happy but realises that it is much better to share than fight with our friends.
We have enjoyed lots of outdoor learning this week. We had a walk around school to see which mini beasts we could find. We talked about the different places we might find them. We were very excited when we reached the pond area to find lots of tadpoles in there.
We thought about different places bugs might like to live and if they ever go on holiday? We decided to create some bug hotels! We were very excited when Mr Atkins gave us a demonstration on how to safely use hand drills and screwdrivers to create our own bug hotel for outside.
We have been exploring different materials to create some models. We really enjoyed using clay and exploring different ways to create joins.
I bet you have all been wondering how our grass heads are doing. Well over the holidays they all grew hair! It was so exciting to come into class and see our new friends. We decided that they needed a visit to the salon and practised our scissor cutting skills by giving them a hair cut!
Our poem this week was called ‘pitter patter’. We hope you like it.
History: What is a carnival?
We’ve kicked off this topic’s learning in fine style! This history driven topic will explore carnivals from around the world but also closer to home – The Leeds West Indian Carnival.
Why not search online about carnivals – we looked at carnivals in Rio de Janeiro, Venice and Leeds. Quiz your child on what things make up a great carnival!
Be sure to chat to your child about the key vocabulary we’ll be using throughout…
But he was still hungry!
Welcome back Nursery! We hope you had a lovely break over the Easter half term.
This week we introduced our new topic ‘ wheels, wings and other things’. Our first focus book was ‘The very hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle.
Here is what we got up to …
We created our own caterpillars using loose parts and play dough. We took the children down to the big playing field to start our minibeast hunt, the children ticked off the minibeasts they found along the way. We also went to check out school pond to see if there were any tadpoles- safe to say we will be seeing lots of frogs very soon!
The Caterpillar goes into a cocoon and then comes out as a Butterfly – Gracie
It gets really hungry, it’s going to eat 5 oranges next- Joshua
Look Miss Harvey, there is a millipede here. It has lots of legs!-Deacon
1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums, 4 strawberries and 5 oranges but he’s still hungry – Zubi
The butterfly is symmetrical because it’s the same on both sides- Austin
Notice
As the weather is starting to become warmer, please could you ensure your child/children bring a sun hat to school clearly labelled. We do have a sun hat box if you would like to leave it with us.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Miss Ward
Finding fractions!
This week, in Maths, we’ve been learning all about how to find fractions of amounts! We’ve been using our knowledge of division and sharing to help us.
We’ve been learning about halves (two equal parts), quarters (four equal parts) and thirds (three equal parts).
We thought about the amount being our whole. We found a fraction of our amount by sharing and dividing.
Help at home: find fractions in your food! For example, cut your pizza, toast or sandwiches into half (two equal parts) or into quarters (four equal parts)!
Topic
We have started out new history topic all about real life heroes. The first important person we’re learning about is Nelson Mandela. You can find more about him here. He believed that everyone should be treated the same. We will be learning about equality, apartheid and the suffragettes.
English
Wow, what a fab start to our Summer term. We have written a recount about our Easter holidays, remembering to use adjectives and conjunctions. Have a look at some of our work!
In English, we have started to read our new book Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World by Kate Pankhurst. We read about Frida Kahlo and Coco Chanel. We used the dictionary to look up the meanings of some words we weren’t quite sure about and added them to our word wall.
We are biologists!
Biologists study living things, including people, animals, and plants. This half term, Year 1 and 2 will be studying plants.
On Tuesday, we began looking at the different things plants need to grow. We have created an experiment looking at what an onion bulb needs to grow.
We planted four onion bulbs in different conditions. 
We have four environments for our bulbs to grow:
- no light, no soil, no water
- no water, no soil
- no soil
- water, light, soil
After we’d planted them, we made predictions on which bulb we thought would grow the best or wouldn’t grow. Each week, we will be observing our bulbs to see which are growing.
Help at home
Explore plants that you have in the garden or that you see on your walk to school. Observe how plants change over time and talk about what things they need to grow and survive.
We are physicists!
Physics is the study of forces and energy and this half term Year 4 are being physicists in their science. The main focus of the sessions will be forces and magnets.
On Monday, the class learnt what a force is and explored different forces. What is a force?
Help at home.
A push, pull and twist are all contact forces. Discuss this with your child. Can they tell you why the word contact is used to describe the force?
Explore these forces at home and please send in any photos of your child doing this task. We love to celebrate extra learning done at home!
Easter brings new life
This week our focus book has been ‘ The Easter Story’. The children have been getting very creative making Easter cards, building churches and designing our own Easter eggs!
We may of had a sneaky visit from the Easter bunny! The children got to work on the hunt to find our colourful eggs around our outdoor provision
Easter means new life and babies like baby chicks- Gracie
Jesus woke up again- Sophie
He died on a big cross- Austin
Hot cross buns!-Beau
You may of also heard the children coming home singing a song about a spring chicken. Reception, KS1 and KS2 visited the church on Wednesday to take part in their Easter service. They have all been practicing the song to perform at church, so nursery joined in and they loved it!
Here it is to share with your children at home …
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip
We have had a wonderful few weeks in Nursery. We wish everyone a happy and healthy Easter and a well deserved break! We look forward to welcoming the children back as we may have some special visitors…. here is a clue!
Miss Ward