Living and Learning – Strong emotions
In Living and Learning this half term, we’re learning about emotions and friendships.
We’ve talked about recognising emotions in ourselves and others and the benefits of speaking openly about them.
We discussed 6 key emotions
- Happy
- Excited
- Tender
- Scared
- Angry
- Sad
Empathy
What is empathy? Empathy is being able to know how someone else is feeling, even when you aren’t in the same situation. Sometimes we call empathy being able to “put yourself in someone’s shoes” and see things from their view.
We explored some situations in which children may have different emotions to one another. It’s important to be respectful of those emotions and acknowledge the importance of sharing them. Keeping feelings to yourself can have a negative impact on your mental wellbeing.
Where can I go for help with my emotions?
- talk to a trusted adult at school
- talk to a trusted adult at home
- talk to a friend
- put your worry in the Living and Learning box
Help at home by encouraging your child to express their emotions. Use the feelings wheel (above) to help. Compare the words in each segment of the feelings wheel – for example, does irritated feel different to furious?
World Book Day in Year 1!
Year One had a fantastic time celebrating World Book Day!
We started with a Love of Reading assembly, where we shared The Storm Whale by Benji Davies and performed our daily poem, There’s a Bear in There by Michael Rosen. The children were also so proud to present their own wonderful versions of The Storm Whale!
Next, we were lucky enough to listen to a seminar by Laura Baker, the author of The Full Stop that Got Away. The children loved hearing about how stories come to life and were inspired by her journey as a writer.
We then spent time in our very own reading café, exploring and sharing a variety of books with our friends. It was wonderful to see the children so engaged and excited about reading.
To finish the day, we designed front covers for the stories we wrote last half-term, using our imaginations to bring our ideas to life. What a fabulous day celebrating our love of books and stories!
Help at home:
- Read together every day and talk about the story.
- Ask your child to predict what might happen next in a book.
- Encourage them to create their own stories and illustrations.
- Visit the local library to discover new and exciting books!
World Book Day – Love of Reading Assembly
We can’t wait to talk to you about our favourite books and perform Joshua Siegal’s poem ‘Not Just a Book’.
World Book Day – Wordsearch
We’ve enjoyed talking about our favourite books and choosing some key words from the books to make a word search. This afternoon we are going to try completing our friends’ wordsearches.
World Book Day – Read How You Want
We’ve really enjoyed a relaxing start to our World Book Day! We chose a book from our Book Club collection or from our KS2 Honesty Library and read it wherever we wanted with whoever we wanted.
Reading in a ‘desk den’ was a popular choice …
… as was our favourite seat …
… and the brightly lit reflection area.
PE: Rugby skills
This half-term in PE, we’re focusing on developing our rugby skills. We began by getting familiar with the rugby ball—practicing throwing, catching, and bouncing. Working in pairs, we passed the ball to each other, improving our coordination and teamwork. To build awareness of space, we also played a game of piggy in the middle, challenging us to think strategically and move effectively.
Living and Learning: MindMate
This half term our Living and Learning lessons are based around the MindMate learning themes of emotions and friendships.
Our first lesson was based around strong emotions and exploring and describing how it feels to be sad/unhappy.
We thought about how others might express feelings of unhappiness and if they did feel unhappy, to practise asking, and listening to, others about what makes them unhappy.
We reinforced that everyone feels sad or unhappy at times and that’s natural.
In our circle time, on the same theme, the children suggested some things to do if they were feeling sad.
Would it help if…
- you walked away from the situation making you sad
- you talked to a friend or a trusted adult
- you wrote down how you felt
- you read a book
- you went for a walk
- you did some exercise like dancing
As part of this lesson, we did a mindfulness exercises taken from this website – mindful hearing.
Help at home – ask your child what they might do if they were feeling unhappy or if a friend was feeling unhappy.
Water Safety Week
This week is Water Safety Week.
We have been discussing how we can stay safe in and around water and reading some of the websites below.
https://www.rlss.org.uk/staying-safe-in-on-and-around-the-water
Help at home – Read through the webpages with your child.
Food technology – pasta bake
Our children have been busy in the kitchen today. They have been creating a very tasty pasta bake.
They have been draining through a colander, peeling, chopping using a claw grip, crushing garlic, tearing herbs and seasoning to taste.
Help at home – Encourage your child to help in the kitchen. Can they show you some of the skills they have learnt today?
The Train Ride
What a busy first week back it has been for team Reception! Our topic this half term is Let’s Go, Let’s Grow and our first focus book was The Train Ride by June Crebbin.
Our word of the week has been destination– the place someone is going.
We have also been historians this week and sorted out old and new trains. We looked at pictures of the early steam locomotive- Robert Stephenson’s Rocket. We compared it to the trains we use today.
Phonics
Spring 2 week 1 has been a review of phase 3 sounds: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, oo, ow, oi, ear, in words and sentences. We review tricky words daily.
Tricky words can be just that-tricky! We’ve previously introduced a few fun games you can play at home to practice tricky words.
Help at home– Play Bingo with your child using the game sent home, we love playing this game in school.
Reminders and Messages
Wednesday 5th March- Class Trip to The National Railway Museum.
World Book Day 2024- Thursday 06 March Please join us in the classroom, where you can relax and read books with your child. We’d also like your child to share their favourite book with their friends. Please send your child into school with their favourite book and please ensure the book is named. As stated on the school calendar, this not a dressing up year.
Have a happy and healthy week and thank you as always for your support.
Mrs. Kendrew, Mrs. Rippon, Mrs. Small and Mr. Smith.