So this week we chose to read the story “Little Rabbit Foo Foo” in Drawing Club as it’s one of the children’s favourites and they love joining in with it. They had some great ideas for where the goblins might live, how he could travel quickly round the forest to apologise to the animals and some interesting ideas for the machine to turn him back to normal. For some reason I was being put in the machine!
Here’s a selection of some of their super writing and drawings:

In phonics we have learned the tricky words ‘out’, ‘do’, ‘what’, ‘when’ (which have been added to their sound card bags) and have been learning to read and write polysyllabic words. They are working hard on making sure they are using their ‘segmenting fingers’ first to listen for all the sounds in the words before writing them.

In Maths we have been learning about sharing equally, initially into two equal groups (halving) and then over the week we have looked at sharing into groups of 3,4 and even 5! We’ve also been recapping our doubles and number bonds to ten to help the children to remember them.

The children have enjoyed planting some seeds at the end of the week that will hopefully grow into flowers that will help attract bees, butterflies and other insects to our outdoor area. We talked about how to look after plants and what they need to grow. They took great care planting the seeds and watering them. Hopefully it won’t be long before we start to see some shoots.

Well done to all our Lucky Dip winners this week. Our highest number of children yet! Thank you so much for your support with this.
Books have been changed today. Please keep reading as much as you possibly can over the half term and practise the new tricky words to help your child become more confident and fluent when reading.

We have a large number of jumpers and cardigans (all unnamed) in the lost property box for our corridor at the moment. These have been displayed out on the fence of the nursery garden at home time the last two days but unfortunately very few have been claimed.
To avoid any further additions to the lost property box, please ensure your child’s clothing is named, especially as the weather is becoming warmer and children are removing their jumpers and cardigans more frequently.

We hope you all have a lovely half term break and look forward to seeing you back on Monday 5th June.

Miss Jones, Mrs Kenny and Miss Harrison

Well another week has flown by and we are just one week away from May half term. The children have really enjoyed The Three Billy Goats Gruff story so we continued with some more adventures this week before completing the whole school writing assessment based on a short animated clip. In Drawing Club they had some great ideas for creating a map for the goats friends to get to their new fields, making up a new monster to live under the bridge and imagining where the troll ended up after being pushed into the river and never seen again!

In Phonics the children have continued learning to read longer words and develop their fluency by sounding out in their heads. They have also been reading longer sentences and have been working on ‘holding a sentence’ by repeating it several times before they write, so they can write more accurately independently. Their new tricky words are ‘one’, ‘little’, ‘were’ and ‘there’. These have been added to their sound bags for practicing at home.

In Maths we have been learning about doubles, making them, identifying them with dice, dominoes and working on recall. As part of this whilst identifying the doubles on our numberline to 20, we have also learnt about odd and even numbers and have even started to count in 2’s using the circled numbers on the number line. Next week we will learn about sharing into equal groups including halving.

Yesterday we decided to let our lovely butterflies go off into the forest and school grounds as they were ready to fly and were a little bored of our orange and sugar water diet! The last three were a little reluctant to leave so we had some extra time with them before they were ready to fly off into the sunshine. The children were fascinated watching them and were so pleased when they actually witnessed the last butterfly emerging from it’s chrysalis on Monday. Huge thank you to Lily’s Nan for letting her share this experience with the whole class.

At the end of the week we also had a little Indian food tasting session. After smelling and exploring some common Indian spices the children then sampled a range of foods – poppadoms, curry, rice, raita, mango chutney and naan bread.

Everyone was great at giving things a try and found they actually liked more than they thought they would! Afterwards we sliced open a mango and everyone tried a little piece before they went home. We also had a letter from Barnaby our travelling bear who has gone exploring in India on our behalf. Keep an eye out on Tapestry for some of the super notes and letters that have been independently written back to him.

Well done to everyone who managed to read their phonics book at home at least five times last week and won a prize from the lucky dip box. I think it’s time to re-stock this weekend so there will be plenty more prizes to be won next week. Thank you so much for your support with this, it’s wonderful to see how much the children are now reading at home too.

Have a lovely weekend, it looks like the weather will be lovely so don’t forget the sun cream if you’re out and about!

Miss Jones, Mrs Kenny & Miss Harrison

This week we have been reading the traditional tale The Three Billy Goats Gruff in Drawing Club. The children have been working hard on including greater detail in their drawings and improving the presentation of their writing by using spaces between words and trying to keep their letters on the line.
They have learned the words luscious, creaky, fearless, gruesome, determined and bamboozled.

In phonics they have continued to work on Level 4, reading CCVC words this week and identifying the double consonant at the beginning of the word e.g ‘sw’ in swim, ‘tr’ in trip, train, tree, ‘st’ in step, stop, stick etc. They have also learned the tricky words some, come, have and like. All the level 4 tricky words they have learned so far have been added to their sound card bags so they can practice at home.

In Maths they started the week continuing to practice solving missing number addition stories, then we moved on to learning to subtract using the First, Then, Now structure introduced last week for addition. Some of the children are beginning to use their bank of number facts to solve problems, which is great but we are also working on making sure they can ‘prove it’ and show it on a ten frame, talk about it or record it in pictures or in a number sentence.

We had great fun in PE working on our running skills, making sure we run safely at speed avoiding obstacles and are getting better at working in teams in preparation for Sports Day which we will start to practice for after half term.

Well done to all the super readers who won a prize from the lucky dip box this week – keep it up over the weekend as we will be checking for winners again on Monday.

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Jones, Mrs Kenny & Miss Harrison

What a short but busy week! In Drawing Club we read the story ‘The King’s Runaway Crown’  the children drew and wrote about their favourite character, the palace and also a way to stop Colin the King’s dog from running away with the crown. There were some very interesting ideas! They learned the words anxious, regal, ceremony, pilfer, exquisite and scarper.

In Phonics we have started Level 4 and begun working on blending words with adjacent consonants e.g. jump, tent, help etc. The children are learning to sound out in their heads and just blend to read out loud so that they can begin to read more fluently. They have also learned the tricky words ‘said’ and ‘so’.

In Maths this week we have been solving addition problems through stories, using the First, Then, Now structure. E.g. FIRST there were 4 animals in the pen, THEN 2 more came, NOW there are …..? They solved these using double sided counters on a ten frame and matched the total to the correct numeral. Some children worked on recording the number sentences. They have been working on setting problems for a friend to solve and ended the week with trying to solve the problem when they didn’t know the second number  eg FIRST there were 5, THEN ???, NOW there are 8. They did find this quite tricky and we will continue working on this next week.

We received some photos from Barnaby yesterday from his trip to India and the children loved seeing what he’s been up to. They were keen to write him a little note to ask him more about what he has been doing and let him know what else they wanted him to find out for them.
We have also been learning about King Charles III and getting ready for the Coronation celebrations at the weekend. The children all looked great in their red, white and blue clothes and fantastic crowns.

Whatever you have planned we hope you have a lovely weekend and don’t forget to share some photos on Tapestry so the children can share with the rest of the class next week.

Have a great weekend.

Miss Jones, Mrs Kenny and Miss Harrison

Well it’s been lovely to see all the children back after the Easter break and catch up on all their news. We have had a busy week settling back into our daily routine and have started to talk about our theme this term “I wonder what’s hot”. In contrast to last terms cold topic we will be learning about India and have already talked briefly about a few of the similarities and differences between there and where we live. We have explored an artefacts box on loan from the school library service and talked a little about what things we would like to find out more about – the animals, food, clothes, weather, hobbies and what school is like.
Our story for Drawing Club this week was “Elmer” by David McKee. The children have really enjoyed drawing and writing about Elmer, designing a pattern machine, a celebration cake and then what Elmer turns into when he eats the cake. The children have been trying really hard to write independently using the sounds they know, they just need to remember to use spaces between their words to make their writing easier to read and help them keep track of where they are up to..

In Maths we have been exploring numbers beyond 10, mostly 11-20 but some are starting to go beyond this using blocks of tens and ones and also representing the numbers on a ten frame. We are learning the number names but also the relevance of the numerals e.g. 11 is one 10 and 1, 15 is one 10 and 5 etc. The children are getting more confident as the week has passed and we will continue to work on this for the next week or so.

On Monday we also went on a Spring walk around our school grounds to see what’s changed and what’s growing. The children loved seeing all the new buds and blossom and enjoyed listening to the birds tweeting.

We have now received all the resources for the Brilliant Brushers programme and if their consent form was completed and returned they have their home kit in their bags today for use at home.

Just a reminder to please write in your child’s reading record when you hear them read at home. I know things can be very busy but please try to do this as often as you can. We are aiming for them to be confident and fluent readers so the more they read a book the more confident and fluent they will become.

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Jones & Mrs Kenny