Lower School Weekly News

News from Lower School this week: 2nd February 2024

Miss Stewart

Deputy Head of Lower School

It has been a very busy week here at Lower School. The children have been enjoying the mild weather with adventures in the garden and a flurry of exciting activities both inside and outside of the classroom.

This week I was delighted to be able to join Pre-Reception on their visit to Paddington Fire Station. It was a wonderful morning and the children had the opportunity to explore the fire truck, spray water with the hoses and watch the firefighters slide down the poles! A very big thank you to the firefighters at Paddington Fire Station for making us so welcome and helping us to learn even more about real life superheroes. Another very big thank you to the two Pre-Reception parents who helped on this trip, we really appreciate you giving up your time to make this event so successful. We were all so proud of the children on this visit, their behaviour was outstanding, they asked some excellent questions and they even recited a poem about firefighters to show their gratitude. Well done, Pre-Reception!

On Friday, the Nursery children went to Forest School for their second session. They had such a fun time exploring the forest and we could not be more proud of them. They listened carefully and really impressed their teachers and the forest school leaders.

Parents Evening will take place in person next week on Monday 5th February and also on Wednesday 7th February. Thanks to everyone who has booked a Parents’ Evening appointment so far. There are still some appointments available for both days so if you have not already requested an appointment to meet with your child’s teacher and you would like to, you can arrange this through the online booking system, if you have any problems accessing or using this system then please contact the IT team on helpdesk@abercornschool.com. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible.

This week, Abercorn has been celebrating Wellbeing Week. The theme for Wellbeing Week is ‘My voice matters’ and focuses on empowering children and young people by providing them with the tools they need to express themselves. We were delighted to see the children (and staff) using clothing and colour to express themselves on Friday 2nd February, kindly donating £2 for Place2Be. Dress to Express is an opportunity for self-expression, celebrating a diverse range of emotions, and provides a great opportunity to be open about mental health within our school community.

Year 2 are really looking forward to their Cross Country event next week. We are keeping our fingers crossed for dry weather! The children have been practising with Mr Doyle and are excited to take part. Thank you so much to the APA for providing them with a well deserved hot chocolate after their run.

Next week, we are also looking forward to Y1M’s class assembly. I know they have been working hard and are excited to share their learning.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Nursery

We have had such a lovely week in Duckling Class. We have been exploring the book ‘Shark in the Dark’ by Nick Sharrat. We read the story by torch light and encouraged the children to join in with the repeated refrain. It is wonderful to see how much they love these stories and how often they retell them to each other during integrated learning.

We have also been trying so hard to identify rhyming words as part of our phonics lessons. We have been doing this through discrete phonics lessons and when we explore books together. Rhyming is a very difficult concept to master but something that is very important for children’s literacy development.

We have also been playing lots of turn taking games that involve shapes and colours. We have been so impressed with how well the children can not only identify shapes and colours but also their turn taking ability. We will continue to play turn taking games each week and encourage children to play in slightly larger groups.

On Friday we were so excited to visit Forest School at Holland Park. We took part in lots of activities such as a scavenger hunt for different colours in the forest. We also made our own paint from soil and water and decorated many of the trees in the forest. Then we explored the forest in small groups and finally played hide and seek in the forest. The children absolutely loved their time in the forest and the teacher was so impressed with our little Ducklings enthusiasm and behaviour. We can’t wait to go back again.

Next week we will continue to explore Shark in the Dark and explore shadows and light and dark. We will also be learning all about Chinese New Year and how some children celebrate. In addition we will be thinking about the people who love us and make Valentine's Day cards for our families.

I wish you all a lovely weekend, Miss Molloy and the Nursery Team

Pre-Reception

Have you ever met a real life superhero? Well, Giraffe Class definitely have as they were lucky enough to visit Paddington Fire Station on Wednesday! They got to meet the firefighters who work at the fire station, have a look at the fire trucks and they even had a go at spraying the hose themselves! We are planning on writing thank you cards to the firefighters next week, expressing how much we enjoyed the visit and to show our gratitude for everything they do to keep us safe.

We have been exploring the concept of ‘less’ in our maths sessions this week, using the ladybird toys to help us grasp a better understanding of what ‘less’ means. We displayed a specific amount of ladybirds in the middle of our circle, before one miraculously flew away. We then constructed a sentence to express what we could see, for example “4 is one less than 5, 4 is a smaller number than 5.”

Our phonics journey continued this week and the children were as excited as ever to learn a new sound. This week focused on the ‘g’ sound and the children did a great job at creating a collaborative poster, listing objects that start with the letter ‘g.’ We also engaged in a variety of blending activities to help support our reading, and some children even attempted to write CVC words.

Although our trip to the fire station was incorporated into our literacy lessons this week, we have also been busy exploring our new book ‘What the Ladybird Heard.’ We have been focusing specifically on the different animals in the story, thinking about how they help each other and discussing how the police help at the end of the story. We will continue to explore this book next week, thinking about how people in our community help us.

The children had a go at drawing and painting their very own farm animal this week. They worked hard to ensure their animal had all of the correct features and they used their imagination to select their own colours, creating some wonderful pink sheep and orange cows.

As always, I wish you all a wonderful weekend - Miss Andrews and the Pre-Reception Team

Reception

Zooming around space really can be busy business. This week in Reception the children have loved exploring planets and continued to make all their teachers so proud with their hard work, kindness and determination.

In literacy this week we had a special delivery! The office received an interesting package for Reception this week, inside was a letter, a mission and a walkie-talkie. Kevin from ‘The Way Back Home’ needed our help! We worked as a team to fix his walkie-talkie and wrote some fantastic messages which we sent to him when we sent back his fixed walkie-talkie.

In phonics, we’ve been on sound hunts around the classroom and have loved using our letter formation rhymes to practise writing some of those tricky letters. Next week we will continue learning our Phase 3 sounds, exploring digraphs ‘ch’ and ‘sh’ and the tricky word ‘she’.

Our addition journey continues in Maths as we explore the written form of number sentences. We have wowed our teachers this week as we enjoyed exploring the different practical methods and resources we can use to complete a number sentence.

Our planets came to life this week during our Art lessons as we used our imaginative and creative minds to add detail to our balloon-marbled planets we created last week. We used a variety of different media including pastels, tissue paper and chalk to add different features like you’ve never seen them before including aliens, rivers, trees and much much more!

Dress to Express! We ended the week with some great outfits and the teachers loved seeing and hearing how the children expressed their unique selves through the way they dress.

Wishing you all an enjoyable and restful weekend! - The Reception Team

Year 1

Another busy week in Year 1, with the children embracing every aspect of the curriculum with positivity.

We explored some interesting illustrations during English this week, from illustrator Beatriz Vidal and used our inference skills to create our very own mini stories. The children then enjoyed reading ‘Bringing the rain to Kapiti Plain’ by Verna Aardema and finding rhyming words throughout this traditional African tale.

The children explored magnets during Science, sharing their knowledge of which materials may be magnetic and why.

Geography knowledge is being absorbed as we learn our lines for our class assembly, reciting facts about different areas of the United Kingdom, we can’t wait to perform for our families next week!

The children’s artwork has continued to improve this term, with a focus on British artists, more recently studying LS Lowry. We look forward to making our collaborative art piece next week

Wellbeing week has been embraced during PSHE with Mrs Wrottsley, with children creating their patterned hearts and sharing ideas for our ‘Your Voice Matters’ display as well as enjoying mindful activities.

Have a super weekend! The Year 1 team

Year 2

Year 2 have thrown themselves into Wellbeing Week’s central theme of finding their voices this week. We read “The Lion Inside”, and realised that its message is to speak our thoughts confidently instead of hiding away or shouting angrily.

We also used this book as inspiration to write our own adventure stories. We drew on our scientific knowledge of different habitats and how animals are adapted to survive in them. Our creative adventure stories are absolutely fantastic! Of course, we applied our phonics knowledge when writing, and focused this week on split digraphs and ‘ture’ endings.

In Maths, we examined the inverse relationship of multiplication and division, using this knowledge to create fact families from bar models, and solving worded questions. We know that division can be achieved through skip counting, grouping or sharing, and are now well equipped to choose the best strategy.

In Art, we completed our African fruit baskets and filled them with 3D fruits that we painted and decorated.

So much of our learning has found its way into our Year 2 show which we have begun rehearsing. The children have contributed their own ideas about their characters, and some have even written their own lines. It is going to be quite the spectacle.

Our cross-country preparations have gone well, and we are excited for next week’s event!