Lower School Weekly News
News from Lower School this week: 9th February 2024
Miss Stewart
Deputy Head of Lower School
It has been a very busy run up to the half term break with a lot happening in each year group here at Lower School. The children have been excited to spot signs of Spring approaching and we are all excited for the warmer weather to arrive!
Thank you to all the parents who attended the Parents Evenings this week. I hope that you found them useful. If you were unable to attend then please contact your child’s teacher directly to arrange an alternative appointment.
Year 2 ran their first Cross Country race this week and were lucky enough to have good weather for the duration. I was so impressed by how far (and how fast) they ran and how all of the children completed the course, showing perseverance and dedication. They really deserved their hot chocolate and biscuits at the end of the session. It was wonderful to see them proudly sporting their medals and discussing their triumph with the adults. A very big thank you to the Year 2 parents for joining us and supporting the children, the APA for providing the hot chocolate and biscuits, and Mr Doyle and Mrs Fisher for organising the event.
I was delighted this week to watch the Year 1 assembly on Wednesday morning, joining the 1M parents to watch a truly wonderful performance on their topic Brilliant Britain! It was so impressive to see how much knowledge they have about the countries of the UK. I certainly learnt some new and interesting facts from them. Their singing was amazing too, providing us with a very catchy song which was beautifully performed. We were all so proud of them, and we look forward to their future assemblies. Thank you to Miss McDermott, Ms Georgeois and Mr Davies for organising this performance.
We wish Mrs Sareen the very best of luck as she starts her maternity leave. We will miss her very much but we look forward to meeting her new baby very soon. Mrs Sareen has asked me to pass on her gratitude to all the children for showing her such care and consideration over the past few months.
This half term has been a great start to the Spring Term and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the whole school community for their continued support.
Finally I would like to wish everyone a very happy and restful half term holiday. I look forward to seeing you on Monday 19th February.
Nursery
We have been so busy in Duckling Class this week. We have been learning all about Chinese New Year as well as thinking about Valentine’s Day and how much we love our parents. We also continued to explore Shark in the Dark and rhyming words.
For Chinese New Year we read a book and watched a short video on how some children celebrate. We talked about their special clothes and food and the fun things they do to make the day special. We also learnt about the parade and watched the dragons dancing. We decided to make our own dragon and practiced our dance which we did all together. It was lovely to see our Ducklings work together to make the dragon move.
As it’s Valentine’s Day next week we have also been thinking about all the nice things our parents do for us and how we can say thank you to them. In class we have been encouraging children to help each other without being asked and we have been so impressed by how kind they have been.
We have also been reading ‘Shark in the Dark’ and encouraging children to answer questions which might not be in the text e.g. 'Why is fish sad?' 'Where is the yacht going?' We will continue to do this with every book we read to help children develop their imagination.
We have also continued to work on counting and recognising numbers to 5. We have been hunting for numbers to 5 around the classroom finding them on phones, keyboard, cars and on puzzles.
It was lovely to share your child’s progress with you this week. Thank you so much for coming to Parents' Evening.
We wish you all a lovely half term break - Miss Molloy and the Nursery teamI wish you all a lovely weekend and we’ll see you all on Monday - Miss Molloy and the Nursery Team
Pre-Reception
Giraffe Class have had another busy week and our literacy sessions really focused on drawing our topic of ‘Real Life Superheroes’ to a close. The children have explored a variety of different people who help us in the community, such as: firefighters, dentists, doctors, nurses, teachers, the police, their parents and other important roles. They really enjoyed engaging in a hot seating activity, asking a variety of different questions to distinguish who the person was trying to be, using some picture prompts for support. The children then worked hard to draw a picture of someone who helps them in their community. It was truly wonderful to see who the children chose and they were keen to share their drawings with their peers.
Counting has been the main focus in our maths sessions this week and the children have really been working on their 1-1 correspondence. They really enjoyed rolling a dice and counting out the correct amount of objects, saying one number for each as they counted. This activity also helped the children with their ability to quickly recognise patterns on a die.
We have continued to make progress in phonics this week and the children have thoroughly enjoyed learning the sound, letter name and letter formation rhyme for ‘o.’ The children worked hard to identify different objects based on their initial sounds, sorting them into the correct groups independently. We have also been working on our blending skills, using our robot arms to help us blend the sounds in CVC words together.
We used the artistic technique of collage in our art session this week and the children created some splendid Valentine’s Day cards. It was so lovely to see them apply this skill independently and I’m sure you will agree that their final products were lovely.
Once again, thank you for your continued support during the first half of the Spring Term. I hope you all have a relaxing and enjoyable half term break - Miss Andrews and The Pre-Reception Team
Reception
The first half term of 2024 has come to an end and what an adventurous half term it has been! We’ve explored planets and galaxies, learnt about nutrition and even got a package from Mars!
We’ve been spreading the love in Literacy this week as we explored the book “Guess How Much I Love You!” By Sam McBratney. We shared what love means to us and how we can show it every day at school and home. We completed this week's literacy with some beautiful writing inside our Valentine’s Day cards. In phonics this week we have continued looking at more of our phase 3 digraph sounds including “sh” and “ch”. We’ve done some fantastic sounding out and challenged ourselves to write some sentences too! After half term, we look forward to exploring the sounds “th” and “ng”.
In Maths this week we’ve been focusing on our odd and even numbers, sorting Numicon, cubes and many other mathematical number representations into odd and even groups. We did a great job using practical resources to determine if bigger numbers were odd or even and did some great number pattern spotting on a hundred square.
Fiery mouths were created this week during our Art lesson as we explored the upcoming festival of the Lunar New Year. We used our creative and junk modelling skills to make paper cup dragons. We thought carefully about the best resource for creating the fire and the head.
We continued learning all about the Lunar New Year in our Early Years Assembly, looking at the different traditions and interesting ways people celebrate the new year.
We would like to thank you all for your continued support this half term. We cannot wait to continue on our adventures around space next half term too!
Wishing you all an enjoyable and restful half term - The Reception Team. The Reception team wishes everybody a lovely weekend.
Year 1
Our Creative Curriculum topic of ‘Brilliant Britain’ concludes this week. The children have enjoyed learning about British artists as well as discovering the different countries, flags, features and capital cities of the United Kingdom. They enjoyed performing ‘Our Journey Around the UK’ to their parents this week, sharing facts about each country and city.
Doubling and near doubles have been studied during Maths lessons, using a variety of techniques and resources, as well as completing mental arithmetic activities. The children particularly enjoyed our special board games, showing great team work and turn taking.
The children’s artwork has continued to improve this term, with a focus on British artists, more recently studying LS Lowry. The children enjoyed collaborating together to make a collage in the same style - Bravo!
During English the children finished the story maps of ‘Bringing the rain to Kapiti Plain’ and then wrote a book review including their favourite part of the story.
As always, Computing, French and P.E have been a big hit, with the children learning new skills and vocabulary every week.
Wishing our Year 1 families a restful half term break - The Year 1 Team
Year 2
Year 2 set records with their cross-country event this week; all children completed the course at lightning pace, defeating the Hill of Despair and surviving the Bog of Doom. Hot chocolates and cookies were very much deserved after such a valiant effort. It was wonderful to have so many parents there for support.
We are not just athletes in Year 2, though. We are also quadruple threats on stage, as our audience will discover next month when we perform our show Flying South. This week has seen us learn new choreography, play recorders, rehearse our lines, and sing our little hearts out.
Back in the classroom, we focused on statistics in our Maths lessons. We interpreted and created block graphs, and our skip counting was put to excellent use as we read and designed pictographs.
In Phonics, we practised silent k and g, and honed in on split digraph u_e. In English lessons, we consolidated our knowledge of vowels and consonants in order to understand when to use indefinite articles (a or an), and practised using apostrophes for contraction.
For our Creative Curriculum, we compared and contrasted the lives of children in Kenya with our own daily lives here in the UK. Our Africa topic has drawn to a close just in time for the African Cup of Nations final! The children have enjoyed following the tournament, predicting the scores, and cheering on their chosen teams.
Next term, we look forward to studying inspirational women throughout history, and examining microhabitats.
We hope that everybody has a lovely half term break! - From the Year 2 Team
