Lower School Weekly News

News from Lower School this week: 18th March 2024

Miss Stewart

Deputy Head of Lower School

A very big thank you to the wonderful APA for the Quiz Night on Thursday this week. We are so lucky to have such a dedicated Parents Association. Thank you to everyone who came along, we hope you had a lot of fun!

On Wednesday, every Lower School Class had an animal encounter session https://www.gargsanimalencounters.co.uk/ . We met an owl, a chinchilla, a python, a Madagascan tenrec, a tortoise to name just a few! Our animal experience teacher was called Garg and he taught us all about the different animals, their habitats, how they stay safe, what they eat etc. The children (and staff) really enjoyed the sessions and loved meeting the different animals. As always, I was so impressed with the children’s behaviour as well as their sense of responsibility and kindness when touching the animals. More information on these sessions can be found in the year group posts. What a fun and action packed session we had with lots of new experiences!

This week we have also welcomed a videographer into school. We would like to say thank you to all the parents who met with him before school on Thursday. We really appreciate you giving your time to do this.

This week concluded with the Year 2 show and what an amazing extravaganza it was, I was incredibly impressed with the children’s acting, their singing, music playing and their dancing. We are so proud of all they have achieved as they head towards their final term at Lower School. Ms Seguier from the Senior School was delighted to attend and was full of praise for their performance! Thank you and very well done to the Year 2 children, the Y2 staff and Mr Davies.

Next week, the Spring Term reports will be available for all Year 1 and above families. These can be accessed through the Parent Portal in the usual way. If you require any support with accessing the Parent Portal, please contact the IT team on helpdesk@abercornschool.com and they will be happy to support you.

Next week is also the final week of the Spring Term, the children will finish school on Thursday 28th March which will be a half day. Dismissal times for next week along with late room and club information was sent to all families by email earlier this week.

Thank you so much for your continued support. I wish you all a fantastic break and look forward to welcoming everyone back for the Summer Term!

Nursery

What a busy week we have had in Duckling Class! On Monday we got a letter from Jack thanking us for returning the hen and the golden egg. In the letter, it explained that he was going to share the hen with The Giant and that they were now friends. As a thank you Jack was sending us his friend the animal man to come and visit us. The children have absolutely loved Jack and the Beanstalk and it has inspired so much writing, drawing and most importantly talking. We have a few other very exciting things happening early in the summer term so watch this space….

This week we have also focused heavily on number recognition and counting out small amounts. We have been looking at different representations of numbers such as on fingers, on spots on dice, and on tally charts and trying hard to sort them into the correct groups. This is something we will continue to work on but we have been so impressed with how well children have welcomed this challenge so far. We will continue to explore numbers in greater depth each day, for example, a 3 is a two and one and a 2 is a one another one in order to ensure our Ducklings have the best foundation on which to build upon in Pre-Reception.

We have also been continuing to explore plants and what they need to grow. Our beanstalks are thriving and they have grown so tall we have had to tie them to a climbing support. We hope you enjoy growing them at home over the Easter holidays. Please be careful no giant climbs down them as it won’t be long before they reach the sky.

The Animal Man’s visit on Wednesday was definitely the highlight of the week. The children were so excited to see what animals he brought us and they were so gentle and brave when touching them. The animals were:

A Tropical Screech Owl
A Hissing Cockroach
A Red Foot Tortoise
A Blue Tongued skink (lizard)
Chinchilla
A Lesser Tenrec (it looked like a hedgehog but we learnt it is more closely related to the elephant than the hedgehog)
And A Royal Python.

Next Week is our last week before the Easter break. We will be continuing to focus on counting number recognition and trying very hard with our drawings. Alongside this, we will be creating Easter-themed crowns and hunting for Easter eggs in the garden. It is hard to believe that this term is already coming to an end. We are so proud of how hard each of our little Ducklings has worked and how much progress they have made. We can’t wait to continue to support their development in the Summer Term.

Have a lovely break - Miss Molloy and the Nursery Team

Pre-Reception

Giraffe Class have had a very busy week and have started to engage in some exciting Easter related activities. They made their own special Easter eggs and enjoyed making their own chicks, which they will get to bring home next week.

Our Phase 2 Phonics journey has continued this week and the children have loved learning another new sound. They have been familiarising themselves with the ‘r’ sound, letter name and letter formation rhyme. We have also engaged in some initial sound sorting activities, allowing children to become more comfortable with the ‘r’ sound. The children have been working hard to read CVC words with the Phase 2 sounds we have already covered. We have focused on using our robot arms to blend the sounds in CVC words, matching them to the corresponding picture.

Superworm has continued to be our focus book this week and the children have had a go at innovating the story. As a class, we chose an animal that we wanted to change Superworm into. We then had a go at retelling the story using our new character, ‘Superbutterfly!’ The children were individually given the chance to change the character to an animal of their choice and they really enjoyed using their imagination.

We really challenged ourselves during our Maths sessions this week and the children used dice to work on their addition skills. They rolled two dice and then counted the dots to find the total amount. We also looked carefully at how to form our numbers 1-10, using rhymes to help us! The children even had a go at writing these numbers themselves!

We have started to explore Easter in our Art sessions this week and the children designed and made their own Easter eggs. We will continue to explore Easter next week, engaging in lots of fun and exciting activities.

On Wednesday we had a very special visitor join us at Abercorn School, The Animal Man! The children absolutely loved seeing all of the different animals and I was very impressed how confident they were around all of the creatures

I wish everyone a restful weekend and a fantastic Easter break. As always, thank you for your ongoing support and we look forward to seeing you in the Summer Term! - Miss Andrews and The Pre-Reception Team!

Reception

Next week marks the end of the Spring Term and what a fantastic term it has been! We’ve been all around space exploring the planets of our solar system and have now landed back on Earth ready to explore our new topic next term!

Flowers are blooming and chicks are chirping in Literacy this week as we explore the upcoming season of Spring. We loved using our imagination to place ourselves in a spring meadow and imagine all the things we would feel, see and hear. We created some well-thought-through posters all about the signs of spring and used our phonics skills to add labels and captions. In Phonics this week, we enjoyed learning the sounds ‘or’ and ‘ar’. We put our blending skills into action as we segmented and blended words to read and write both words and sentences, we love a challenge in Reception! Next week we look forward to reviewing all the exciting new sounds we’ve learnt this half term and all our tricky words.

In Maths this week we have enjoyed applying our existing knowledge of lots of different mathematical skills as we explored addition and shape. We even helped some ladybirds find their spots to complete and create some double-number sentences. We wowed our teachers as we applied our fantastic learning when exploring in the classroom.

Trees were blossoming in Art this week as we used our printing skills to make some beautiful blossom trees. We mixed white and red paint to create our perfect blossom colour and used cotton buds bundled together to print the delicate petals on the trees. It really does look like a spring day in our classrooms now!

We had a very special visit this week from the Animal Man and got the chance to meet and stroke some beautiful animals including a chinchilla, a baby owl and so many more. Our teachers were so impressed with how kind and respectful we were towards the animals, making sure to use gentle hands and keep our voices quiet so as not to scare them. We had such a fun time meeting all the animals!

As next week will be the last week of term please do note that dismissal time on Thursday 28th March will be at 11:10 am.

We would like to say a massive thank you to all the Reception parents and carers, all your support through the Spring Term, as always, has been greatly appreciated. We hope you have a lovely and restful Spring break - The Reception Team.

Year 1

Year 1 has enjoyed their last full week of the Spring term, finishing off our ‘Terrific Tales’ topic and getting ready for the Easter break.

As part of STEM week, the children enjoyed an ‘Animal Encounter’ - finding out about small birds, mammals, reptiles and insects. The chinchilla was a firm favourite! As the theme for British Science Week is ‘time’ we decided to experiment and see how long it would take for some celery to change colour by the intake of coloured water. The children used their excellent observational skills to keep track!

We also had a ‘beanstalk’ that kept on growing this week! We had to ensure to measure it accurately to help out Jack, as well as improve our measuring skills during Maths learning. The children enjoyed using cubes, paperclips and rulers to measure other items in class as well as complete some problem-solving activities.

For English, the children showed their excellent comprehension skills by answering questions about the traditional tale of Jack and the Beanstalk as well as showing an understanding of fiction and nonfiction books about plants and growing by listing the main differences.

To finish our Creative Curriculum topic all about the postal service, the children will be writing and posting short letters to each other next week! We look forward to walking down to the post box and ensuring we have our addresses and stamps on the envelopes!

The last swimming lesson of the term is always fun, with a floatie day! Well done to the children for all their hard work and progress this term, not just in swimming, but all subject areas!

Wishing our Year 1 families a lovely Easter break! - The Year 1 Team

Year 2

There was no business quite like show business for Year 2 this week! To conclude STEM week, we performed our habitats-themed show after many weeks of rehearsal. We are so proud of the children not only for their superb performances, but their contributions to the characters, script, and costumes. They have really enjoyed combining their skills to produce a show that is meaningful to them, and their joy really shone through in the performances.

Of course, STEM Week featured plenty of other science activities, and we were delighted to see our friend Garg and all his animals! We certainly impressed him with our knowledge of invertebrates. He introduced us to an adorable “screeching” owl, a surprisingly soft hissing cockroach, a very sleepy millipede, and a royal python called Prince William.

In our Creative Curriculum lessons, we focused on the women of NASA; we love that so many of the inspirational women we have learned about this term made contributions to STEM. We also used our science skills to investigate how a food chain is formed by living things feeding on other living things!

Throughout the week, we have focused on recognising, spelling and using adverbs in our writing. We were intrigued to learn that not all adverbs end in-ly and that not all -ly words are adverbs. We were sure to use impressive adverbs when creating posters to advertise our show.

In Maths, we consolidated our understanding of time-telling and dipped our toes into position and direction, which we will continue after the Easter holidays.

In Religious Studies, we thought about the symbolism of Easter. We examined the Easter story of Jesus’s death and resurrection and considered the various symbols which represent the message.

In French, Madame Constant introduced us to a variety of French delicacies, so we are all ready to take a trip to a posh Parisian restaurant to order some fancy food.