Lower School Weekly News
News from Lower School this week: 19th February 2024
Miss Stewart
Deputy Head of Lower School
Welcome back, I hope that you all had a fantastic half term break!
It has been such a pleasure to welcome the children back to school following the half term holiday and we have all really enjoyed hearing all about their time spent with their families. Thank you so much for the wonderful Tapestry posts we have seen.
There are lots of exciting things planned at Lower School (and the whole school) this half term, with a variety of different and interesting activities, trips and visits
Year 1 and Year 2 went to the Forest School this week and had so much fun accessing a wide range of activities including making popcorn in the forest! They did not let a little bit of rain spoil their fun and came back full of excitement and positivity about their experience. Forest School is such a wonderful part of the curriculum and the children gain so much from each visit. Forest School takes place throughout the year, please see information on the Google Classroom about each visit and don’t forget to bring wellington boots and black school coats!
Pre-Reception and Reception learnt all about Road Safety in their assembly this week. Miss Andrews led the assembly, and I was so impressed by how sensible and knowledgeable the children were about staying safe when out and about. We all learnt some songs about road safety to help us to remember to stop, look, listen and think. It is clear that Giraffe Class, Mouse Class and Gruffalo Class have an excellent understanding of this very important topic, which they consistently demonstrate when walking to and from their PE and Gymnastics lessons.
As we are rapidly approaching World Book Day, we have so many exciting plans and activities over the next couple of weeks. Next week, we will be welcoming the author Lou Kuenzler, who will be visiting all of the children in the Lower School and the author Toby Glover will be coming to Lower School the following week! If you would like to purchase any of their books, please see the information sent to you from Mrs Shuttleworth earlier this week. Abercorn School will be celebrating World Book Day throughout the week commencing 4th March but the main day will be celebrated on Friday 8th March when a wide variety of activities will take place as detailed in the letter from Mrs Shuttleworth. On Friday 8th March, the children (and staff) are invited to either dress up as a character from their favourite book or in their pyjamas and dressing gowns and bring in a soft toy ready for a bedtime story or dress as a word of their choice - please see Mrs Shuttleworth’s letter for ideas. They may bring in a suggested donation of £1 which will go to the school’s chosen charities – Celia Hammond Animal Trust and Guide Dogs UK.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend
Nursery
What a lovely first week back we have had in Duckling Class. This week we have been learning the poem ‘One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive’. We have broken down each line, clapped the syllables and worked on the mouth shape needed to pronounce each word correctly. We have been so impressed by how well our Ducklings have learnt this poem and how clearly they pronounced each word.
In Maths, we have been working on recognising numbers 1,2 and 3 as well as trying to count out small amounts. The children have done so well with this and we will continue to work on it through the year. We have also been hunting for numbers around the classroom and encouraging children to use numbers as they play, for example, charging for some of the food they make or counting out cars as we play together.
We have also had lots of fun exploring the garden in our wetsuits this week. The children have loved exploring water and enjoyed playing in the rain. We encouraged the children to talk about how water flows and how we can move water from one place to another using guttering. The children have also had fun using the push bikes and tricycles as a way of developing their gross motor skills.
In French we have been working on how to say our name. Madame Constant’s puppet Claude has been asking the children and they have been replying in full sentences.
Next week we will explore Jack and the Beanstalk. We will introduce the book, act out the story and begin to explore the different characters in it. We will also begin planting some beans and cress seeds to see if we can grow our own beanstalks. In Maths we will explore length and begin to use words like ‘longer’ and ‘shorter’ to describe things around the classroom.
Have a lovely weekend - Miss Molloy and the Nursery Team
Pre-Reception
It has been a busy first week back in Pre-Reception and the children have shown enthusiasm towards the second part of our Superheroes topic. This term, we will be exploring fictional superheroes and the introduction of our new book ‘Supertato’ has definitely been popular amongst the children. We have spent the week familiarising ourselves with the storyline, using a variety of talk for writing techniques to support us. The children loved acting out the story and used different actions to help them become familiar with the key events throughout the text. We also made a whole class story map as an aid to support our storytelling and the children even had a go at filling in the missing parts independently!
We have been clicking our fingers lots during our phonics sessions this week to familiarise ourselves with the new action for ‘c.’ The children have shown enthusiasm when learning another new Phase 2 phonics sound, and it has been wonderful to see their motivation during our sessions. They worked hard to identify as many sounds as they could in 30 seconds, beating the timer to achieve a record of 10 sounds! We have also spent a lot of time working on our blending skills this week, using robot arms to say each sound and then clapping our hands together to blend them. The children have had a go at reading a range of CVC words and short Phase 2 captions, further developing their confidence in this. We have now learnt all of the Phase 2 tricky words, exploring ‘into’ throughout the week, we will continue to explore all of these tricky words through a range of fun and engaging activities.
Creating different repeating patterns has been the focus in our maths sessions this week and the children have really enjoyed creating a variety of different two colour repeating patterns, and some children even challenged themselves and had a go at using three colours! As the week progressed, we used our skills to create patterns using different objects and shapes.
Creating our very own stylish, colourful and unique Supertato was the aim of our art session this week. The results were very impressive and there were certainly a wide array of ideas!
I would like to wish all of you a restful weekend - Miss Andrews and The Pre-Reception Team!
Reception
The first week back is complete and wow it has been a great start! We are all so excited to continue on our journey through space and learn even more about the planet we live on.
We’ve been showing kindness, respect and a very caring nature in Literacy this week as we explored our new focus book “Here We Are!” By Oliver Jeffers. We discussed all the different parts of the world and the variety of living things that we may need to help look after. We discussed what we need to do better to keep the Earth clean and carefully wrote down something we will do to look after the planet we live on. In Phonics this week, we have loved exploring our Phase 3 digraph sounds ‘th’ and ‘ng’. These can be tricky sounds to hear sometimes but we showed some great determination as we wrote words and sentences with these sounds. Next week we look forward to looking at our new focus sounds ‘ai’ and ‘ee’.
It’s all about 3D shapes in Maths this week as we explored and consolidated our knowledge of different shape names and properties. We enjoyed thinking about all the different shapes in the environment and matching the correct 3D shapes to everyday objects.
We showed some fantastic collage skills in Art this week as we created planet Earth using a variety of materials. We spoke with our friends about colours, materials and the best ways to attach these to the card. Our teachers were so proud of our beautiful final pieces.
Next week we look forward to a visit from the author Lou Kuenzler, who writes some lovely adventurous and funny stories for children. If you would like to purchase a book for your child to get signed on the day then please follow the link on the email sent out earlier this week by Mrs Shuttleworth.
Wishing you all an enjoyable and lovely weekend - The Reception Team.
Year 1
The children have returned to Year One with enthusiasm and maturity, excited for our busy half term ahead and our new topic - Terrific Tales!
The children launched straight back into our Guided Reading sessions with confidence and excellent comprehension. Taking turns to read different pages and using their VIPERS skills when answering questions.
VIPERS = vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and sequencing.
Super subtraction occurred during Maths, finding the difference between two numbers and using number bonds. The children also tackled some tricky missing number problems too - Bravo!
Our History learning embraces a new topic, using what we already know about timelines and chronology to study history of the postal service in the UK. We can’t wait to visit the postal museum in a few weeks time. The children made their own ink, used a ‘quill’ to write and even sealed their letter as if it was from pre 1840, which is before children had to go to school and before stamps were invented!
The focus for RS is Christianity this half term, sharing stories from the Bible and learning about Christian Easter Story as well as celebrations. The children have been very mature when tackling some tricky understanding, very impressive!
1M enjoyed a damp Forest School this week, making little stick people and seeing signs of Spring in the pond with some frogspawn! The highlight of course was the campfire, this week we even made popcorn!
Please continue to check the Google Classroom for important updates during this busy half term!
Have a fantastic weekend, The Year 1 Team
Year 2
In Year 2, we have launched into our new topic of Inspirational Women by learning about Amelia Aerhart. We also thought about the inspirational women in our own lives, and asked lots of questions that we would like to answer throughout the term. We are excited to find out more about athletes, explorers, scientists and artists who have changed the world.
In English, we have focused on affixes; we practised negating words by adding prefixes, and investigated the effects of adding different suffixes. We can now build words out of prefixes, roots and suffixes, and explain how affixes alter meaning.
In French, we practised ordering items in a cafe, and using euros to pay for them.
In Maths, we delved into fractions. We have focused on halving and quartering this week; of course, we had to involve food in our activities! Fruits and fractions definitely go hand in hand. Next week, we will focus on finding thirds and comparing different fractions.
In Religious Studies, we learned about the celebration of Akikah and how babies are welcomed into the world by Muslim families.
Mr Davies is well and truly in Show Mode, so our Music lessons have been all about the songs for our up-comping extravaganza!
Have a great weekend - The Year 2 team
