YR Visit to Lepe Country Park

The children in Year R have had a fabulous day, travelling on a coach to Lepe County Park. While they were there they had a minibeast hunt in the woodland, looked at what they found under microscopes, swept nets through the long grass to find other creatures. They also had a seashore scavenger hunt and safari which included creating some beach art. After lunch the children had the opportunity to explore the sensory garden and had a play on the park. Lots of fun was had!

Year R Making Mr Greenhead

This week the children have enjoyed making their own "Mr Greenhead" having been inspired by reading the book. They worked carefully, following instructions to make their seed filled heads.

Our first week in Year R

The children in Reception have had a fantastic first week at school and have settled in really well, adapting to routines and making new friends. Have a look at what fun they have had.

YR Zoolab Visit

The children in Year R were very lucky to have Anna from Zoolab come to visit. They were introduced to Gary the Giant African Snail, a Giant Cockroach, Buttercup the tarantula, Cheese the millipede and Dolly the snake. Anna taught the children about each of the minibeasts and introduced each of them, including a reptile! She then allowed the children to handle each of the creatures if they wanted or encouraged a wave if they weren't feeling quite brave enough. A big Thank you to Anna for such an exciting and interesting visit.

YR Playing Rounders

Year R enjoyed being introduced to the game of rounders. They were keen to have a go and had fun too.

Year R Nativity Performance

The children in Year R all took part in a Nativity play. They entertained us by their beautiful singing, dancing and story telling and we are really proud of their performance. Well done to everyone involved who supported in organising costumes, props and learning lines to help make it such a success. A real Christmas treat.

YR Leaf Man

The children in Year R have really enjoyed the story Leaf Man. They were inspired by the beautiful illustrations and have had a go at creating their own leaf man pictures with the fallen autumn leaves and other natural items that they have found such as sticks, conkers and acorns.

The children had a lot of fun making their pictures. What other pictures could you create?

Making Patterns

The children in YR have been in exploring patterns. They have recognised patterns, continued a pattern and even had a go at making their own!

Spelling Workshare

Thank you so much to everybody who came to our 'Spelling Workshare' last week. The children were very excited to share their spelling journey with you. We hope it gave you some ideas on how to continue to support spelling at home. 

First few days of school in YR

Our new Reception children have just completed their first two weeks of school. They have enjoyed their mornings and lunch times.

They have settled in really well, adapted to our routines, made new friends and have had lots of exciting experiences exploring through play and having fun.

Have a look at what we have done so far!

Author Visit in Year R and KS1

Author and actor Grant Koper visited Year R and KS1 on Tuesday to share his new book. Grant read 'The Day Granny's Knickers Blew Away' to the children using some very funny voices!

Afterwards the children asked Grant questions including:

'What made you become an author?'
'How do you write your stories?'
'How many schools have you read this story to?'

Some children had ordered Grant's book and he very kindly signed them.

It was great to see the children engaged in a new story read by the author.
 

Azura Win Sports Day

This year's Sports Day winners.... AZURA!

Curriculum Bulletin: Year R

People Who Help Us

Topic

• We learn about the real life super heroes that help us every day.
• We read lots of non-fiction books about superheroes and specifically look at the clothing they wear.
• We use our fire station role play area to create signs. This is a nice website with activities to help make Sparkton safer and this one with fire safety videos for children. 
• We talk about which adults are safe to give us medicine.
• We design, make and decorate superhero vehicles from junk modelling materials, here are last year’s vehicles to inspire you.
• We begin writing simple sentences to match superhero vehicles and how they help us by applying our phonics knowledge, hearing and writing main sounds in unknown words and writing taught high-frequency words from memory.

• Last year we had lots of real life superheroes come and join us to talk about what they do for their job, we hope you can help us out this year too, look who came.

Reading

•  We continue to look for the initial sounds in words and sound talk simple cvc words with support.
• We can spot more high frequency/tricky words within sentences and say them from memory. This is a good matching game.

Maths

• We begin to add two sets of objects together and find how many there are all together. Check this activity out for adding two sets together.
• We start to look at different coins and use these to buy superhero vehicles.

On 25th November we will be having a ‘People Who Help Us’ dress up day to end this fun topic, we look forward to seeing the different costumes.

Winter and Christmas

Topic/Reading

• We read the rhyming story ‘The Snowman’ and continue rhyming strings both orally and in writing.
• We read the ‘Nativity’ story and begin sequencing and retelling it in different ways for example with puppets and pictures. This helps us to act in our Christmas Performance, have a look at some of the parts your child could have this year.

• We continue to develop our reading and writing skills. Writing ever increasingly more tricky sentences and labels, using the high frequency words and phonics sounds we have learned. We are also reading harder sentences by applying everything we have learned so far.
• We create winter pictures on the computer program ‘Dazzle’ and begin to type a caption to match.
• We learn about how Christians celebrate Christmas and talk about what different families do.
• Christmas crafts play a big part of our last few weeks at school, we make cards, calendars and decorations for you to cherish at home, if you would like some ideas to do at home over the holidays, have a look at Activity Village.
• We will bake and decorate cookies, ready to eat at our Christmas party. A great way to finish our first full term at school.

Maths

• We begin to subtract numbers by taking sets away. Work out the answer here has good subtraction word problems to solve.
• We use Santa’s presents to describe and compare weights and use our hands and balances as a way of measuring.

Keep an eye on our posters each week for more specific updates and phonics sounds and high frequency/tricky words being taught to each group.