Living & Learning – I know the importance of personal hygiene
Earlier this week, we had a detailed discussion about the importance of personal hygiene. The children summarised their key learning beautifully:
Help at home:
Discuss things that you do at home to maintain your personal hygiene. Children could try different hand soaps and different toothpastes to see if they have a favourite!
Living and Learning: I know the importance of personal hygiene, including handwashing.
Today, Year 3 have been learning about allergies and how these may tie in with personal hygiene. An allergy happens when a person comes into contact with something, such as a food, that their body thinks might be harmful. We discussed some different types of potential allergens, both foods and non-foods. Here are some responses:
Pollen is an allergen because I have hay fever.
People can be allergic to peanuts and have a reaction.
I’m not allergic to anything, but I think I have an intolerance to milk and dairy.
Some medicines make your body have a reaction, but they are meant to make you feel better!
We then learnt about ways to avoid allergens and how to deal with potential reactions. We discussed how washing our hands and keeping our personal hygiene levels high is important when tackling allergies, e.g. washing our hands to avoid spreading allergens that we might’ve handled. It’s really important to wash our hands at lunch times, especially with so many different foods in our packed lunches!
Help at home:
Discuss potential allergens and signs to look out for with allergic reactions. Check some food packaging on your next shopping trip – you should find the most common allergies are in bold!
History Topic – Heroes
We’ve begun our exciting new History topic: Heroes. Over the next five weeks, we’ll be learning about two inspirational figures: Nelson Mandela and Leonora Cohen.
To kick things off, we explored the big question:
What is a hero?
Here are some of the lovely ideas the children shared:
“Somebody who’s done something very good.”
“Somebody who helps or saves people.”
“Someone who protects you from danger.”
We also discussed the qualities of a hero and how these connect to our school rules and Christian values. These included:
empathy, passion, caring, kindness, honesty, bravery, respect, helpfulness
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be using and exploring this vocabulary in class.
Help at home: Look at the key vocabulary together to support your child’s understanding.
Welcome back!
We hope you all had a wonderful Easter break. The children have returned full of energy and enthusiasm and they’ve made a fantastic start to the summer term!
Phonics
We’ve now learnt all of the Phase 5 sounds, so we’ll be revisiting them to prepare for the upcoming Phonics Screening Check in early June. We’ll be practising reading both real and ‘alien’ (nonsense) words to build confidence and fluency. To help us, we always use our decoding mantra:
Maths
In Maths, we’re continuing to work on counting forwards and backwards to 50. We’re using number lines and a 50 grid to help us find:
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1 more and 1 less
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10 more and 10 less
These are key skills that help build number sense and mental maths fluency.
Help at home:
Phonics: play phonics games and practise reading real and alien words together.
Maths: Use the 50 grid to practise counting forwards and backwards. Try finding 1 more/less or 10 more/less from different numbers.
Summer 1
Welcome back to the summer term! This half term our theme is Life on Earth and our first focus book is The Bug Detective by Alex Griffiths.
This week we will be beginning to look closely at minibeast and where they live. We will also be creating a class Bug Hotel using the hand drills.
We can’t wait to see you all,
Mrs Kendrew, Mrs Rippon, Mr Smith and Mrs Small
Welcome back!
Hello and welcome back!
I hope you have all enjoyed the Easter break; I can’t wait to see everyone back tomorrow for the Summer Term!
Although this is only a short half-term, we’ve got lots of exciting things planned:
Topic – History – we’ll be learning all about Leeds West Indian Carnival. Have you been to the carnival? If so we would love to hear about your experience and share any photos you have.
Maths – we’ll be learning how to add and subtract fractions. Children will also bring home their fortnightly arithmetic quizzes. If you would like any questions to practise with your child at home please let me know.
Writing – inspired by Michael Rosen’s poem Chocolate Cake, we’ll write a story about sneaking in to the staff room to take a tasty treat!
Reading – it’d be great to make our Friday Book Club even better by sharing the challenges the children do in their Reading Record. If you need a new Reading Record let me know.
PE – we’ll continue our swimming lessons on Tuesdays and also be developing our skills in Netball on Thursdays.
Science – we’ll be learning about different habitats and how humans can positively and negatively impact them. If you have visited any interesting habitats we would love to see your photos and hear about your experience.
RE – we’ll be finding out what happened at Pentecost.
Food Technology – we’ll be making savoury scones.
Do let me know if you have any questions or if you have any experiences you would like to share with the children!
Science: Electricity
This half term we’ve loved learning about electricity.
It has been wonderful to see the children showing resilience, problem solving and working collaboratively to build a circuit. Whilst not everyone will have parts to build a circuit at home, children can explore circuit building using this simulator: https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/circuit-construction-kit-dc
Have a lovely holiday!
We had a brilliant last day of the spring term. This consisted of Easter baking and Easter bonnet making!
We even went into collective worship to show the rest of the school our bonnets!
We hope all the wonderful children and their families have a lovely break.
The Nursery Team 🙂
Planting Sunflowers and Writing a Recount
This week, Year One completed an amazing independent write all about their science learning! The children wrote a recount about planting their very own sunflower seeds and showed off what they’ve learned about the life cycle of a plant. They carefully planted their seeds and made thoughtful predictions about how much they would grow over the Easter break. They also explored what plants need to grow healthy and strong – like sunlight, water, and care.
We are so impressed with how fantastic their writing has become. The children are becoming much more independent and confident, especially when using verbs and adjectives to make their writing exciting and detailed.
I’m looking forward to investigating how much our sunflower seeds have grown over the Easter break and comparing this to our predictions!
What a fantastic end to the Spring term – thank you Year One!
Help at home idea: Encourage your child to keep a plant diary or describe what they see in the garden using adjectives and verbs!
Topic – D&T Cooking and Nutrition
Food preparation is part of Design and Technology; children have three opportunities each year to prepare food.
This term, the children made overnight oats using a variety of skills:
- snipping
- weighing (using digital scales)
- measuring liquids
- use measuring spoons
- claw chopping grip
- mixing
- arranging toppings
First, we read the recipe together, discussing some elements that might be changed. We also discussed hygiene and how we can stay safe in the kitchen.
The children enjoyed a great deal of success, building on previous food preparation learning.
Children took their food home to try then returned to school to evaluate the product. We considered the success of the product and how close it was to the recipe. We discussed challenging techniques and any changes we would consider for next time.
Help at home by watching some of these fantastic cooking videos. If you try any of these recipes at home, we’d love to see the results.