This week’s bible story
David and Jonathan: 1 Samuel 18-19
Friendship is a precious gift. Everyone wants to have friends. If we are fortunate, we will have a group of close friends, people with whom we can share our lives. However, sometimes, things go wrong. There can be disagreements that lead to friends falling out and maybe not talking to each other altogether. When David was a young boy, he had been told that one day, he would be the future King of Israel. As he grew up, David became famous for defeating the giant, Goliath, and for being a skilled soldier. He also wrote many songs that are recorded in the Book of Psalms in the Bible.
When David was a boy, a man called Saul was the King of Israel. Saul had a son who was called Jonathan. David and Jonathan became great friends. One reason was that Saul (Jonathan’s dad) was the present king and David was going to be the future king. David was also a great soldier and King Saul became very jealous of him! Another reason is that, if the usual practices were followed, Jonathan would have followed in his father’s footsteps as the future king – not David! Jonathan had a good reason to be jealous of David!
Reflection:
It would have been very easy for Jonathan to be jealous of David. Instead, he always protected him – sometimes, even saving David’s life!
How do we treat our friends?
Do we get jealous when they are successful or if they are better than us at something?
Or do we encourage them? Do we stand up for them? Do we feel happy when something good happens in their lives?
In David’s case, he really did get by ‘with a little help from his friend’.
Prayer
Dear God,
Thank you for friends whom we can trust.
Thank you for friends who stick with us when we need them.
Please help us to be a friend to anyone in need.
Amen.
Gardening club
This term a new group of children are taking care of our garden area. After all the hard work of last term’s children, this new group are beginning to harvest the crops that they have grown. We have tomatoes, peppers and potatoes to enjoy. The sunflowers that last year’s Y5s and Y6s grew are looking fantastic too! We are going to take the potato crop that we have collected so far to our Harvest Festival service on Thursday.
Maths – place value and counting
We’ve been counting forwards and backwards from different numbers. We use a 100 square, number lines and songs to help us.
We have also been using a range of models to represent numbers.
We use real life examples to demonstrate how 10s and 1s can be used. Here we have 12 pens made up of one pack of 10 and two ones.
By seeing and making a range of representations, children are able to secure a deep understanding of numbers.
Most of the following representations focus on partitioning (splitting up a number into parts) a number into tens and ones.
The middle box on the bottom row shows 12 being made by cubes. The second picture in that box is to show how the cubes can be drawn. Children find it far quicker and easier to draw a long line to represent a ten than drawing a rectangle that is divided into ten squares.
Use these at home to support your child’s learning.
What have we been up to this week?
Maths
This week, we’ve been learning all about repeating patterns. We’ve been noticing patterns everywhere. The children even pointed out my patterned dress on Tuesday! Each day, the children were asked to make a repeating pattern using different objects/resources. They were fantastic at talking about their patterns and spotting mistakes – oops!
Phonics
This week, our daily phonics sessions have been a mixture of phase 1 activities. Phase 1 focuses on listening to different sounds and oral segmenting* and blending* skills. We went on a listening walk, made rhyming silly soups, and played I spy. Next week, we will begin phase 2. By the end of next week, the children will know the first three sounds: s, a, t.
PE
The children loved their first PE session! Mrs. Palmer will be teaching PE every Wednesday morning. The children had lots of fun travelling around the hall like animals. Mrs Palmer was very impressed with their amazing listening skills – well done Reception! Even though we only do one PE session a week, in early years we make sure we stay active throughout the week.
Snacks and Water…
Please make sure your child’s water bottle only contains plain water.
Every day, we provide a healthy fruit or vegetable at snacktime. If your child would prefer to bring their own snack, please ensure this contains only fruit and/or vegetables. Snacks from home will stay in the children’s bookbags until snack time at 10 am.
If your child is having grapes for their snack, please ensure that the grapes are cut lengthways.
Chilli challenges
The children have been introduced to the chilli challenges. Each week, there will be six green chilli challenges in different areas. The children will be encouraged to complete the challenges and tick them off on their chilli challenge card (see below). There will also be some red chilli challenges. These challenges are to extend their learning further.
Home-Link Challenge
*Segmenting – breaking down a word into individual sounds.
Blending – combining all the sounds to read a word.
We are geographers!
This week, we’ve been learning how to use six-figure grid references in geography to help us locate places on maps efficiently. We started by using four-figure grid references and progressed onto using six-figure grid references. This was a challenge!
Science investigation
This week in science, we conducted a comparative test on different substances to see if they dissolved. We sorted the substances according to if they were soluble or insoluble. Throughout the investigation, we made observations so we could make a logical conclusion.
Welcome
Welcome to Nursery!
My name is Mrs Boulton and I’ll be teaching the Nursery class this year. This week, Mrs Cairnes and I have been settling the children into their daily routines and have also spent a lot of time getting to know them. We have shared our favourite stories and songs. The children have been busy learning in all the areas of provision and we look forward to a very happy year ahead.
If you would like to to ask any questions, please speak to a member of staff at the gate or contact us using the following email address:
stjamesnursery@spherefederation.org
What does my child need to bring:
- water bottle – NAMED
- change of clothes in a small bag – NAMED
- waterproof coat – NAMED
- wellies – NAMED
Living and Learning: The 8Rs
In recent weeks, Mrs Bald has been delivering our Living and Learning sessions and these have focussed on our 8Rs for learning. These are eight key principals that promote good learning behaviour. Ask your child how many of the 8Rs they can remember (hint).
The children have been taking part in some activities about the 8Rs. During a Diamond 9 activity the class had to work together to decide which of the Rs they thought was the most important and which was the least.
There were some very interesting debates! Is remembering more important than being resourceful? Should you show respect more than resilience?
For their next lesson, the children thought about how they use the 8Rs to help them with their learning.
We will be referring to the 8Rs across the whole of the school year.
Science – sorting different states of matter
In Science this half term, we are learning about different states of matter. We used a lot of scientific reasoning to decide whether something is a solid, a liquid or a gas. We have some great chemists!
Diary Writing
In our writing lessons, we’ve been learning about all the things that make a great diary entry-Leah’s writing today is an awesome example of WAGOLL (what a good one looks like!)
You’ll find all sorts of technical stuff-fronted adverbials, fab adjectives, emotive language, capitals all in the right places as well as being in the first person.
Nice one, Leah! Keep up the hard work! 👍😁⭐️
