Yo-ho a Pirates life for me!
This week our focus story has been ‘Pirates love Underpants’ by Claire Freedman.
We’ve been practicing our best pirate voices and searching for treasures around school.
We made our own pirate maps and thought about the locations we could hide our treasure for our friends to find. The pirates left one for us to follow, it lead us straight to forest school. We followed the directions and found the pirates treasure!
Although sneaky pirate Miss Harvey kept pinching our treasure so we had to chase after her!
Help at home: Can you draw your own treasure map? Hide some treasure around your house and see if your grown-ups can follow the directions on your map!
If you have any photos of your treasure maps, please send them in so we can have a look at them during ‘snack and chat’.
stjamesnursery@spherefederation.org
Our garden has been busy growing our peas and runner beans for a while now and the children were so excited when I told them the peas were ready!
We picked some, washed them and then enjoyed them during our ‘snack and chat’. They were delicious and very sweet.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Miss Ward, Miss Harvey and Miss Feldman
Living and Learning – Brilliant Bodies
In Living and Learning, we’ve been learning about identity and body image.
We’ve been thinking about the physical and personal features that make each and every one of us special. We spent some time considering how our names and appearance form part of our identity, including an interesting discussion about how life might look different if we were nameless and all looked the same…
- How would we make friends?
- How would we know who to play with at playtime?
- How would you get someone’s attention?
- How would your family know you were you?
It’s important to know that we’re all unique. It’s something worth celebrating!
It would be boring if everyone liked the same things. It’s good to share each others’ successes and interests.
Not everyone can be good at everything but everyone is good at something.
It can be hard to celebrate our physical features – sometimes, we feel insecure about the way we look. The children showed mature understanding of the physical features they can and can’t change and spent some time complimenting one another. We discussed appropriate ways to respond to compliments; a simple ‘thank you’ or a compliment in return.
Finally, we took a moment to celebrate ourselves and our brilliant bodies.
Help at home by discussing our living and learning statement with your child:
I know that people I see in the media don’t always reflect real life.
Is it healthy to compare ourselves to the people we see in the media?
Living and Learning
Body image
In Year 3 and 4 this week, we have thought about our bodies and about how they might change. Changes in our body can occur through a variety of reasons, some things we can influence and some things we can’t.
The children wrote down their thoughts and we had some in depth discussions about their ideas. The children were very mature and spoke with respect whilst building on each other’s ideas.
We then focussed on ourselves and wrote down three things that we are good at. We shared our strengths and found that others had the same strengths too. Children understood that even though we are all different in many ways, we can all share similar attributes.
Help at home – Ask your child what they are good at. Can you make opportunities to do something they are good at? How will we change over time? Are there any changes we can/can’t influence? How do you feel about that?
Nell Bank School Trip
Our next school trip is on Tuesday, please see below the kit list for a Day Visit to Nell Bank.
Clothing
Practical outdoor clothing- long trousers please as we will be walking through long grass and will be outside for most of the day.
Trainers
Hat
Waterproof coat
Gloves
Wellies
Packed Lunch
Including a filled drinks bottle
It is hungry work being outside!
If you have any questions please come and catch a member for the team.
Thank you
Mrs. Kendrew
Super Sewers
We have some fantastic sewers in Year 1.
The children have learnt some new vocabulary in their design and technology lessons.
- felt: a kind of cloth made from wool
- needle: a thin piece of metal or plastic with a point at one end and a hole or eye for thread in the other, used in sewing
- thread: a long, thin strand of cotton used in sewing or weaving
- over stitch: a stitch that circles the edge of a piece of fabric
After designing their product (a puppet), it was time to start making. It was amazing to see great resilience when threading a needle and tying a knot!
We are sure you’ll agree that the stitching is incredible!
Clean Up
We have had fun this week using our focus book Clean Up by Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola. The children have been wonderful talking about the messages in this book.
Our word of the week was pollution the children have really enjoyed using this during their learning.
“The girl cleaned up the pollution like in the other story (Somebody Swallowed Stanley) to save the turtle.”
“I saw some rubbish on the way to school that is pollution.”
Poetry Picnic
This week our poem was Five Little Peas
Five Little Peas
Five little peas in a pea pod pressed.
One grew. Two grew.
So did all the rest.
They grew, and they grew,
And they did not stop,
Until one day the pod went POP!
The classroom Challenges this week have been
- to write a thank you message to the clean up crew.
- to cut out the parts of the turtle and put it together.
- to copy and continue a pattern.
- to work as a team like the clean up crew and recycle something.
Sports Day Fun
WOW! what a great time we had, sports day was so much fun! We had a great time showing our super physical skills. We loved our book themed races and it was great to cheer on our friends and grown ups as they raced.
Next week our focus book is The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.
Reminders and Notices
PE– Is on Wednesday please send your child to school wearing their PE kit and trainers they can fasten themselves.
Forest School– Is on Thursday please send your child to school in their PE kit with their forest school water proofs and wellies in a labelled plastic bag.
Please can you send your child to school with a sun hat and sun cream already applied.
Waste Innovation– Please don’t forget to send in any donations for us to be creative.
Have a happy and healthy week and please don’t forget to email any pictures from home to stjames@spherefederation.org thank you as always for your support.
Mrs. Kendrew, Mrs. Rippon and Miss. Feldman.
Maths
Identifying angles
We have had a fantastic maths lesson this morning, searching for and identifying angles. We found right angles, acute angles and obtuse angles. The children were fantastic when using the correct names for each angle and could clearly tell me how they know what type of angle it was.
Help at home – can you find any right angles, acute angles or obtuse angles at home or in your garden. How do you know it is a right angle? How do you know it is an acute angle? How do you know it is an obtuse angle? Can you draw them and put them in order of size? How many quarter turns make a right angle?
Full, half-full and empty!
Over the past two weeks our maths focus has been exploring capacity.
We’ve spoken about understanding what full and empty means, exploring capacity using different materials such as water, sand and rice and comparing capacities directly by pouring from one container to another to find which holds more or less.
Charlie- ‘ It doesn’t all fit in this one (water), the jug is too small’
Wyatt- ‘ It’s gone over the top, it’s too full now’
T- ‘ This is a really small one (jug), it won’t be big enough for all the water’
Next week we will be getting out our eye patches and going on a treasure hunt, the pirates are arriving in their underpants!
We would just like to say a BIG thank you to all our lovely parents and carers for attending our sports day this week. It was a brilliant morning and I think we can all agree that the children had a wonderful time!
Have a happy and healthy weekend!
Miss Ward, Miss Harvey and Miss Feldman
Design and Technology
We had a fantastic opportunity this morning to listen to and speak to Joel Wilson. Joel is a footwear designer for DR Martens, he has previously worked at brands like Lacoste and Ellesse.
Speaking to Joel fits in perfectly with our current Design and Technology work. We are currently in the process of creating a pouch. We follow a design brief and specific design criteria to produce an end product. We found that Joel follows a similar process in his area of work.
He told us all about his childhood and how he loved to draw and then about his journey into designing clothes. Can you believe that he didn’t even know that being a designer was a job?
We learnt about the process of creating a pair of Dr Martens – it takes about 18 months from the first design stage to a completed pair of shoes!
The children were extremely engaged and had lots of questions. We have been inspired by what Joel had to say.
It’s inspired me to design clothes.
Shae
I have always wanted to design clothes but now I’m thinking about shoes because when he answered his questions I gave me ideas about what I would like to do.
Emily M
It’s inspired me becasue now I am keen to draw and design clothes and footwear.
Emily G
I never knew that people drew the shoes that we wear!
Beau
Help at home – Ask your child about what they remember from Joel. What design criteria do we need to incorporate into our pouches? What is the purpose of your pouch? Who is it for?
Pie Corbett (Wings) inspired writing
In our reading sessions, years 5 and 6 have been practising our reading fluency, using the poem ‘wings’ by Pie Corbett. In this poem (below), Pie Corbett uses his senses to influence his ideas on what he would do if he were to have wings.
The children were really inspired by his work, so we decided to create our own versions of the poem. We still focussed on our senses to guide our writing. Have a look at some of our fantastic pieces below!
