Welcome back Foundation!
We hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year break with your families. It has been great to see Foundation children return to school happy and ready to learn!
We have some new faces in both F1 and F2 and would like to welcome our new children and parents/carers. We are also welcoming our new class teacher Mrs Valentine. Mrs Valentine will be teaching foundation Monday-Wednesday and Mrs Allen-Kelly will be teaching Wednesday to Friday.
This week we have been introducing our new topic- Transport and Journies. Next week, we will start by looking at non-fiction books and fact finding, as well as creating props and signs for our upcoming role play area.
If you have access to any bus or train timetables, car manuals, old travel tickets or anything else relevant to our new topic that you could add to our role-play area, they would be much appreciated.
Home-Link Challenge- F1 and F2
We would love to hear more news from home this week, so we have attached our ‘Time to talk’ and ‘Learning at home’ sheets to the weekly update sent home this evening. Don’t forget to keep sharing learning at home on our parent whiteboard as you enter the classroom. Our sheets are always available to tell us about the wonderful things your child has been doing at home. We would especially like to see anything linked to our topic; does your child role play with transport toys at home? Do you have a photo of you travelling together on public transport?
You can email photos and learning at home to; stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
Parent reminder
PE will continue to take place on Thursday afternoons. Please return or bring in PE kits. Please also remember to have book bags and reading books in school each day. Books are usually changed on a Monday and Thursday or Friday. Thank you.
Living and Learning: I know love is important
Living and Learning: I respect my community and other communities
Today we talked about the living and learning statement ‘I respect my community and other communities’.
We talked about what a community is and how we can show respect to our community and to others. Jack told us that we can respect the community by keeping it tidy and throwing rubbish in the bin. Brooklyn and Willow told us that we have to look after the things in the community and not break them.
We talked about needing to respect people in our communities and in other communities. Leah told us that some communities might have a different language to ours and that we need to respect their language. We made posters about how to respect or community and other communities.
Christmas Countdown
Amongst the fun and chaos of Christmas, Foundation have still been working hard in the classroom. This week F2 have learnt three new diagraphs; ng, ai, ee and Sid has also brought them the rocket word ‘was’. We’ve rounded up our learning on our focus number 6; demonstrating what we know pictorially, through number stories and through different ways of showing the same value. Don’t forget, you can see our work on our ‘Fabulous Focus Numbers’ in the maths area, within the classroom.
F1 have enjoyed some festive song circle time which had a counting focus. They’ve been working on their personal, social and communication skills with their key worker, discussing happiness and sadness and the things that can make us feel that way.
We’ve looked closely at the Christmas Story and written about the people and scenes within the Nativity.
As part of our Living and Learning focus, we’ve been thinking about our school community and appreciating all of the people who work here. The children thought of some interesting questions to ask Mrs Walshaw (who works in our office), Mrs Philip (our cook) and Mr Atkins (our site manager) who came to talk to us in class. Mr Atkins also let the children help him PAT test ‘Henry the Hoover’, which led to some great discussions about electrical safety and general safety of the school, being part of his role.
On Thursday we joined our whole school community and had a lovely Christmas dinner and dance party in the hall. Check out our happy faces!:
Christmas Performance- It’s a Party!
We’re super excited to show off all our hard work in the Christmas performances this week. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday 2-3 pm or Wednesday 6-7pm.
We understand it is difficult with the younger children but please do try to bring your children back to Wednesday’s later performance, so that the children, parents and carers at this showing can have the same experience.
Thank you for your support.
Home-link challenge
Please keep practising rocket words and reading at home. If your child has lines to say in our Christmas Production, please practise these at home.
Reading Books
Reading books were swapped on Friday and two were sent home for over Christmas (as long as previous books have been returned) If you have not returned book bags and reading books, please do. We will not be reading next week. You will only need to bring book bags on Friday, in order to take home any special learning from this term.
Christmas Stay, Play and Decorate
Don’t forget to join us on Thursday 20th December, 8.30-9.45am to look at learning journeys and join your child in some Christmas Craft fun! A letter about the session has been sent home. Please let one of the Early Years team know if you need a replacement.
Applications for F2 places- September 2019
You must apply for a school place, even if your child currently attends our setting in F1. Please see the details below:
(This poster is also available to view in the classroom)
Festive homework
We have had some great creative homework this week, where children have researched a festival or created their very own festival.
Some of the festivals presented include: Christmas, Snow and Ice festival, Eid, Leeds festival along with many more.
Musical stars!
Yesterday, we played music all day long – it was fantastic!
We learnt how to play different chords on the guitar and keyboard so we could play along to various pop songs. At the end of the day, we performed to the rest of the school and to some of our parents.
This was a music project supported by Leeds Artforms.
“It was fun and I loved playing along to the Christmas song- Last Christmas!”
“I enjoyed playing the keyboard because I could play the music. I liked playing the Taylor Swift song.”
Living and Learning: I respect myself and others.
Our Living and Learning theme this week was all about Respect. When we hear the word what does it mean to us? We began by filling pieces of paper on the things we already know. By the end of the session we filled in the ‘gaps’ with the things we had learnt.
After our ‘silent statement’ circle activity, we discussed some of the things that arose.
How do we show ourselves Respect?
“By looking after our body, doing things that keep us healthy”. Emily
Would you ever respect someone who is unkind to others?.
“No because that would mean their behaviour is ok. People should treat other people how they wanted to be treated”. Lily
Should we only show respect to living things?
“No. We should respect our things, things at school and the environment”. Hannah
As usual, another mature and sensible session. Well done 3/4!
Our smells poems
Here are is a selection of some of the wonderful poetry work we have composed this week based on the poem ‘Smells’.
We all started the poem in exactly the same way as the poet and then added our own ideas from then onwards.
Why is it that the poet tells
So little of the sense of smell?
These are the odours I love so well
The smell of oranges freshly ripe – Erin
Apples sunset red and juicy – Oliver
The fragrance or a rich chocolate cake – Hannah
Melon mouthwatering and sweet – Jessica
Let’s investigate!
This week, we’ve been investigating air resistance in our Forces topic.
‘The bigger the parachute, the slower it will fall.’
In groups, we investigated if this was true or not.
We discovered that the bigger parachute fell to the ground slower than the smaller parachute. We concluded that the bigger parachute had a larger surface area, therefore there’s more air resistance. The more air resistance there is, the slower an object will move.
Funky Phonics!
Thank you to the parents who came to our ‘Funky Phonics’ Stay and Play. We’re so proud of how far the children have come already in their phonics and pleased that they had the opportunity to share their learning with you.
Our next Stay and Play is our Christmas Stay and Decorate! A chance to look at your child’s learning journey and make some lovely Christmas crafts to take home with you. It is taking place on Thursday 20 December, 8.30-9.45 am.
As always, you’re welcome to stay for the whole session or a little while.
We hope you will join us for some festive fun 🙂