Creative Homework
This week, Years 5 and 6 have been learning all about how to stay safe online. It was also a topic for their creative homework this week. Here are some fabulous creations they have brought into school.
Hand to Mouth visit
On Thursday, Hand to Mouth, who are a Christian organisation which visits schools offering ‘reflective journeys’ on different topics and workshops with the children, visited our school to work with each of the classes.
Year 1/2 participated in a Lent reflective journey. The children took a journey with a partner or on their own, helped by volunteers from St James’ church to learn about Lent – step by step from Shrove Tuesday to Easter Sunday. The children visited 6 different stations, and if they wanted to, completed an activity at each station: Things we’ve got wrong, saying sorry for our mistakes, our hurts, the poor and what we can do to help, I wonder where Jesus is now? and God loves you.
The children also enjoyed a workshop learning about the creation story. Then, they made puppets of some of the creatures God created.
Below are some quotes from the children, after completing the journey, and some pictures.
“I feel happy because I learnt something”
“I learnt not to be a bully”
“It was fantastic”
“I liked writing prayers to God”
Getting active
The last couple of weeks have been very active indeed. We’ve launched our 30:30 challenge. This involves getting 30 minutes of physical activity at school, which is then carried on with 3o minutes at home on as many days as possible. It’s great to see that so many children are already well on with the challenge with ten full days of activity recorded.
To go with this big push on physical activity, we had a judo workshop where children experienced this interesting and technical sport first hand.
We also got physical with our Life Forces topic. After deciding how we could help wildlife around school, we hung up bird feeders and made bug hotels in the hope of being able to study some creatures close up.
The Story of The Creation
Foundation enjoyed an incredibly fun and interactive workshop this morning, presented by Hand to Mouth Ministries.
The workshop focused on the story of The Creation, with a particular emphasis on how special all of God’s creations in nature are. The children discussed how individual and special we all are, especially to the people who love us.
Take a look at the pictures below which capture some special moments from the experience.
What can your child tell you about the story they heard today?
Pure Sounds- Phonics
F2 children have now learnt all Phase 2 phonics sounds and are moving on to Phase 3.
It’s really important that children pronounce ‘pure sounds’ when practising and using their phonics in reading and writing.
The video posted below has been created by teachers Mrs Flynn and Miss Eckersley, who teach Reception at one of our federation schools. (You might recognise Mrs Flynn!) It gives examples of both the correct pronunciation of each phase 2 sound and the actions we use in class to remind ourselves of the sounds.
Please use this video to help support your child’s learning at home.
A taste of judo…
On Tuesday morning, Year 1 and 2 enjoyed a fantastic trial judo session by Sportif Judo.
The children enjoyed learning some of the throws and hold downs taught by Glynn Fidgeon, who is a British and Commonwealth Medalist. Glynn was here to tell the children about the beginners Judo classes at St. Joseph’s Church Hall – have a look in your child’s bookbag for a leaflet with more information.
Judo
We all enjoyed our Judo trial session this week!
Life Forces
We’ve now started our new big topic of ‘Life Forces‘, which will see us studying various plant and animals. Last week, we started by classifying various plants by using a Venn diagram. Later on in the topic, we’ll use other types of sorting and classification methods for animals.
During this topic, we’ll read ‘The Adventures of Akimbo’, written by Alexander McCall-Smith. This brilliant book is full of wonderful stories about Akimbo’s adventures on his reserve. In addition, it is quite thought provoking on topic such as animal poaching.
If you or your child wish to find out more, then the BBC Blue Planet website has great resources and video taken from the award-winning series. As well as this, the National Geographic Kids channel on YouTube has a great series of short videos entitled Amazing Animals which are fun and interesting to watch.
Wonderful Workshops
We were lucky enough to experience two wonderful workshops in Foundation this week.
The charity D:side visited us at the start of the week. Through a fun and interactive session, the children were taught different ways to keep happy, healthy and safe. They discussed ways to be a good friend, the foods and activities that will keep our bodies healthy and important information about medicines: who is allowed to administer it, where medicines should be stored and why we shouldn’t touch it.
Can your child tell you some facts they have learnt this week about keeping healthy and safe?
On Wednesday, the children enjoyed their first ‘Mini-Music’ workshop led by ArtForms – Wetherby Music Centre. They had a fantastic time learning percussion instrument names/ how they are played and playing along to a beat, stopping and starting on cue. They also sang songs and played along to the tunes with the instruments. We are looking forward to continuing the music sessions over the next few weeks and developing lots of new skills!
Past Tense Songs
Here are links to songs we have been singing in class to help us identify past simple, progressive and perfect tense.