11th March 2019

Dear Parents,

Class One Weekly Update – Week commencing 11th March

What a busy week last week! This week we are continuing our work on pirates and the children will be giving themselves a pirate name based on their favourite colour and animal! Friday is Red Nose Day and the children are welcome to dress up as their favourite famous person for the day.

Last week all children were sent home with an expression of interest letter about going to Ilfracombe aquarium on 28th March. Nursery parents need to accompany their child on the trip but if you are unable to attend then you could ask another parent to take your child on the trip. Unfortunately we, as a school, are not able to organise this for you but if you would be willing to take other children or you will have difficulty taking your own child please speak to us and we will try to point you in the right direction if we can.

 

Literacy

Last week nursery children enjoyed learning about the /s/ phoneme and many children brought in items to go on the /s/ table. Reception children spent the week practising writing the letter /s/ correctly. As a school all children are taught cursive writing so reception and nursery children are also being exposed to this and learning to write in a pre cursive style. This week the children will be learning about the /a/ phoneme so if you have any items at home that you are willing to bring in for our /a/ table that would be great.

Reception are continuing to learn about blending sounds together to help them read words and while writing they are focusing on thinking of a sentence, saying their sentence and then writing their sentence. All reception children are having a big push on using the correct letter formation over the coming weeks.

 

Mathematics

We are continuing our work on shapes this week but introducing 3D shapes and thinking about the properties of these shapes. The children will be making pirate telescopes and decorating them with shapes, building pirate ships using 3D shapes and painting pirate ships using 3D sponge shapes to name a few of the activities planned.

 

We would be very grateful for any cylinder shaped junk modelling, such as kitchen rolls, yoghurt pots etc.

Yours sincerely

The Class 1 team

On Monday we held our annual sports day. All of the children were great at taking part and enjoyed all of the races. We would like to thank all parents who came and supported the morning very much appreciated.

Today is our last day before we break up for the summer break, we want to wish all children going to different schools the very best of luck, we know you will all be fab!! To the returning children we hope you all have a lovely break and will see you on the 5th September.

 

 

  

This morning we had Kim a dental nurse from Torrington Dental practice come to visit our children, she gave them all a talk about how to keep our teeth healthy, what’s good to eat and what isn’t so good and how to brush teeth properly. Some of the children took part in an activity where they had to chew up a tablet to show the plaque on their teeth. She recommended that all children have water in their drinks bottles and when brushing teeth to spit out the foam but do not rinse mouth with water.

 

Yesterday we joined Reception and year 1 on their trip to Knightshayes. We started the day with a lovely walk through the woods to try and find The Gruffalo!  All of the children did really well with the long walk through the woods and fields as a certain teacher (Mrs.Hancock!) took a wrong turn. The children then enjoyed sitting down resting to eat their lunches. While class 1 were doing their workshop we had planned to take the children to the playground and read The Grufflo story but we were stopped by the sudden downpour of rain and had to make our way to the house where the children took part in the Knightshayes safari trail where they had to look for different objects around the different rooms.

Since coming back from half-term we have been continuing to learn about ‘Under the Sea’. The children have enjoyed learning about different types of sea creatures, what they eat and where different types of sea creatures live. The children have made textured fish and paper star fish which are on display around Pre-school. As some parents may have heard we have loved learning a new song called ‘Under the water, Under the sea’!

 

This morning we took the children on a walk around the village. Each child had a check list of the plants and flowers we were looking for. We were very lucky that we were able to find all that was on our lists except a rose. As we were walking around the village we reminded the children of how to keep safe on the roads, which they all walked around the village very safely.

We’ve had success in our growing over the bank holiday weekend! All of our plants, vegetables and flowers have finally started to grow. Our grass heads are all now are starting to sprout hairs and our sunflowers have started growing their shoots. This week we will be doing some measuring, we’ve started to measure the children on our dinosaur growth chart. We will move some of the sunflowers outside at the end of the week and the children will be involved in measuring these and comparing how they grow outside and how they grow inside.

The children are continuing learning about growing, as some of you may have seen our growing is in full swing. Last week we started growing our grass heads (fingers crossed they will start growing soon!!) also we planted some lavender, marigold’s and petunias in our plant pots. This week the children have started planting their own sunflowers in plastic cups. We are hoping that we will be able to see the roots start to grow to be able to show the children what they look like. We were kindly donated some courgette, beetroot, pumpkin and cauliflower plants which we will plant in our garden when they become ready to do so.

 

This afternoon we went out into the school field with the reception children. Sam was teaching the children some new yoga poses following the success of our garden yoga last year. All of the children loved joining in and all worked really hard to try and get the poses right. We will continue to teach the children yoga on a Monday afternoon for the next half term.

This morning we held our annual Easter Hat making morning, the children made an Easter Hat with their parents for our competition. Mrs Hancock came down to judge all of our fabulous hats it was a hard choice but she chose two winners! Afterwards we had an Easter Egg hunt that all of the children enjoyed!