Duckling Newsletter 14/11/14

Friday 24th October 2014 Our News!

We have been enjoying learning all about Harvest time and how different people celebrate this time of year. Thank you to all you who came to join us in our Autumn/Harvest activity afternoon. It was lovely to see so many of you there and the children were very proud to perform all of their Harvest and Autumn songs for you. They thoroughly enjoyed playing and learning with you in their classrooms.

The children have really enjoyed reading lots of different versions of the traditional tale ‘The Little Red Hen.’ They all know it so well now they have been having great fun retelling the story and acting it out with puppets and masks using the repetitive language from the story.

We have been very busy just like the Little Red Hen, but baking hedgehog biscuits. Mrs Moss and Miss Watmough have enjoyed taking the children on Autumn welly walks around the school grounds to explore and investigate signs of Autumn. They were able to fill the wheelbarrows with lots of interesting things which they used to make large scale pictures.

We have had lots of fun exploring how the primary colours can be mixed to make different colours. We mixed the paint on our hands! It was really messy fun and we are going to use all of our hand prints to make a lovely Autumn tree display.

In Mathematics we have been busy counting groups of objects and using different language to say which group has greater or fewer. We have also been using seasonal vegetables to explore which is the heaviest or lightest and using the balance scales to check our predictions.

Mrs Wills has been helping develop our fine motor skills. We have written or traced over the letters in our names and used our scissor skills to cut them up and then rearrange them. We have also been using our pincer grip to pick up and stick dots of orange paper to make lovely pumpkin pictures. Practising this grip strengthens our fingers to help with holding our pencils correctly.

A big thank you to all of the children who have brought in some of their Magic Moments to share with the class. It is lovely to find out how well you are learning at home as well as at school. Please see your child’s class teacher if you need more Magic Moment slips.

STARS OF THE WEEK Bella McIlwrath for super work in Phonics and Ada Navruz for being caring and thinking of others.

Our Star Mathematicians are Jessica Williams and Charlie Timperley-Green.

Our Star Writers are Matthew Manning and Lydia Pirie Our next newsletter will be on Friday 14th November and will give details about all the fun activities we have planned for the next two weeks.

Any questions please don’t hesitate to ring, email or come and see us.

Staff email: Mrs Claydon l.claydon@carletongreen.lancs.sch.uk Mrs Catterall m.catterall@carletongreen.lancs.sch.uk

OUR LEARNING PEOPLE WHO HELP US For the next two weeks we will be starting our new topic ‘People Who Help Us.’ We will start with finding out how and why people celebrate Bonfire Night, who Guy Fawkes was and how to be safe on Bonfire night. Hopefully Mr Ball, our Chair of Governors, will be coming in to talk to the children about his important job, being a fireman.

Now that it is starting to get darker earlier, we will read a lovely story together called ‘Whatever Next.’ The main character imagines taking a trip to the moon for a picnic and this will make a great role play activity.

The children will be able to recognise that people who help us work at night too and we hope to have PC Banks a local Police Officer to visit us and talk to the children about her special job.

Following on from this we hope to set up our own ‘everyday’ heroes role play area in our outdoor role play shed. Our indoor role play area will be a workshop, so any resources you may have that would help with this we would be very grateful.

We are continuing with Phase 2 and 3 of the Letters and Sounds program.

The sounds we will be learning are; h, b, f, ff, l, ll And the tricky words we are learning to read and write are; I, go, to, the and no.

We will continue to send home sets of letter flash cards as we cover them, so that you can use all the sounds covered to practise letter/sound recognition, reading words and making words.

It is important that they can hear the sounds for themselves in words and say them correctly.

In Mathematics we will continue with recognising numbers and see if we can notice any patterns such as numbers ten to nineteen starting with a one, so we count 10 and 1 makes 11, 10 and 2 makes 12 and then continuing the pattern. Hopefully this will help us when we also look at larger numbers too. We will explore ordering numbers and practising counting on and back.

We will practise using tools and develop our physical skills when we build junk model rockets.

Whilst building our rockets we will also be looking at and learning the names of the 2D and 3D shapes we are using; cylinder, cube, cuboid and cone being the most common. We will work together with a partner to plan our rockets and hopefully help each other overcome any difficulties. It will also be good for us to talk about our work together and listen to each others ideas.

REMINDERS PARENT HEPLERS WANTED!! Please see Mrs Catterall or Mrs Claydon if you are able to help.

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE DUCKLINGS Come and learn all about how your child develops their Gross and Fine Motor skills. Enjoy a coffee while you find out all about it and ask as many questions as you wish.

READING BOOKS PLEASE can all reading books be in school EVERY day! Try and read a little every night.

JUNK

Please send in any junk such as big and small boxes, tubes, yoghurt pots, egg boxes and plastic containers.

PEOPLE WHO HELP US

Please send in any books for us to share about People Who Help Us. We promise to look after them.

WE NEED YOU!!! If you would be willing to come into school to chat to the children about your job please see the class teacher.

PUDDLESUITS AND WELLIES

Please can all children have a pair of wellies and a puddlesuit in school? Their puddlesuits have been returned home for a wash during the holidays! Please remember to return them after the holiday, as most children love to learn outdoors whatever the weather!

MUD KITCHEN

We are hoping to make a mud kitchen in our garden and are asking for any old metal pots, pans or lids, plastic jugs, wooden spoons, spatulas and so on. We would be very grateful.

SOCKS AND SPARE CLOTHES

Please can all children have a spare pair of socks in their book bags, especially as we learn outdoors and the weather is getting colder and wetter. Please return all spare socks/clothes that have been borrowed from school.

If you are having a clear out and have any spare socks (any colour will do!) please send in.

Thank you

DATES Half term Holiday School re-opens Tuesday 4th November Parents’ Meetings Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th November School Photographs Friday 7th November Physical Development in the Ducklings Meeting for parents in the hall Wednesday 26th November 9-10am PTFA Next meeting on Wednesday 26th November at 5.30pm

TALK HOMEWORK Talk for Numbers Practise counting form 0-20 and back again.

Make numbers out of 2 digits.

Put 4 or 5 different numbers in order.

Talk about 1 more than 10 etc. www.ictgames.com/numeracy

Talk for Reading and Writing Please look at the difference between words and letters.

Talk about why the spaces are there and how a group of sounds together make a word.

Count the words on the page.

Type or write out a sentence, cut it up and count the words that sentence had.

Please don’t worry about the children actually WRITING. They will benefit much more from finding out about sentences, words and writing and reading than by making them do it.

Some of us still find it hard to read and write our names.

Here are a few ideas you could try to help.

Make the name out of magnetic letters, label the child’s belongings and encourage them to find them, spot the letters in order in a newspaper, magazine, book, write their name in chalk outside and let them wash it off with a paintbrush and water.

Continue to listen and learn the sounds each day as the children talk about them at home.

Play I spy with the new set letters.

Have a go at being Metal Mike!

Listen for the new sounds at the beginning, middle and end of words. www.ictgames.com/literacy

TALK FOR TOPIC Talk about how to keep safe in the dark.

Talk about Bonfire Night Safety.

Read story books or non-fiction books from the library about People Who Help Us. Talk about the jobs that you do in your family.

Who is your favourite author, story and book character?

Find 3D shapes around the house and environment can you name them?

How many sides, corners and faces have they got

Talk about everything!

Have fun!