Duckling Newsletter 27/2/15

Friday 27th February 2015 Our News!

Firstly, a big thank you to all of the parents and carers who attended the Open afternoon at the end of the half-term. The children thoroughly enjoyed celebrating and finding out all about Chinese New year. We have made a lovely display with some of the photographs in the classroom. Also thank you to all of you who attended the Parents’ Meetings this week. It was lovely to share with you all how hard the children are working and to inform you of the next steps in their learning.

The Naughty Bus trip was enjoyed by all and was made even more exciting with the sun shining and the fantastic views we had from the top deck! We amazed the bus driver with our maths skills when we all counted out the right coins to pay for our bus tickets! We drew some super maps of our journeys and labelled them on our return. The children were a pleasure to take out on a trip!

As part of our Personal, Social and Emotional topic ‘It’s good to be me!’ We have read the stories ‘Owl Babies’ and ‘Can’t you sleep Little Bear?’ whereby the characters experience different feelings. The children have had the chance to name some different feelings and share with the class when they themselves have experienced these feelings. We have played a range of different feelings games both indoors and out. The children have learnt a lovely song ‘Good to be me!’ which encourages the children to be proud of themselves. Ask them to sing it for you!

And maybe show you the sign language actions too! In the creative area the children have painted lovely pictures of what makes them feel happy or proud. Come in and see them!

In mathematics we have been exploring and using the different vocabulary associated with size, length and height. We have been putting a range of objects in order of size and identifying the biggest, smallest, longest and shortest. We have then been trying our hand at measuring using cubes and building blocks to find out how many cubes long different objects are.

STARS OF THE WEEK Joshua Nutton for his fantastic enthusiasm in PE and demonstrating fantastic aim with his throwing Lily Johns for working hard in PE and performing with agility Our next news letter will be on Friday 13th March and will give details about all the fun activities we have planned for the next few 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 Our Pets and Other Animals Our new topic for the half term is going to start with us looking at our own pets. We will be reading two lovely stories The Great Pet Sale by Mick Inkpen and Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell.

From these stories we hope to gain lots of different writing opportunities such as making posters with labels and writing our own letters to the zoo. We are looking forward to setting up our own pet shop and vet’s surgery.

We will practise using the repeating patterns within the stories to help retell the stories in our own words and to sequence and order the main events.

We will explore the difference between living and non-living things and find out what our pets and other animals need to stay alive and healthy. We will look around our environment for living and non-living things.

In mathematics we will continue to develop our addition and subtraction skills by solving reallife problems and trying to use counting on and back to help us find the answers. We will then be ‘data handling’ or collecting and sorting information. For e.g. finding out who has a pet and which pet? Which is the most popular fruit? Our favourite colours and so on, then making real life graphs and constructing charts such as pictograms.

We are hoping to arrange for a Vet to come to school to talk to the children about their important job.

Our speaking and listening skills will also develop as we bring in photographs of our pets to show and talk to the class about. We can’t wait to hear all your expert knowledge! Who will be first to have a go at this?!

We will complete programmes on the computers and smart boards to sort the living and nonliving things and to help look after a number of virtual pets by giving them all that they need.

In PE we will be learning to move like the animals in “Dear Zoo”. We will practise being big heavy elephants, tall elegant giraffes, hopping frogs, crawling caterpillars, scampering puppies and cheeky chimps using the space around us and trying hard to look where we are going and not bump into anyone. We will be learning how to balance too pretending to be a monkey on the branch. On the mats we will be learning how to; egg and pencil roll without using our hands to turn over or get back up (trickier than you think!) and to land safely from a jump. We will continue to develop our throwing skills becoming more accurate; aiming at a target and throwing to a friend. We will learn to control a football with increasing skill and kick with more accuracy too. It’s not all about the force! We will practise these skills outside so perhaps you could have a go at home as well.

Our fine motor will continue to develop our finger strength and the activities will help us learn to cut, spread and use a knife and fork correctly during snack and lunch times. This is a very important life skill and will certainly help the dinner ladies. Our finger strength is also very important to help with our handwriting and we will continue our work developing letter formation, patterns and cursive handwriting so your child is able to write neatly and for increasingly longer periods of time.

REMINDERS Junk Modelling Any recycling of cardboard boxes, yogurt pots, lids, cartons, etc would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Class Blog Don’t forget to go on the school website and have a look at the class blog and photo galleries which show examples of what we have been doing in school.

Snack Please provide your child with a healthy snack and bottle of water.

Walk to School We have started the Walk to School initiative, whereby the children can keep a record of how often they walk to school. Remember, if you live further away from school, you can still take part, by parking a little further away from school and walking a short distance.

Vet and Pet Shop Please send in any items that would be of use to us in our role play area such as soft toy dogs, cats, mice, etc, pet carriers, pet food leaflets or posters, empty pet food bags or boxes, photographs of you and your pet, information books and stories about pets.

Dates Family Photographs Saturday 28 February with Mel Jones 9-12 noon Mother’s Day Lunch Tuesday 10th and Thursday 12th March Mother’s Day Cake Decorating Afternoon Thursday 12th March Easter Disco th Thursday 26 March 5-6pm – FS and KS1 Open Afternoon in Ducklings Friday 27th March Easter and Spring themed activity afternoon from 1.30pm Easter Holidays Friday 27th March School closes for Easter 2.30pm th

TALK HOMEWORK

Talk for Numbers Order different objects according to their length, size, height and so on, for e.g. socks, toy cars, skipping ropes, teddies, shoes, pieces of string.

Ask questions that you can try to find the answers to, such as, Who is the tallest in the family?

Who is the youngest? What colour hair do most people in my house have?

Which colour car is the most popular in my street? How many houses on the way home have a red door?

How can you record these answers? Can you draw a picture or a chart? Can you count the numbers?

Practise number formation on an iPad. www.ictgames.com/numeracy www.adamup.co.uk www.nrich.maths.org www.tesiboard.co.uk Talk for Reading and Writing Read every night.

Share a story about a pet animal.

Draw and write about your pet or an imaginary pet.

Practise the new sounds and tricky words sent home, reading and writing words with the new phonemes in.

Practise letter formation on an iPad/tablet Read every night. www.phonicsplay.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies Talk for Topic Call in at a Vets or Pet shop and ask for some information or leaflets.

Look at what you can see in the vets or pet shop.

Find out more about your pet or a particular pet. What does it eat? Drink? Need to stay healthy and clean?

Talk about everything!

Have fun!