Ducklings Newsletter 11/3/16

Friday 11th March 2016 Our News!

Firstly, a big thank you to all of the parents that let us ‘borrow’ their pets for the day or parents who brought their pets in and spent time talking to the children about them. The children are certainly pet experts now! Also thank you to those of you who were able to make it to the meeting about Mathematics. The information has been put on the class webpage too.

We have had a very busy few weeks, just for a change! Here are just a few of the things we have been doing! (Remember to keep looking at our blog on the school website too!)

We have enjoyed different stories about mums to celebrate Mother’s Day. We hope you enjoyed reading the writing they did for you and liked the flowers they made for you. The children have completed our topic on pets by reading the story ‘The Great Pet Sale’ and a nonfiction book, ‘Guess My Pet?’ They have enjoyed playing ‘guess my pet?’ with their friends and have each written clues for their own lift the flap pet books. We have been able to identify which things in our world are living and non-living and have enjoyed looking after our virtual pet dog, making sure it has all the things that it needs to stay healthy and alive! So far, so good! We are pet experts!

In Mathematics the children have been practising their estimation skills in different ways, such as guessing how many toy pets will fit in a box, how many fish are in a tank and how many cubes tall or long a pet is and then checking their estimations by counting. We have also been exploring one more and one less than a given number. Ask them some questions about this at home! We have also been ordering objects according to their size, length or height. We have also begun to measure objects for e.g. how many cubes long a book is or how many milk crates tall the shed is. The lovely spring weather has meant we have been able to do lots of measuring outside.

The children have created lots of ingenious pet homes together with their friends, out of junk materials. They have used their funky fingers to twist and wind wool to make lovely spring lambs!

STAR Mathematicians Mamie Walker and Austin Cole STAR Writers George Sykes and Amelia Brady Our next newsletter will be on Friday 24th March and will give details about all the fun activities we have planned for after the Easter holidays.

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

Staff emails: Mrs Lees s.lees@carletongreen.lancs.sch.uk Mrs Catterall m.catterall@carletongreen.lancs.sch.uk

OUR LEARNING The Farm, Spring and Easter In topic time we will be reading lots of different stories and non-fiction books about the farm, such as Rosie’s Walk, Six Little Chicks and I Love Animals. We will be reading Duck in a Truck by Jez Alborough.

This is a rhyming story and we will explore lots of rhyming activities and games, and make lists of our own rhyming words.

We may even write some rhyming captions of our own, e.g. A lamb covered in jam! A pig wearing a wig!

Our Farm trip this week will help us find out about the farm animals and what their young are called. We will get to see where our milk comes from and some of the things that it is made into.

In mathematics we will begin to look at time and will start by ordering familiar events in our day, the days of the week, months of the year and the changing seasons. We will complete ‘One Minute Challenges’ to see what we can do in one minute!

We will find out who celebrates Easter, how and why?

We will find out and talk about how we celebrate Easter in our own homes and decorate our home corner.

We will make Easter nests during snack time and make nests from natural materials outside. We will explore why eggs are a symbol of Easter and Spring and find out which animals hatch from eggs. We will create our own Easter egg patterns, decorate eggs and use marbling inks to create our own eggs.

In PE we are doing our “Animals” topic and focusing on the story Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell. For our warm up we move around like the animals in the story while listening to the song on YouTube. Why not watch and have a go at home? Our fundamental skills are developing really well and we are focusing on improving our accuracy of throwing, catching, rolling and kicking a ball by aiming at targets on different levels.

Outside we have been developing our skills of hopping, skipping, kicking and balancing on benches and following a line. Try balancing on one leg for longer periods of time at home really helps with all these fundamental skills. Mrs Moss and Miss Watmough have been setting up obstacle courses and helping us develop these skills during a Tuesday afternoon.

Our “Funky Finger” work is focusing on developing our pencil pinch and the formation of letters and the patterns they follow. Some of us are doing this with ribbons and materials outside, some of us on a large scale with paper on the floor and others on handwriting sheets on the lines.

The children are all working well in their phonics groups and are trying hard. Keep practising your reading every night at home and remember to keep going over the tricky words and sounds previously sent home.

We have spent a number of weeks recapping over reading and writing with the sounds that we have been learning. It is important to be able to recognise the sounds confidently in their reading and to use them independently in their writing. Please keep practising and send any writing in to share with us. Thank you.

REMINDERS Farm Trip All money to be paid by Tuesday 15th March.

Spare Clothes Please return any outstanding clothes borrowed and brought home from school as we are running very low. Thank you.

Junk Modelling Any recycling of cardboard boxes, yogurt pots, lids, cartons, etc, would be much appreciated for our pet homes.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.

Wanted for our dressing up!

Any old hats, handbags, scarves, and in particular any large pieces of fabric for making all sorts of imaginary things with!

Water Bottles Please ensure your child has a bottle of water in school each day.

WE NEED YOU!!!

New PTFA members needed. To help occasionally or on a regular basis.

To help in lots of different ways, for e.g. volunteering at a disco or collecting provisions from the cash and carry. No job is too small! All help is appreciated and the PTFA are important in raising much needed funds for your children.

Make new friends and join our meetings in the local pub!

Dates Class Trip to Old Holly Farm Wednesday 16 March – Bring wellies and a waterproof coat Sport Relief Day Friday 18th March Bring a donation and wear sports clothes to school.

Don’t forget to keep collecting your sponsors on the sponsor form!

Easter Disco Wednesday 23rd March 5-6pm Easter Egg Competition All entries to be in by Wednesday 23rd March Book Day Thursday 24th March Our classes have chosen to dress up as their favourite princess or hero from a story, book or comic strip! Bring in their favourite book to share with the class.

Easter Holidays Thursday 24th March School closes for Easter 2.30pm th

TALK HOMEWORK

Talk for Numbers Say the days of the week in order Say the months of the year and the seasons in order Carry out some 1 minute challenges at home – see how many times you can skip around the garden in 1 minute, write your name in 1 minute, how many items of clothes you can dress up in, in 1 minute!

Make a little picture diary of your day, your weekend What did you do yesterday, today and what will you do tomorrow? Bring them in to share with us. www.ictgames.com/numeracy www.tesiboard.co.uk

Talk for Reading and Writing Keep learning your sounds and tricky words Read your reading book every night and look out for these sounds Make a list of rhyming words – cat, bat, fat, that, hat Make a little book all about the farm Tell your family all about the visit to the farm www.phonicsplay.co.uk Phase 2/3 TALK FOR TOPIC Ask your family what you will be doing to celebrate Easter Go to the library and find some books about Easter and Spring Find out which animals come from eggs Go all creative and decorate a hard-boiled egg for our Easter Egg competition. Use whatever theme you like, for e.g. our book day princess and hero theme, a spring or Easter theme or your favourite animal! All entries to be in school by Wednesday 23rd March at the latest!

Talk about everything! Have fun!