Ducklings Newsletter 24/3/16

Thursday 24th March 2016 Our News!

We have had a very busy few weeks again! Last week we all enjoyed a fabulous day out at Old Holly Farm. Most of the adult helpers will agree it was one of the best trips ever and the children learnt so much. They were all brilliantly behaved and were worn out on the coach journey back to school! Thank you to all of the helpers that gave up their time to come and help us. We also had a very active end to the week with Sport Relief. Thank you to all of the children who brought donations and sponsor money in.

Remember to look on the Ducklings Class Blog on the school website for all the photographs of these events.

In topic time the children have been busy finding out who celebrates Easter, how and why? They were all able to say and write about what they are looking forward to doing in their Easter holidays; lots of Easter egg hunts and having special family meals together!

During snack-time with Mrs Moss and Ms Watmough we have made delicious chocolate Easter nests, following a simple recipe and watching the changes to the ingredients. We have put our funky fingers fine motor skills to good use in the creative area, by drawing beautiful patterns on some eggs. We have made some lovely eggshell patterns using marbling inks. Outdoors the children have used natural materials to create giant nests.

In mathematics we have had great fun carrying out One Minute Challenges, to see what we can do in one minute, such as how many times can we bounce and catch a ball, skip around the playground, write our names or how many star jumps we can do! We have been singing the days of the week and months of the year songs and have had great fun sequencing pictures of familiar events in our day, using vocabulary such as yesterday, tomorrow, before, after, etc.

STARS OF THE WEEK Cole Chappell for being a super star learner, carrying out lots of challenges and Archie Baxter for learning lots about the farm and its animals on our visit Our next news letter will be on Friday 22nd April 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 Lees s.lees@carletongreen.lancs.sch.uk Mrs Catterall m.catterall@carletongreen.lancs.sch.uk

OUR LEARNING Our Gardens and Jack and the Beanstalk

We will be reading lots of different versions of the Jack and the Beanstalk traditional tale and compare and contrast them. We hope to sequence the main events from the story and retell the story using the familiar story language. We will have lots of opportunities for writing from this story such as writing letters to the giant, describing the giant and other characters and writing our own versions of the story.

Creatively we hope to construct castles and beanstalks and explore moving in different ways such as like a giant or climbing up and down a beanstalk. Our funky fingers can make some lovely collages with different beans, seeds and pulses.

Outdoors we will be sowing seeds and planting in our vegetable patch, taking care of our plants as they grow. We will also explore growing cress and runner beans, labelling the different parts of plants and finding out what plants need to grow healthily.

We hope to turn our role play area into a fruit and vegetable shop or a garden centre.

In PE we will warm up playing the ‘Bean game,’ moving in different ways like different kinds of beans, such as runner beans or jumping beans.

In mathematics we will solve problems with beans as our theme – estimating and counting beans, ordering numbered beans, adding, taking away and sharing with beans and weighing bags of beans.

REMINDERS Water Bottles Please can all children bring a water bottle to school every day?

Garden Centre Role-Play Please send in any posters, leaflets, donations of seed packets, plant pots, etc. for our role-play area.

Tadpoles It would be lovely to watch the changes to tadpoles as they grow and change if anyone has some frogspawn we could have, after the Easter holidays.

Jack and the Beanstalk Books Please have a look at home for different versions of the Jack and the Beanstalk story for us to read in school. Thank you.

Reading Books A number of school reading books are being damaged beyond repair due to water bottles leaking in book bags. Please can drinks be carried separately? Thank you.

PE Kits and Puddle Suits We have sent home your child’s PE kit and puddle suits home for washing. Please can you ensure that they are returned on the first day back.

Thank you.

Dates School Re-opens Monday 11th April at 8.50am Yellow Ducklings Class Assembly – Tuesday 19th April Parents, Grandparents and all carers are invited – in the hall at 3pm Meeting for Parents about The EYFS Profile Tuesday 3rd May Come and have a coffee and find out more about the EYFS Profile and how your child’s progress will be reported to you at the end of the year.

In the classroom at 9.00am

TALK HOMEWORK Talk for Mathematics Complete some 1 minute challenges at home and email some photographs in to show the class Keep a diary of your Easter holidays, use words such as yesterday, tomorrow, at the weekend, on Saturday……Bring them in to show us!

Make a patterned Easter egg design using different shapes and colours www.iboard.co.uk www.ictgames.com/numeracy

Talk for Reading and Writing Practise the new sounds and tricky words sent home.

Play some rhyming games together Say a word e.g. hen – make a list of words that rhyme with it.

Go to the library, find and read different versions of the Jack and the Beanstalk story Practise forming each letter of the alphabet from the correct starting point – practise in sand, with sticks in the mud, in shaving foam, etc. www.phonicsplay.co.uk Phase 3 and 4 TALK FOR TOPIC Find out about as many different types of beans as you can!

Draw and label a plant Make a poster showing how to care for a plant Plant and care for some seeds of your own or help with the gardening!

Visit a garden centre TALKING TUBES Keep an old ‘Pringles’ tube. Decorate it and fill it with things from your Easter holidays, such as leaflets of places you have visited, photographs, writing and drawings and other things of interest that you have collected. Bring them in first week back to show and talk about to the class.

Talk about everything!

Have fun!