Ducklings Newsletter 15/5/17

Monday 15th May 2017 Our News!

We had a fantastic day out at Old Holly Farm. The children behaved brilliantly and learnt lots about the animals and where our milk comes from. I think that they enjoyed their picnic lunch, the bus ride and the ice-cream tasting the best though! Look at the photo gallery on the school website to see the children having lots of fun. We have also made a lovely display of our trip in the classroom. Come in and see it!

A big thank you to Jaxson’s grandma and grandad for helping to fill our sand pits last week, just in time for the lovely weather and our capacity topic in mathematics. Also thank you to Jaxson for finding some tadpoles for us on his trip to the caravan. We are enjoying taking care of them and watching them growing and changing day by day.

The children have been confident to explore time in Mathematics. They were able to investigate what they could do in 1 minute using sand timers! They were very active, finding out how many times they could hop, bounce and catch a ball, run around the playground or do star jumps in one minute. They have also been able to sequence and order events in time, such as how we get ready for school or getting ready for bed. We were also amazed at how well they could tell the o’clock time. We have been looking at capacity and weighing porridge too and this has been great fun for problem-solving.

The children have loved reading the different versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears so much that we have decided to continue with this for another week! Thank you for all of the different versions that you have sent in for us to share! They know the story so well that they can act it out using puppets and props. Some of them have even written their own stories.

STARS OF THE WEEK Jacob Turner for being a super star writer and Isaac Hale for all of his hard work in Phonics.

Joshua McDougall for being a super learner at Holly Farm and Jac Cardwell for his enthusiasm with our Goldilocks topic.

Our next newsletter will be on Friday 26th May and will give details about all the fun activities we have planned.

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

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

OUR LEARNING Traditional Tales Next week we will continue to read lots of different versions of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears story. We will discuss ways in which they are the same or different. The children will pretend that they are Goldilocks or the Three Bears and will write letters to each other. They will also write their own stories and create wanted posters for Goldilocks.

The following week we will start to read the story of The Three Little Pigs.

In the creative area the children will make different sized beds and chairs for the three bears and then use junk materials to build houses of straw, sticks and bricks for the three little pigs.

In PE the children have been creating dances for some of the traditional tales, as well as starting to practise some of the skills that they will need for their Sports’ day races.

In Mathematics the children will continue to explore capacity using the water trays and sand pits. They will explore filling different sized and shaped containers and will use their estimating, as well as counting skills to find out how much it takes to fill them.

In Phonics the majority of the children will be moving on to the Phase 4 aspect of the Letters and Sounds Phonics programme that we follow. During this phase, the children do not learn any new sounds, but consolidate their writing of the Phase 3 sounds (something that both teachers have found from their assessments that most children need) and learn to read and write words such as those with consonant clusters at the start or at the end, such as trip, crunch and stamp.

Fun Friday is going to start in the final summer half term. This is where all the children get to choose a fun learning activity to take part in on a Friday afternoon. Some of the activities in the past have been learning Spanish, Dancing, Cross Country and Cooking. They will then spend Friday afternoon with that teacher and will mix with children from all of the different year groups! It is great fun and gives the children the opportunity to try out new things! They will be choosing what they would like to do soon!

REMINDERS and REQUESTS! Blog Don’t forget to look at the Ducklings Blog on the school website to find out more about what we have been learning!

Skipping Ropes We are doing 2 minutes of skipping every day. Bring in your own skipping rope to use if you want to. Make sure it has your name on!

Names on Book Bags A lot of names have worn off the children’s book bags. Please can you re-write on them for us?

Thank you.

Warmer Weather Please can all children bring a water bottle to school each day? Sun hats and sun cream (clearly named) are also needed. Please show your child how to apply this carefully or apply a long lasting cream on them before school on days when it is needed. Thank you.

Coats Please can all children bring a coat to school each day, even if it is a light weight one, as we have had a number of children who haven’t brought a coat and then the weather has taken a turn for the worse during the day! We learn indoors and outdoors every day, whatever the weather!!

Lates Children who consistently arrive at school late will have to catch up this ‘Lost Learning Time’ at lunchtime in line with the rest of the school. We really do not want any of our Reception children to have to do this. We start our learning straight away after the register at 9am.

DATES

Meeting for Parents about the Foundation Stage Profile Tuesday 16th May All welcome, in the Brown Ducklings Classroom 9-9.30am Have a coffee and find out about how your child’s development and achievement will be reported to you at the end of the Reception Year.

Sports’ Day with BBQ Apologies for the incorrect date on the previous newsletter!

Tuesday 6th June from 1pm (Reserve day if the weather is bad - Thursday 8th June) Summer Fair Saturday 1st July from 1pm

TALK HOMEWORK Talk for Mathematics Do some baking or cooking together. Weigh and measure out the ingredients together.

In the bath or sand pit explore filling different containers with water or sand.

Predict which container will hold the most or least and then use a smaller container to fill and count how many it takes! You could use dry pasta or rice and see how many spoons it takes to fill a container.

Explore making a container full, nearly full, half full, half empty, empty, nearly full or nearly empty! www.ictgames.com/numeracy http://www.iboard.co.uk/activities/subject/maths Talk for Reading and Writing Practise reading and writing the phase 3 sounds in particular the vowel phonemes such as ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, er, ow, oi, ear, air and ure.

Write sentences or captions with words featuring that letter for e.g. ‘ear’ I had a tear in my eye. / ‘air’ My hair is long.

Please try to read your reading book every night. www.phonicsplay.co.uk - phase 2, 3 and 4 Geraldine the Giraffe (plus the letter/phoneme you want to find out about!) www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks www.oxfordowl.co.uk Talk for Topic Read some Traditional Tales together at home.

What happens at the beginning, the middle and the end of the story?

Who are the characters in the story? Is there a bad and a good character in the story?

Draw and write some describing words for one of the characters.

Write some traditional stories of your own and bring them in to show us.

Talk about everything! Have fun!