Ducklings Newsletter 16/3/18

Friday 16th March 2018 Our News!

A big thank you to those of you who managed to come to the Mother’s Day event. It was a lovely afternoon. We hope that the children managed to give you their cards and special writing on Mother’s Day too.

The children are doing really well with writing in their new news books. Thank you for supporting the children each week with this. If you have any questions regarding this, please feel free to ask us.

Our space topic is nearly coming to an end and the children have had great fun and learned so much.

They have enjoyed reading more factual information about space over the last few weeks and have used this newly gained knowledge to write some lovely space facts. Each class has made an information book all about space! We will put these out on the open afternoon for you to enjoy!

The children have gained super vocabulary from reading and listening to all of the factual information about space.

We have nearly come to the end of our current phase in phonics and will be completing assessments over the next few weeks to see which phonemes (sounds) the children can recall, read and write, as well the ‘tricky’ words too.

In mathematics the children have enjoyed using our space theme to investigate doubling, halving and sharing, by sharing out ‘space’ rocks fairly between our friends and doubling the number of craters on different planets. This week the children have also been exploring time by ordering and sequencing familiar events in their day.

During science week we have been exploring making moon craters, bubbling planets and shooting rockets. We also enjoyed the year5/6 Eagles class sharing their investigation about space nappies with us!

In RE they have enjoyed reading the stories ‘Guess how much I love you?’ and ‘No Matter What’ and talking about who loves them, who they love and how Jesus showed unconditional love.

STARS OF THE WEEK Blake Crumblehulme for trying really hard with his handwriting and his amazing knowledge of space and Eva Price for her super enthusiasm when learning facts about space.

Our next newsletter will be on Friday 13th April 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 Easter, New Life and Spring and Animals On our return we will explore how the children have celebrated Easter and what it means to them. We will also find out about how other countries and people around the world celebrate Easter in different ways. We will be writing all of our Easter holiday news too!

We will be exploring our local environment for signs of spring and going on lots of welly walks to spot these and photograph them, as well as to sketch and write about them too!

In Mathematics we will be continuing with our work on measures and will be comparing and measuring size, height and length.

In the All About Me booklets, a number of children expressed wanting to learn more about animals, hence our new animal themed topic. We will let the children take a lead with exactly which animals we learn about from their interests as the topic progresses.

We will be finding out which animals come from eggs and will be doing lots of egg themed activities. Does anybody have any frogspawn which we could have in school to observe it grow and change?

Our phonics will focus on reinforcing the tricky words and sounds we have been learning most recently and will focus more on the writing of these, before moving on to the next phase.

We will be starting our new RE topic of ‘The Church.’ During the first week back it would be lovely if children could bring in photographs or special artefacts from their own christenings to show and talk about to the class.

…… is a Lancashire initiative to help promote reading. We want to show that ‘The Ducklings read everywhere!’ In order for us to evidence this, please could you send in photos (or email them in) for us to display? They could show your child reading absolutely anywhere, for e.g. on a long journey in the car, reading road signs, reading signs at the supermarket or at the park, reading a book in the bath or up a mountain on holiday! Anything goes!! Who can send in the most different examples or most unusual?!!

As part of our gradual transition into Year 1 we will begin this important process on the first day back by changing our home time routine, slightly. At the end of the day we ask you to wait outside by the usual doors and we will bring the children out to you. Thank you for your help with this and remember we are still there to speak to you if you should you need to.

REMINDERS Blog Don’t forget to look at the Ducklings Blog on the school website to find out more about what we have been learning! It would be lovely if you could look at it with the children and even add some comments with them!

Spare Socks Please send in a spare pair of socks, in your child’s book bag, as we want to go on welly walks to investigate the changing season. This will help if we get wet!

Knives and Forks Practise using your knife and fork each mealtime over the holidays! Some children are experts at this! Some need a little more practise!!

Head Lice Please can long hair be tied back for school at all times and can we please ask that you regularly check your child’s hair and treat them before they return to school if you spot any. Thank you.

Help needed!!!!

We would really love for more volunteers to help for an hour or so with listening to readers.

Please see your child’s teacher if this is something you would like to do. It can be a parent, grandparent, carer, big brother or sister! It doesn’t need to be a on a regular basis either, but whenever you can!

Reading Books We have noticed a number of reading books (even brand new ones) being returned to school damaged. Please can we ask for water bottles not to be carried inside book bags? Thank you.

Road Safety Training We will be teaching road safety sessions with the children during the summer term. Our staff members will be receiving a training update and we are able to train parents and carers who would be willing to be volunteers and help us when we do the sessions later on in the term. The training will take place on Friday 13th April at 9.30am for about one and a half hours. Please contact your child’s class teacher if this is something that you would like to help us with and would like to join us for the training. Places are limited.

DATES

Open Afternoon All families welcome from 1.30pm, with school closing for Easter at 2.30pm School Re-opens Monday 9th April Parent Forum th Tuesday 10 April 3.45-5.45pm in the school hall

TALK HOMEWORK Talk for Numbers Find a clock in your house. Look at the numbers and how they are organised. Look at the different sized hands and where are they pointing to? What number does the big hand point to when it is an o’clock time?

Talk about different times of the day and talk through the different activities you do and their order, for e.g. getting ready for bed or getting ready for school in the morning.

Count and look at numbers beyond 20. Can you spot any patterns? What does each digit mean? www.ictgames.com/numeracy http://www.iboard.co.uk/activities/subject/maths Talk for Reading and Writing Practise reading and writing new tricky words and high frequency words that are sent home.

Write sentences with the tricky words in or look for them in your reading books.

Please try to read your reading book every night.

Take photos for our ‘We are Reading!’ challenge.

Practise your cursive handwriting. We want the children to form their letters like this all the time! www.phonicsplay.co.uk - phase 2, 3 and 4 www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/alphablocks www.oxfordowl.co.uk Talk for Topic Make a paper mache planet. It could be a real planet or one that you have imagined yourself!

Take photos and bring them in or email them to show how your family celebrates Easter.

Competition Time!!!!

Go all creative and decorate a hard-boiled egg for our Easter Egg competition.

Use whatever theme you like, for e.g. a space themed egg or spring themed one!

Thursday 12th April at the latest!

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.

Make a recipe using eggs – scrambled eggs, bake some buns!!

Plant some flower or vegetable seeds in a seed tray and care for them. When they have grown bring them into school and we can plant them in our vegetable patch or flower pots! Let’s see who has green fingers and can grow the most!

Talk about everything! Have fun!