Author: Mrs Taylor

At the start of the new school year, in our Living and Learning lesson, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life. This also links to the British Value of rule of law.

Before focussing on our school rules, we started by thinking about…

Why do we have rules?

What rules can you think of?

What places have rules?

Who makes the rules?

Rules tells us what to do.

We need rules so we don’t hurt each other.

Rules help us to know what is right and what is wrong.

Rules keep us safe.

In our school we have three school rules and three, two, one, stop is one of the most important instructions the children will hear at school.

Following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and SAFE place to learn.

We also agreed our Living and Learning ground rules.

For rules around online safety at school, your child will be bringing home their Being online – acceptable use agreement for pupils and parents/carers which should be read through, signed and returned to class.

Any questions, please do ask.

Help at home – think about our three school rules and talk with your child about what that might look like or sound like in the classroom, the playground or at lunchtime. Here are some examples the children thought of. Being ready would mean looking at the speaker, being respectful would mean laughing with not laughing at someone and being safe would mean washing our hands before lunch to stop spreading germs.

This week, Year 2 have been using their design and technology food preparation skills to make our latest recipe, fruit bars.

Some of the skills we used to make our product included:

• snipping
• mixing
• measuring
• mashing
• using the oven and hob safely

After the cooking, we carried out the evaluation of the product and we enjoyed the tasting our product together.

Help at home: Ask your child/children what food preparation skills they have used in this learning and can they demonstrate these using the recipe they have brought home.

 

 

It was a busy end to our being healthy themed week with lots of visitors to support this key aspect of Living and Learning.

Matt, from Leeds Well School Partnership, visited to deliver an assembly all about being healthy. There were key messages about being active, sleep and healthy eating. We also got to hear our two winning entries that have now been published in a book titled Move Well looking at children’s relationship with physical activity and sport. Well done to Florence and Soham.

Catering Leeds, who provide our school meals, came to deliver their Bushtucker trial workshop all about healthy eating. Here, the children were able to taste blind taste and blind feel different fruits and vegetables. There were lots of new foods to explore.

Foot tech, who support our PE curriculum, came to deliver some of the games which we’ve enjoyed this year in a fun and active way.

Our final visitor was Hazel from D:side, a health charity. We started by thinking about the three main things that we need to put in our body – food water and air. We also looked at different parts of our body and what their job is. Finally, we thought about our emotions and used this car wash activity to share compliments to our friends while they walked down the ‘car wash’.

Another way we’ve thought about our emotional health is mindfulness and ways we can calm our mind. The children enjoyed using their glitter bottles to watch the glitter settle just like our emotions. We hope the children enjoy using these at home.

In our circle time, the children shared the ways they are going to improve their health following our learning.

I’m going to play outside more.

I’m going to drink more water.

I’m going to have less screen time and TV time.

I’m going to go to bed earlier.

I’m going to eat less sweets and chocolate.

I’m going to be more active on my way to school.

I’m going to try new foods.

I’m going to make sure I keep my body clean.

Help at home: support your child to complete the online health questionnaire homework to share your child’s views on health at school.

Our latest Living and Learning sessions have been focussed on body image and we started this learning by thinking about what is special about our own identity and how we can describe our own identity in terms of our physical appearance.

Our self portraits show just how unique we all are.

We also thought of other ways we might be different, on the inside as well as the outside. For example, we don’t all have the same personality and characteristics and we have different interests and hobbies.

We agreed that being different is a good thing and it should be celebrated as it would be boring if we were all the same!

In our circle time, we thought about good things about ourselves…

I am alive.

I can be on stage confidently.

I have a good imagination.

I care about the environment.

I care for others and help my friends.

I am funny.

…and what we like about our bodies.

I am flexible.

I like my long hair.

I am unique.

I can see and hear.

I like my eye colour.

My brain helps me think.

Help at home: discuss this learning with your child. Encourage them to think about their strengths and what they like about who they are.

For the last few weeks, our Living and Learning lessons and circle times have been all about happy and healthy relationships between our friends, peers and families.

When thinking about our families, we thought about how we show we care for each other.  We read some texts about how not all families are the same and that is ok. The children enjoyed sharing special members of their family.

The Family book by Todd Parr

The Great big book of families by Mary Hoffman

We have already learnt about consent in terms of permission seeking when online but here we thought about it when we are with others. We practised showing how we give and don’t give consent and how we can also change our mind if we want to.

Finally, you will have seen the children have brought home the NSPCC Pants Underwear rule. We revisit this important learning every year.

Help at home: read the NSPCC pants underwear rule with your child/children and think about how this keeps you safe. This parent guide is available too.

With six Numbots certificates awarded this week, it’s great to see the children continuing to work hard at home to achieve their next level.

Certificates are awarded every Tuesday so let’s see how many more we can achieve before the end of the year.

This week, Year 2 took part in our Skipping School KS1 festival at Leeds Trinity University against four other Leeds schools.

The children have been learning lots of individual and group skipping skills and today it was great to see just how much the children have progressed.

All the class worked hard as a team to earn as many skips as possible in their events. Dexter’s 99 single bounce skips in 30 seconds certainly helped to contribute to our total!

After all the points (skips) were added up, the winning school was announced…

We were so excited and proud to hear we had won!

A huge well done to all the children for fantastic determination, resilience and team work. They have worked so hard by practising in PE, at lunchtime and playtime, at skipping after-school club and even at home!

The festival has been really fun. I feel happy.

I like it because I’ve learnt lots of different skips and people encouraged me.

I feel proud of my skipping.

This is the third year in a row our Year 2 classes have achieved this and we feel very proud of their success.

Recently, as part of the Leeds Well Schools Partnership, some of our Key Stage 2 children participated in an orienteering event at Roundhay Park.

After being briefed on the rules and how to complete the orienteering challenge, they set off with their partner armed with a map of the site to find the first check point. Then, it was back to the start to hand over to the other pair in their team for them to find check point two and so on until all twelve markers had been found.

The children worked brilliantly in their teams encouraging and supporting each other.

Well done to all the children for representing the school so well and developing these great skills.

The event was led by Airienteers and they have permanent orienteering courses across Leeds locations. Here’s the course for Roundhay Park.

Our latest Living and Learning sessions have been all about the importance of exercise and how we need to keep active to keep our bodies and our minds healthy.

We thought about all the things we had done since waking up. Then, we checked which ones were active.

Practised gymnastics

Wake up Shake up

Walking to school

Playing tig with friends at playtime

Classroom skipping brain break

Pull ups

The NHS guidance states that children and young people should ‘aim for an average of at least 60 minutes (30 minutes in school and 30 minutes out of school) of moderate or vigorous intensity physical activity a day across the week’. We know that the exercise we need to do to achieve this, should increase our heart rate.

How do we manage to achieve our 30 minutes during the school day?

• Daily WUSU
• 2 weekly PE sessions
• Playtimes
• Lunchtime play – front playground, MUGA
• Go Noodle, Supermovers and active counting in class
• Jogging around the playground for brain breaks
• After school clubs

Help at home – try a new physical activity out of school – maybe a local junior park run, tennis lessons or have a look at our local physical activity guide for more ideas. Don’t forget to do skipping practice for our upcoming festival too.