Spring 2: Week 1
Pancake day
On Tuesday, we learnt all about Shrove Tuesday. We talked about some of the traditions that happen in the United Kingdom. One of the traditions we liked was the pancake racing that happens in Olney, Buckinghamshire. Of course, we had to have a go at doing this ourselves! Click here to watch our races.
One of our chilli challenges this week was to make playdough pancakes and write a list on ingredients.
This week’s poem was Pancakes by Christina Rossetti. On Tuesday, we created a tally of pancake toppings. We also enjoyed eating pancakes and saying the poem. Listen out for our fantastic use of prosody.
Class assembly
Thank you to all the parents/carers who came to watch our class assembly. All the children spoke loud and clear when saying their lines. We’re so proud of all of them. We hope you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed practising it.
Phonics
This half-term, we’ll continue to review and revisit phase 3 digraphs and trigraphs. We will practise reading words with:
– double letters (h-a-mm-er)
– two or more digraphs (ch-a-tt–er)
– ending in –ing (l-oo-k/i-ng)
– s /z/ in the middle (visit sounds like v-i-z-i-t)
– s /s/ /z/ at the end (c-oo-k-s)
– es at the end (t-or-ch-es)
There’ll be no new tricky words this half-term. We’ll continue to recap all the phase 2 and 3 tricky words.
Help at home:
Practise reading and writing all of the phase 2 and 3 tricky words.
Reminders
- World Book Day stay & learn session – 9.00am-9.30am
Come and read a book with your child. You’re child is more than welcome to bring in their favourite book. We alternate years when we dress up – this is not a dressing up year. - Don’t forget to write in your child’s reading record every week.
Please!
Our children love to do junk-modelling in our creative area. They love it that much I can’t keep up with them! It would be great if you could bring in a selection of recyclable packaging.
Supporting our school charity
St Gemma’s Hospice is our current school charity chosen democratically by the children.
Today, we welcomed Steph and Stewart from St Gemma’s Hospice for an assembly to find out more about the fantastic work they do in our local community.
Here, two of our junior leaders are presenting them with a cheque for £377 for the money we have raised so far.
Steph and Stewart commented on the impressive behaviour of the children and the intelligent questions they asked.
Our junior leaders are planning a visit to the hospice over the next few weeks to continue this partnership.
Real-life superheroes, length and more
This week, we’ve been learning all about real-life superheroes. We read non-fiction texts about police officers, firefighters, dentists, paramedics, doctors, vets and more. Our focus story was The Great Fairies of the World. We designed our own fairies and wrote sentences about their jobs.
This morning, we had a real-life superhero come to visit us! We listened carefully and asked lots of questions. We were so excited when we saw the police van pull into our playground.
In maths, we explored length. We cut a piece of ribbon as long as our arm and explored finding things in the environment that are longer, shorter or the same length.
We also used different objects of equal length to find out how long we are. We made sensible predictions and then checked to see if we were right by counting them.
Yesterday, we made a height chart to see who is the tallest.
We carried out a colouring mixing experiment and watched the primary colours (red, blue, yellow) travel up the kitchen roll to make a secondary colour.
The Bee-Bots have been a big hit this week! We’ve loved programming them and watching them move around our classroom.
Reminders
- Class assembly – Wednesday 22 February, 2:40pm – 3:00pm
- World Book Day stay & learn session – Thursday 02 March, 8.50am – 9.30am
- Comic Relief: Red Nose Day – Friday 17 March
Your child can come to school in non-uniform. - Learning Journey Drop In’s – Tuesday 28 March – 8.50 – 9.30am or 3.15 – 3.45pm & Thursday 30 March – 8.50 – 9.30am or 3.15 – 3.45pm
Lexia
To login into the Lexia app, please use moortowneyfs@spherefederation.
Once you’ve done this, you should be able to login into your child’s account using their login details.
Finally…
I can’t believe we’re half-way through the year! The children are thriving with their learning. They are becoming confident independent learners.
Thank you to all who attended the parent-teacher meetings this week. It was lovely to share the children’s wonderful achievements.
As always, I hope you all have a happy and healthy half-term break. Don’t forget to send me an email of what you get up to. I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday 20 February.
Have fun and keep reading!
Supertato continued
Literacy
We continued to read Supertato. We created wanted posters to try and help capture the Evil Pea. We thought of sentences to describe the Evil Pea.
He is green.
He is round.
He has a red cape.
He wears a black mask.
He is tiny.
Once again, the Evil Pea has been up to mischief! We’ve been super building traps in the construction area. The children came up with some fantastic ideas! 
Some of the children drew a picture of their traps.
Maths
We’ve been learning about weight. We used balance scales to compare the weight of different objects.
Art
We looked at some of Yayoi Kusama’s famous dot paintings. Yayoi is a Japanese artist who is sometimes called ‘the princess of polka dots’. Although she makes lots of different types of art – they have one thing in common, DOTS! In the creative area, we had fun creating our own dot paintings using cotton buds and bubble wrap.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s was called Mrs Bluebird. The children particularly liked being Mr Bee!
Outdoor learning
The wind didn’t stop us from having fun outside.
Early writing
A short presentation by Mrs Payne, one of our Sphere Federation Reception teachers has been emailed to you this week. The presentation explains how writing develops over the Reception year and has some ideas of things that you can try at home to support your child’s learning. If you have any questions about the presentation, please ask.
Reminders
- Parent-teacher meetings – Monday 06 & Tuesday 07 February
I look forward to chatting to you all in person next week. - A new e-book is assigned every Thursday. Please make sure your child reads this daily at home.
- Library books must be returned every Friday.
Finally, thank you to all of the parents and carers who came to the fiddly fingers stay & learn session today. It was lovely to see so many of you! We hope you all enjoyed it.
Living and Learning
This week, our Living and Learning was ‘I know how to seek help’. We talked about different scenarios and how/who we would ask for help.
AP – I would ask a teacher.
MB – I would ask my Mummy and Daddy.
SSK – I would ask the police.
TH – I would ask my neighbour.
FlM – I would ask someone who works there who is wearing a hi-vis jacket or wearing uniform.
DD – I would ring 999.
Super Reception!
Supertato took over our classroom this week! The children have loved reading this story. On Tuesday, the children noticed the veggies taped to a table with pictures of the Evil Pea all over the writing area. Just when we were about to start reading the book, we found a letter from the Evil Pea.
On Wednesday, the Evil Pea had been up to his mischievous tricks again! The veggies were trapped in a shopping basket hanging on a door!
All week the children our new role play area has been very busy with determined superheroes trying to solve the crimes and capture the Evil Pea!
Super writing!
Every morning, the children have a morning activity to do before phonics. We’ve been super impressed with their amazing sentences this week.
Maths
In maths, the children continued to develop their understanding of composition, or the numbers within numbers. We used the Hungarian number pattern (die pattern) to explore ways to represent numbers. By using this die pattern, it is helping the children understand the ‘5-ness’ of 5.
We started by sing the ‘5 Little Aliens in a Flying Saucer’ song to help us see remember the pairs of numbers that make 5. When another alien joined the gang, they quickly realised there was no space! FlM said, “We need to build another spaceship.” Therefore, we used a double dice frame to begin to explore 6 and 7 as numbers that are composed of ‘5 and a bit’.
Music
This week, the children learnt all about robots and made their own robot to use next week in music.
AT – They might be used to help people.
TH – They do what you say.
JQ – You can control it.
FiM – A robot could help you with your shopping.
MB – I would put a button on to move it.
SL – I would put hands on my robot so it can do the cleaning.
SS – I might use a remote control.
AS – I would put legs on my robot.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was an eight-line poem called A Little House. We highlighted lots of digraphs, trigraphs and tricky words when reading the poem.
Reminders
- Fiddly Fingers Stay & Learn – Friday 03 February 8.50am-9.30am
No need to sign up just come and join in with some fun finger gym activities. Due to limited space, only one adult per child can attend this session. - Parent-Teacher meetings – Monday 06 & Tuesday 07 February
- Class assembly – Wednesday 22 February – 2.40pm – 3.00pm
Reading
As you all know we love to read at Moortown Primary School. Starting from today, Year 5 will be reading with Reception every Friday. It was lovely to see and hear all the children engaged in a story.
Music & Living and Learning
Every Monday afternoon, the children have lots of fun exploring music with Miss Gaunt. Last week, they continued learning about the pulse through movement. They listened carefully to the song When the cold wind blows and responded appropriately by using coordinated movements with the parachute.
They crouched down small like hibernating hedgehogs.
They wriggled the parachute like they were shivering.
They warmed their hands by the fire.
Last week, our Living and Learning was ‘I can asses my own risks’. We looked at different activities and placed them on a ‘risk ladder’. We talked about high and low risks.
Lunar New Year
This week, we’ve been learning all about the Lunar New Year.
On Monday, they had lots of fun moving in different ways to create a dragon parade. Click here to watch it at home.
In literacy, we found out that the Lunar New Year is traditionally celebrated in Asian countries. We used a globe to locate some of these countries.
On Wednesday, we watched a video about special traditions and thought about the differences between the Lunar New Year and the New Year celebrations held on 31st December.
AP – It goes on for 15 days.
AM – They do a dragon dance.
EC – They have a big parade.
LN – They eat Chinese food.
SSK – They make lanterns.
FM – They have a lantern festival.
AT – We clean our house.
We had a go at making our own Chinese lanterns and dragons.
We also read the story about how the Chinese Zodiac started. We looked at the Zodiac wheel to find out which animal we are.
Our focus story was The Magic Paintbrush by Julia Donaldson. We closed our eyes and imagined what we would paint if someone gave us a magic paintbrush.
EZ – I would paint a tree because I want some gold coins.
SBL – I would paint a cat because I like cats.
SB – I would paint a rainbow.
FM – I would paint a heart.#
One of this week’s chilli challenges was to have a go at writing Chinese numerals- we found some of them really tricky!
Week 2: The Secrets of Winter
Literacy
Our focus story was The Secrets of Winter by Carron Brown and Georgina Tee. We had a lots of fun shining a torch onto the pages to find the hidden winter surprises.
On Wednesday, we talked about the difference between non-fiction and fiction books and why they are both important. We then sorted a selection of non-fiction and fiction books into two groups.
We’ve also learnt lots of interesting facts about penguins! We watched various videos, talked about the life cycle and had a go at writing our favourite facts. Ask your child if they can remember one fact about penguins.
Maths
This week, we continued to engage with counting activities. A key focus this week has been the stable order principle – understanding that the position each number holds in our number sequence does not change. To help us understand the stable order principle, we used cubes, blocks and other resources to make staircase patterns.
When making our staircase patterns, we discovered that each number has a value of 1 more than the previous number.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem is a short poem called I can build a snowman. We used our imaginations and pretended to build snowmen.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the challenges this week…
Reminders
- Please make sure you write in your child’s reading record when you’ve read at home. It is important we see how your child is doing with their reading at home.
- Don’t forget our Phase 3 Funky Phonics Stay & Learn session! Thank you to everyone who has returned their slip. We look forward to seeing you all on Monday and Tuesday.
- E-books are assigned every Thursday. Please make sure your child reads this daily at home.
Home-Link Challenge
