Whoops a daisy angel
Rehearsals are going well for our Reception, Year 1 and 2 Christmas production of Whoops a daisy angel.
Following our dress rehearsal to the rest of the school on Monday, we will welcoming you to come and watch us on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon at 2:15pm.
If your child has brought a note home about their costume, please could you send this into school in a named bag by Friday. Thank you for your support.
We hope you enjoy the show!
Science: we are chemists
This half term, we have been learning all about materials and their properties (chemistry).
Here’s our vocabulary for this learning.
Actions help us to remember the definitions of these words. Which words are being shown here?
We’ve been exploring materials around us.
The object is a chair. The material is plastic. Plastic is a man made material and it can sometimes be recycled.
Then, we were scientists and we investigated the most suitable material for an umbrella. It needed to be waterproof, light and strong.
Then, we used our playdough to investigate how some materials are flexible and can change shape. How has the playdough changed shape?
Help at home: have a look at home to find different things that are flexible, rigid, brittle, transparent and opaque.
Topic – Art
This half term, we are learning about art – both practically and some art history too.
We are learning about Georges Seurat, who used pointillism (dots), and Bridget Riley, who is an optical artist (uses shapes, pattern and colour to create illusions).
We have created dots using cotton buds and bubble wrap.
Help at home by talking about your preferences for certain artists or colours and shapes.
Design & Technology: food preparation
This week, Year 2 have been using their food preparation skills to create their latest product, fruit smoothies.
This forms part of our Design and Technology food learning which involves following a recipe to create a product each term.
The recipe, taken from this healthy eating website, is our reading fluency text of the week so we’ve had chance to read and understand the instructions before we made our smoothies.
First, we got ready to cook by washing our hands, rolling up jumpers, putting on our aprons and tying long hair back.
We used lots of different food preparation skills including peeling, fork hold to help with claw grip (for chopping), measuring liquids and using measuring spoons.
Then, the children got to enjoy their smoothies.
We always evaluate our product afterwards to see how it could be changed next time. In a link to our learning about adjectives (words that add information about a noun), there were plenty of adjectives used to describe the smoothies – extraordinary, bubbly, fizzy, tasty, yummy, creamy and delicious.
Well done to all the children who worked safely and sensibly with Mrs Roth.
Help at home: your child has taken this recipe home. Can they demonstrate some of their food preparation skills by making this again at home.
English – Little Red
We are linking it to learning about nouns and adjectives in our writing. We are also using our retrieval and inference skills in reading and thinking about the author’s choice or words and phrases.
Help at home by discussing the text with your child. How is Little Red different to the traditional tale Little Red Riding Hood?
Living and Learning: mental health
For the next three weeks, mental health is our new theme in our Living and Learning lessons.
Talking about feelings and knowing where and how to seek help for yourself or others is very important.
People can help you if you tell them how you feel.
If something is wrong and you don’t tell an adult, it might get bigger.
Start telling other people so you can feel better.
This week, Year 2, with the help of some of the characters from the Beano, have been learning about a range of emotions.
Emotions are feelings. They can change all the time.
We all experience a whole range of emotions, from anger to happiness to fear.
Looking at someone’s face and their body language can help us to understand how others might be feeling.
How might Dennis be feeling? What clues tell you this?
We discussed why it is important to recognise and talk about our emotions and how to seek help with our feelings or if we notice a friend might need help.
Next week, we will be thinking about self care techniques that can help us to look after our own mental health. Mindfulness is one example of a self care technique. We do lots of mindfulness techniques in class – ask your child to share them with you. Also, look out for the wellbeing bingo for you to try at home.
Help at home: We’ve talked about how people’s faces and body language can help us to understand how others are feeling. What emotions are the children showing here? Maybe try some other emotions at home too.
Living and Learning: online safety
This week, our Living and Learning focus has been about online safety and in particular spotting adverts online.
First of all, we thought about what an advert is and what a pop up is.
Then, we read a story about Smartie who had a dilemma with a pop up while he was online.
Pop ups, including online adverts, if clicked on, may take us away from the page we’re looking at so we learnt this key message to help keep us safe online.
Help at home: reinforce this key message of telling an adult if an advert pops up on screen.
Assembly stars
Well done to all the children who performed so well in our class assembly. The children have worked hard to rehearse and they have enjoyed being able to share their learning with you.
Assemblies give the children a chance to practice their oracy skills in particular to project their voice and we hope you’d agree they did that well.
Thank you for your support to help the children to learn their lines and for coming to watch on day. We hope you enjoyed it.
Reminders
This Tuesday 19 November at 2:40pm is our rearranged class assembly. We hope you can join us.
On Wednesday 20 November, as the whole class are taking part in the infant agility event, the children will need to come to school in PE kit. This will replace our Tuesday PE lesson for next week.
This means, the children should come to school in normal uniform on Tuesday 19 November.
Living and Learning: anti-bullying day and odd socks day
We kicked off anti-bullying day with our odd socks to celebrate that we are all unique and different.
Odd socks day is a celebration to show that we are all different and that makes us unique.
We are wearing odd socks today because we are all different and we should be treated fairly.
Odd socks day shows that we are all different. We should respect everyone no matter what they look like.
We explored our school definition of bullying, created by our junior leaders, by looking at what some of the words meant.
What are the different types of bullying?
Our school definition helped us understand the different types of bullying – physical (hurting someone’s body), emotional (hurting someone’s feelings) or cyber bullying (online).
We also considered the role of bystanders and their responsibility to start telling other people.
The story #Goldilocks looks at how we should treat everyone with respect whether it is in person or online.
How can you STOP bullying?
We used our weekly circle time to think about the role we all have to STOP bullying. Year 2 had some excellent suggestions.
Our main message is Start Telling Other People and to continue to do that until you are heard.
You can stop bullying by…
respecting others
telling the bully to stop if you are a bystander.
telling a trusted adult.
asking a lunchtime helper to help.
standing up for others.
letting everyone join in and not leaving people out.
being kind to people and not hurting them.
helping the person being bullied and take them to an adult.
being resilient and saying STOP.
ignoring the bully, walk away and don’t say anything back to them.
Using positive words and actions can also help to prevent bullying by creating a happy and healthy school.
How can you get help?
Seeking help can be done in a number of different ways.
Who could you tell? (taken from our child friendly anti-bullying policy)
- Safeguarding team – Mrs Weekes, Mr Wilks, Mrs Russell and Mrs Limbert
- Any other members of staff
- A trusted adult
- Someone in your family
- Friends
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your Living and Learning box or the whole school worry box (outside the school office)
- Email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org
The children thought about who they would tell if they needed to Start Telling Other People.
Help at home: discuss our school definition of bullying with your child. Do they know the difference between falling out and bullying, and between a one-off situation and something that’s happened more than once?