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Nursery – Mufti day and so much more!

We’ve been very busy in Nursery this week. We’ve been learning, dancing, cooking, playing and so much more…

We continued our Autumn talks by adding different animals like hedgehog, badger, fox and deer to our Treasure bag display. The children were exploring the animals and we even talked about hibernating!!! We made enclosures, so the animals can sleep during the winter.

We worked very hard to keep our finger muscles strong and ready for writing. The children were engaged in different funky fingers activities every morning and truly enjoyed all of them.

Great news! Our pumpkin seeds are now growing and everyone was so excited.

Story of the week was ‘Room on the broom’. The children did potions in the tuff tray using pipettes, spoons and colored water. Don’t forget to say the spell: ‘Iggety, ziggety, zagetty, ZOOM! As always our playdough table was very, very busy. This week we did spiders and the children were counting 8 legs, 2 eyes…

Letters and sounds:

We all went on a listening walk around the school. We listened very carefully and successfully heard an aeroplane, cars and even the wind. Well done Nursery! First we walked around the playground and then all the way to the playing fields. The children did very well preparing their own listening ears bands and practised some cutting and sticking skills.

Let’s not forget the dressing up on a Friday, topped up with some cooking. We made a yummy pumpkin pie and all children took part. My personal opinion….delicious!!! Hope you will enjoy it too!

Have a happy half term week!

Mrs Solakova

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Foundation Stage Religious Education: Baptism/Confirmation – Belonging

Reception children have begun learning about Baptism/Confirmation – belonging and will continue their learning on this topic after half term.  Nursery will also begin to explore Baptism after half term. 

Core Vocabulary:  Welcome, Baptism, baptise, water, candle, In the name of ……

Additional vocabulary in Reception:  priest, white garment, godparents, font

Baptism makes us members of the Body of Christ.  For Foundation Stage children, this means being welcomed into the Church Family.

Children will explore what it means to be ‘welcomed’ and draw on their own experiences.  For example, how do we welcome each other when we arrive at school?  They will also be talking about how we welcome a new baby into God’s family through Baptism.  Activities will involve arts and crafts eg. making welcome cards, welcome poster.  The children will also role play and learn a simple sequence of the Baptismal rite alongside how the priest helps us when we celebrate.  There will be a focus on the words “I baptise you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy-Spirit.’

Home Learning:

Look at photos or other reminders of your child’s own or other family members’ baptisms.  Please send into school with your child a reminder for your child to share in class.  This could be a photo, memory book, candle or item of clothing.

Thank you once again for your continued support.

Mrs Palmer and Mrs Solakova

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News from Year 3

This week, we have started a new text in English. We have been focusing on the story ‘Dr Xargle’s Book of Earth Hounds’, an alien’s guide to dogs. Even though we thought the book was a little strange to start with, we look forward to returning to the story after half term.

In Maths, we have started looking at using the column method for subtraction. We have just started to focus on using regrouping within the written method, which has been a little tricky. Yet, with some hard work and patience, we will soon be experts at it!

To round off our PE learning this half term, we staged a small five a side tournament to put all the skills we had learnt into practice. We really enjoyed the matches and were very competitive! Yet, it’s the taking part that counts.

In History, we used the Chromebooks to research Skara Brae. Skara Brae, on Scotland’s Orkney Islands, is one of the best kept examples of a Stone Age village. It was only discovered by a big storm hitting the coast and revealing the homes underneath mounds of sand. We really enjoyed having the opportunity to use technology to research this special Stone Age monument.

We have had a brilliant half term and look forward to concluding the rest of the term after the half term break. Have a very happy and peaceful break.

Miss Battams 🙂

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Have a great half-term, Year 4!

Well done, everyone. You have worked really hard this half-term, quickly adjusting to the new rules and helping to keep our bubble safe. It’s so good to have you all back at school.

Mr King and I are not setting any formal homework for the holiday. Keep reading and practise your multiplication tables.

Enjoy the half-term break, have fun and keep safe.

See you in November!

Mr Hayes

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Happy Holidays!

The children have settled beautifully in Year 2 and it was wonderful to meet with all the parents this week during our socially distanced consultations.

We have had a very busy half term, focusing especially on English and maths, but also a whole host of other areas of learning too.

Year 2

The children have been very excited by the planting that they have done outside and we are halfway through an investigation to find out what happens when plants are grown without heat (we’ve left a pansy plant in the fridge!), light (another plant is in the cupboard) and without water. The children have a number of predictions and we will find out more after the holiday.

Our pumpkin raffle was a great success and £67 was raised for the class. We will use this money to fund other planting projects as we go through the year, so thank you very much for your generosity everyone!

As part of our history learning, we are finding out about the life of Walter Tull. Our learning will culminate in a focus on Remembrance Day and how we remember our servicemen and women. This topic gives the children a great opportunity to develop a sense of time as well as promoting their enquiry skills.

As part of their Design Technology learning, the children have also been enjoying developing their sewing skills and they have created a wonderful banner to welcome everyone to the class every day.

Next half term will include many exciting new activities and I look forward to sharing them with the children.

Have a well earned break this week. The children certainly deserve it.

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Future Events

Mufti/Fancy Dress Day – Friday 23rd Oct 2020

You are welcome to send your children in this Friday in fancy dress or their own clothes for a bit of seasonal fun and to help raise funds for our school PTA.

Donations per child from £1 to be sent in with children and given to Class Teachers.

We hope to raise around £500 to help rebuild the fundraising we usually would have gained through small events like quiz nights and bingo evenings.

Thanks so much

For full details and the latest news, please join www.facebook.com/groups/stadriansparents/events

To volunteer to help at other events, please register at PTA Social or log-in here

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Reception – Home Learning

This week the children brought home a learning pack developed by Herts for Learning.

The packs include fun activities and ideas for parents/carers to enjoy with their child.  The activity ideas, alongside the time you spend with your child, will help develop many skills your child needs to prepare them for the next step in their education.

Today, with much excitement, the children received a library sticker specially created to link in with the Time to Read book,  The Runaway Pea, which your child brought home a couple of weeks ago.   You will find a leaflet inside your child’s book bag promoting the benefits of using the library.  All Hertfordshire libraries, except the smaller community libraries, are now open. 

Below is a short video produced by Hertfordshire Library Service providing tips on how you can help your child develop a love of reading.

Now that the children have settled into Reception, I plan to hold a ‘curriculum information’ session after half term to provide you with more information on what you child will be learning over this next academic year.  This session will be via Zoom – more details to follow.

Many thanks for supporting your children and helping them to settle into Reception. 

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

Nicola Palmer

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News from Year 3

In our English lessons this week, we have been planning to write a story based on another character’s point of view. Instead of seeing things from the princess’ point of view, we will be writing it from the dragon’s perspective of the story, The Paper Bag Princess.

In Maths this week, we used our learning of formal column addition to support us with subtraction. We have also learned a couple of tricky mental methods to support us with this more formal method

In PE this week, we have developing our shooting skills by playing dribbling and shooting relay games. We also played ‘hot seat’, where players had to take it in turns to shoot and score a goal. If they didn’t score, they entered the hot seat. If the player after them scored a goal, the player in the hot seat was out!

In our History lesson last week, we focused on what Stone Age people ate and their way of life. We turned into archaeologists and studied some poo (Miss Battams had made by hand), dissecting to see if it would reveal clues to Stone Age people’s eating and living habits. It was a great lesson, if not a little yucky!

Have a restful weekend and I look forward to seeing parents next week for parents evening.

Miss Battams 🙂

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Year Four triumphs!

Over the past week, children in Year 4 have been competing with students across the county in the SumDog maths competition. After taking an early lead, a coordinated effort on the part of the class secured the ‘Daily Winner’ certificate on Tuesday. Each day, we eagerly tracked our progress on the leaderboard, but were dismayed to see the chance of victory ebbing away. By home time on Thursday, it seemed that everything was lost and that there was no way of closing the gap with the leaders: we would have to settle to for a still respectable fifth place. This made the news that greeted us on Friday morning all the more sweeter: it became clear that the phenomenal effort put in by some children on Thursday evening had not only swept us to back in to the lead, but that we had finished the competition 38 points clear of our nearest rival. Year Four were the SumDog World Champions*, with nine children placing in the top fifty and Eva achieving an amazing third place. It was only the need for social distancing that stopped her classmates from carrying her should-high on a celebratory lap of the playground. Well done, Year 4. You have done yourself proud!

You can download your winners’ certificate from the links below:

Daily WinnerDownload
Overall WinnerDownload

*Hertfordshire division

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Nursery – Autumn

What a fantastic week we’ve had. The children did extremely well learning the new routine and we truly enjoyed our time together.

This week we’ve been talking about Autumn. Thank you for all the interesting autumnal items and objects that you have brought in. We have looked, felt and smelled all the objects. We have found out what tree grows acorns, conkers and pine cones.

Our art table was as busy as always and the children explored autumnal colours, leaf cutting and sticking and so much more.

We also practised cutting skills by decorating autumn trees on the writing table.

One of the favourite activities this week was scooping out a pumpkin and then planting the seeds. Everyone is waiting for them to grow and we also make sure the compost is moist every day. The children had some brilliant ideas:

The seeds will grow big and tall.

We can make pumpkin pie when they grow.

The pumpkin is big and orange, the seeds are tiny.

On our playdough table we made mini pumpkins and pumpkin lollies and we ‘baked’ pumpkin pie. We used real pumpkin seeds to put inside the pumpkin.

Letters and sounds:

This week we rescued the bear by using our quiet and loud voices. We also practised our listening skills by trying to ‘hear’ different musical instruments. Well done nursery!

The children went on a bear hunt too. We’ve been reading the story this week and everyone truly enjoyed walking through the thick oozy mud, through the deep cold river, through the snowstorm. We talked about patterns in the story and everyone did really well retelling the key events and describing the characters. To support children’s learning we had a lovely sensory tray and we played ‘We are going on a bear hunt’ board game.

Well done Nursery! Keep up the good work!

Have a lovely, fun filled weekend!

Mrs Solakova