Year Two get arty

We have thoroughly enjoyed our Art and Design topic this term. We explored Wassily Kandinsky’s artwork Squares with Concentric Circles and then created our own fantastic artwork using pens, oil pastels, powder paint and clay.

Reception – Easter Preparations!

24.03.2023

Hello everyone,
another week for us in Reception full of new learning and lovely experiences. In RE we were thinking about Jesus and how he dies on the cross to save all of us. We discussed fairness, trust and love for one another. We made beautiful Easter art and Hot cross bun posters. Really looking forward Tuesday, so we can gather together and think about Good Friday.

Vegetable patch update:
Outside we were busy prepping the soil for new vegetables. The children helped clearing everything out and then getting all the weeds out. The soil is all ready and we are planning to plant radishes, beans, onions and carrots. Strawberries are also on the list :). We are all very excited and hope that they all grow big and strong.

In Little Wandle this week we are continuing with Phase 4 sounds and are reading long words like ‘waiting’, ‘zooming’ and ‘singing’. The children are getting better and better chunking the long words up, if needed.

In English we wrote our own captions ‘I will not ever eat…’. We are absolutely loving the book. Why don’t you have a go too:

In Maths this week, the children continued to explore the composition of numbers within 10, focusing on the ‘special case’ of when 2 equal parts combine to make a whole. The children used their skills of comparison and identify when 2 sets are equal or NOT equal. They noticed a range of familiar representations including dice and fingers to explore the idea of ‘2 equal parts’, and then find the whole by combining these parts. They also used the stem sentence: ‘This is a double because ….. is a part and …… is a part.’

Dates to remember:
Tuesday 28th of March, 2:15pm – Hot Cross Bun Gathering
Friday 31st of March Easter Parade (deadline for Easter bonnets is Tuesday 28th).

Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Solakova

Rocking the times-tables – and other learning in year 4

A wave of excitement rolled over year 4 this morning when we saw our classmates’ names topping the leader board in TTRS! And more names are appearing further down the leader board. Great job, year 4 – let’s give years 5 and 6 a run for their money. Keep playing Garage to improve your recall. Then, when your accuracy is there, play Studio and your status will improve.

This was after a lovely mass at St Barts, with years 3 and 4. Behaviour was impeccable and the children were a credit to all their adults.

Thank you to the original works of art which are coming in for the home learning/art competition. Each one is unique and, as a class, we are enjoying celebrating each creation.

The children also used their creativity to illustrate one station of the cross in watercolours, as part of our understanding of Good Friday.

As it’s the end of term, we’re finishing off the learning in topics. We have finished the chapter about fractions and next week will be learning about time, in particular the number of minutes in an hour, weeks in a year, etc. We will have lots of absorbing problems to get stuck into. We’ve all found learning about physical features of the earth such as volcanoes and rivers very interesting. We will start “Letters from the Lighthouse” next week, as our reading book.

Have a lovely weekend and let’s hope the rain stays away.

Year 2 celebrate their wonderful mums!

We all had a smashing time during our Mothers Day Assembly and the children sang with great enthusiasm, having written the words to the song together the previous week. Please do take a look in your child’s book bag where you will find their creative Mothers Day card.

Here are the words to the song again, if you would like to sing it at home.

Have a wonderful Mothers Day everyone!

Reception – Happy Mothers Day!!!

What a week! A very scientific one! Yes we did lots of science experiments, but also we were singing, performing, creating and learning. We are getting busier and busier :). Throughout the week we’ve conducted lots of experiments to celebrate British Science Week. Our tiny seeds are not that tiny anymore. Some of them are growing very, very tall. We compared them and recorded our observations while practising forming sentences:

We also made lemon volcanoes and talked about how the soda and the citric acid react and create bubbles.

We also talked about floating and sinking and the children were testing their ideas and marking the results. After experimenting and discussing we found out that wood and cotton float, but metal will sink.

In English we began reading a new book ‘I will not ever never eat a tomato’ by Lauren Child. We had a testing session and the children had to draw and label one fruit or veg they will never eat. The winner is…. brussel sprout 🙂

In RE this week we finished our very special Lenten promise tree. The children are trying very hard to keep their promises, so well done everybody!

We also read the story ‘Once they were giants’. We talked about growth and how during Lent we are growing in goodness and kindness and try to be a little bit more like Jesus.

And finally Happy Mothers Day! I really hope you get spoiled and enjoy the day with your families.

A mother is the tender touch
that soothes our little aches,
The patient way that overlooks
our mischief and mistakes,
The smiling face that shares our jokes
and triumphs of the day,
The helping hand that reaches out
when trouble comes our way.
A mother is the warm embrace,
the love that knows no end,
The one who proves from day to day
to be our dearest friend!

Please check your tapestry account for a special mothers day message on Sunday morning!

Have an amazing weekend!
Mrs Solakova

Fantastic Friday in Year Four!

We all hope you enjoyed year 4’s tribute to their wonderful grannies, aunties, mums, great-grandmas and other significant women in their lives. The words were created collectively and the children loved filling the room with happy voices in recognition of all that is done for them.

We are moving on with our learning in Lent. We have been thinking about the role of self-sacrifice in our lives, particularly during Lent but also in general. I haven’t sent a specific piece of Lent homework in the spring home learning grid, but please remember the Easter art competition. I’ve included some suggested scripture on Google Classroom.

The children’s understanding of fractions is developing very well, in little stages. I’ve been reminding them about the importance of pictures – diagrams – to show and develop understanding in Maths. Drawing the fractions as pizza/pie or as a bar model are very effective ways to problem-solve and also prove your answer.

We marked Science Week with an investigation involving carbon dioxide, leading on from the learning on states of matter. We found out that the hotter the water the more carbon dioxide is produced in a mixture of yeast and sugar. It was very exciting, as you can see. In one batch, the balloon split and so the gaseous liquid spread everywhere. Can your child explain this, thinking about how molecules in different states behave?

I hope you all have a lovely weekend. With the longer days (if not the temperatures) it’s starting to feel a bit springlike.

Science Week!

For science week, we investigated how we can increase our heart rate. The topic links to our science topic animals including humans. We explored different ways we could stay fit and increase our heart rate. Each group was given a different exercise to do for one minute after the exercise we measured our pulse. Here are some photos of our investigation.

Nursery – 17.03.2023

Our story this week was The 3 Little Pigs. The children have enjoyed learning about the pigs and what they used to make their houses. In the nursery there were a variety of 3 Little Pigs activities for the children to have a go at such as dressing the pigs, making one of the houses using the large construction blocks outside, 3 little pigs role play and 3 Little PIgs Bingo which the children enjoyed.

The children also enjoyed watching this very funny version of the story online:

This week as part of our RE lesson we were able to go out on our spring walk to find signs of new life growing outside, the children had their own clipboard and had to tick off what they found.

We have decided to do our own growing in class, we will watch and observe closely over the next few days to see the mung beans grow.

The children have been working really hard this week practising the songs for Mothers Day. They did really well in the assembly this morning and sang so beautifully – they also liked seeing their siblings singing.

Other photos from this week:

Have a lovely weekend and wishing all the mums a very happy mothers day on Sunday.

Miss Taylor

Year 2 Food Technology

This term, we have been learning about the Eatwell plate and what foods go in each food group. We have learned that it is really important to have foods from a variety of food groups in order to eat healthily. We taste tested combinations of ingredients to see what went well together and then designed a wrap that would be tasty and healthy.

We had great fun preparing ingredients for our wraps and learned how to chop foods up with a knife by making a bridge with our hands. Once we had made our wraps, we reviewed them against our success criteria to see just how tasty and healthy they were. We tried to include ingredients from at least three food groups in our wrap and we have found that there are new foods that we will try.