We all performed brilliantly in our class assembly this week and we are very proud of ourselves. As part of Children’s Mental Health Week, we shared our top tips for how to boost wellbeing and cheer ourselves up when we are feeling down.
Here are our top tips for good wellbeing:
First of all, connect with the people around you. We created a paperchain to show all the things we do that connect us together.
Don’t forget to Be Active: we start each day with a song and dance and we love to run laps around the playground to keep extra fit.
Remember to Give: small acts of kindness are a great way to give to one another. We look out for our friends in the playground and give our clothes to charity to help to raise money.
Take notice: we love to spend time in the great outdoors and we have planted some young trees in the field outside. Over our time at St Adrian’s we will look after these trees and we look forward to seeing them grow.
Finally, don’t forget to Keep Learning. There are so many wonderful things to find out and each day, we love to learn something new!
Hello children, parents and carers It’s been a lovely week of thinking about feelings, emotions, mental health and wellbeing. Lots of the activities that took place were closely linked with this year’s theme ‘My voice matters’. We played games and enjoyed our time together on the carpet to help the children build a bank of ideas on how they can express themselves.
‘Are you listening carefully?’ This was the question we’ve asked the children. We played ‘The whisper game’ where everyone had to pass the message around the circle from child to child. We made string telephones working in pairs and noticed that when the string gets loose we can’t hear that well. We also talked about how important eye contact is and played the ‘Eye signaled game’.
In PE this week we danced and did yoga and the children truly enjoyed both activities. They all commented on how well and refreshed they are feeling after the dancing and how calm and content after the yoga:
We also did wonderful writing thinking about our likes and dislikes. Here are some of the examples for you to enjoy 🙂
And finally we began reading a wonderful book called ‘Ruby’s worry’. We all learnt from Ruby. She’s a perfectly happy little girl, until she discovers a worry. The worry – depicted as a scribbly yellow shape – is hardly noticeable at first, but starts to grow and soon it’s with her all the time, stopping her from doing the things she loved.
We made a chart of how Ruby was feeling before the worry and how she was feeling after the worry and discussed the importance of sharing your worry with someone you can trust. That can be your friend, teacher or family, anyone you feel comfortable with. Next week we will create our worry box and the children will be able to draw or write their worry and share it with the rest of us. We all know that if we do that the worry will just disappear :)!
On Tuesday we talked about how to stay safe while using the internet. Smartie the Penguin was very supportive and he helped us understand the importance of never clicking on websites we are not sure of. We watched his story and created posters to take home. We also learnt his internet safety song.
In Little Wandle we started reading very, very long words like picnic and magnet, and even longer ones like bedroom and carpark. We’ve been revisiting phase 2 and phase 3 digraphs and some of the tricky words. In your orange books this week you will find your first longer words. Please practice them at home for building confidence and fluency. In class, when we read the longer words, we use the term ‘chunk’. For example the word bedroom can be chunked into two smaller words ‘bed’ and ‘room’. That really helps the children hear all the sounds in those very challenging phase 4 words.
In Maths the children were introduced to the concept of doubling and they learnt that this means ‘twice as many’. We had plenty of opportunities and the children had to answer very tricky questions like: ‘What does double mean?‘ or ‘Where can you see a double?‘. We also practiced physically making doubles, using manipulatives and mark making.
In RE we created a wonderful ‘Mary and Joseph are taking baby Jesus to the Temple’ drawings. We also practiced tricky words and ‘igh’ trigraph by writing ‘He is the light!’ Have a look at our wonderful display. No doubt that you will love it 🙂
We are very excited to show you our wonderful Still Art paintings. They are now complete and the water colors look lovely. We all all very proud!
Have a lovely weekend. Looking forward seeing you all on Monday for another fun filled week. Mrs Solakova
This week has been bustling with activities centered around children’s mental health and Safer Internet Day. To kick off our week, we delved into the theme ‘My voice matters’ in class, exploring ways to use our voice to share what matters to us. We took part in a dance and yoga session to help us focus on our physical well being.
For Safer Internet Day, we immersed ourselves in various activities aimed at enhancing our online safety awareness.
.. has been the theme of this week. Some of what we have done is in the bulletin. On Thursday, the children also thought of an achievement they are proud of and shared this with their table. Also key to good mental health is a healthy outdoor environment and the Eco Councillors and other children planted some saplings on the field which will hopefully grow to provide shade and a home for birds and other animals.
The children are really enjoying “The Firework Maker’s Daughter” which is a beautifully written story of bravery and adventure, laced with plenty of humour.
Reading rich, varied and creative literature is a key aspect of good learning and the children are also loving exploring nonsense poetry, specifically “The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll.
They have been learning about data – what it is, the pitfalls of collecting what seems to be straightforward data, and how well-suited computers are to gathering and processing it. They used data loggers, which are borrowed from a local computer hub.
Here is the display of the children’s writing about the (imitation) Roman artefacts we have here and their excellent accompanying sketches the children took great care in drawing.
The children used data loggers for the first time today. They recorded the levels of light and noise and the temperature in different parts of the classroom. Some children went to great lengths to ensure different readings!
Year IV know just what the Romans did for us and they told us all about it on Thursday. They did it with style, confidence and worked brilliantly as a team. The children learnt their lines off by heart so they could concentrate on delivering them clearly and loudly. Thank you for coming to support the children. We hope you enjoyed their ukelele playing. Thanks go to their teacher, Mrs Newman, who prepared all the music and tuned the ukeles the day before the performance.
We used the visit to Verulamium and the resources we have at school to complete some topical writing and Art which are now proudly displayed on the classroom wall. The children have very much enjoyed reading “Escape From Pompeii” and will start a new book very soon.
Everyone looked amazing on Number Day on Friday. Thank you for your donations to the NSPCC. The children played some games from the nrich website to use their multiplication and division fact recall in strategic problem-solving contexts. Maybe you could play the games with your children at home? The links are :
https://nrich.maths.org/6863 – Times Tables shifts,
https://nrich.maths.org/10094 – Four in a Row (or similar name)
Over the last couple of weeks in RE we have learnt that there was a man named Simeon who lived a very long time ago in Jerusalem. He was a righteous man and he was told that he would see the Messiah. Mary and Joseph came to the Temple with Jesus, Simeon took Jesus into his arms and said a very special prayer.
We acted this out in class
In maths this week we continued to look at number 3. Mr Wolf could only eat 3 things so we found things in the classroom we thought he would like.
On Friday we took part in the NSPCC Number day.
We did a number 3 hunt out in the playground, made triangles using lolly sticks and had some number and shape activities at the writing table.
RE
In RE over the next couple of weeks we will be thinking about our families and all the wonderful things families do together. It would be lovely if the children could bring in a photo of their family doing something together e.g. family wedding, birthday, days out. Photos can be given in to share or uploaded onto tapestry.
Important Dates
Half Term – Monday 19th – Friday 23rd February.
Parent Consultation – Tuesday 27th and Thursday 29th February.
World Book Day – Thursday 7th March – Come to school dressed up as your favourite book character.
There will be no reading morning on Friday 8th March as we will be going to the Mothers Day Assembly – parents welcome.
Friday 22nd March – PTA Break the rules day
Friday 22nd March – EYFS Cake Sale after school
School finishes at 1:30PM on Thursday 28th March 2024.
Over the last few weeks, we have been using games, programmable toys and online coding games to explore algorithms. We have created our own algorithms, tried them out, spotted problems and then debugged our programmes to make sure that they work. This has involved lots of mistakes, discussions and problem solving, which has been great fun!
… was one of the headlines year 4 chose to start their reports on their trip to Verulamium Museum. They also wrote about what they had learnt and their ideas show insight.
It was a beautiful day to walk across Verulamium Park and the interest in the dogs we passed along the way was almost as great as that shown in the Roman artefacts we handled during the workshop session. It was a fantastic opportunity to actually touch the same objects that Romans made nearly 2000 years ago. The children then had the opportunity to learn more about the Roman history of their city by exploring the museum exhibits.
We are very grateful to the two Mums who came with us, midweek; and without whose support we couldn’t do these very valuable enrichment activities. Thank you.
The Roman topic, studied in History and through reading “Escape From Pompeii”, has provided the children with opportunities to learn about vocabulary, practise art and understand the impact of a hugely significant civilisation.
This week we took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch. The children really enjoyed making their binoculars to use and were excited to take them out and use them. We went outside on Tuesday morning, Wednesday afternoon and again on Friday morning to see if we could see any birds in trees or on the field. We were also had a look to see if the birds have been eating the bird feeders we made.
The children will bring their binoculars home today – please ensure they are supervised while using because of the strings.
Other photos this week including the children playing ‘Bertha on the bus’, exploring the objects beginning with ‘g’ and a very long road track which the children have loved.
Important Dates
Monday 29th January – INSET Day
Friday 2nd February – NSPCC Number Day – Wear a math themed outfit
Half term – Monday 19th – Friday 23rd February
Reminders
Please can children have a small keyring on their book bag handle so they can identify their book bag when getting ready for home time.
Jewellery such as bracelets, rings and necklaces are not part of the school uniform – please can children keep them for after school, weekends and holidays. Children are allowed to wear stud earrings if they have their ears pierced.
Inspired by the amazing artist, Charles McGee, the children have been exploring colours, patterns and shapes to create their own artwork using pens, charcoal and sculpture. Here is a selection of the tremendous artwork that we are thoughtfully making during our art project. Our next challenge is to create 3D sculptures using our drawings. Watch this space to see what comes next!
