Welcome back! I hope you've all had a lovely Christmas. Please see the newsletter for this term below.

We've been learning about the animals that live in cold places. We looked at a globe and found the Arctic and Antarctica. We then sorted the animals according to where they live. We learnt some facts about these animals and had fun playing with them in our small world area. The children were challenged to write a list of five animals they might see if they went to the Arctic. I was impressed that they all remembered that penguins don't live there. We listened to a story about Hunter the polar bear who had to be rescued from a rocky ledge and flown back to his home in the Arctic. 

We looked at photographs of the Northern Lights and watched a short video clip. We then used chalk and pastels to create our own representations of them.

In maths we've been continuing to practise our subitising skills and number bonds to 5. We've also been learning about patterns and the children have been busy continuing repeating patterns using paint, chains and cubes.

We've been focusing on reading and writing CVC words using the letter sounds we've learnt so far this term. The children have really enjoyed hunting for the CVC pictures that I placed around the room. Many of the children were able to sound out the words independently and write them on their clipboards.

We've also been busy practising our nativity. The children were very brave to get up on the stage in front of an audience of their family and friends. 

What a lovely month of celebration and learning. 
The children did a fantastic job of learning lines and songs for the Key Stage One Nativity show which was a joy to watch. 
In maths we spent some weeks consolidating what we have learnt so far this term and really working on the rapid recall of number binds within 10.
We learnt abut the season of winter and used this as a subject for some descriptive writing. 
The term was rounded off with a special Christingle assembly shared with families.

This month we have continued to learn about how toys have changed through time. We asked our parent's about their favourite toys and we found out more about the differences between how toys are made now and how toys were made in the past. We had a go at making a cup and ball toy which was popular with children in the Victorian days.
The theme of toys continued into our DT learning. We explored and made toys with moving parts in preparation for making moving robots.
We learnt more about the NSPCC's 'Speak out. Stay safe' message and learnt about what could motivate us to speak out to a trusted adult. We also learnt the number for the NSPCC in case we feel we need to speak to an adult at the charity. 
In science we have used our knowledge of materials and their properties to make windproof and waterproof structures and have used our testing and observation skills to check our structures were up to the task. 

 

December

December was a busy month for us.

We had a successful ARC trip to Plymouth Theatre to see Raymond Briggs 'Father Christmas'. It even snowed in the theatre. The children enjoyed the show and there was much laughter throughout. 

As this was the Christmas Term, we looked at why Christmas is important to Christians. We discovered that for Christians, Advent is a time for preparing for Christmas and each candle as it is lit represents Faith, Hope, Peace, and Joy. The final one is the joy that Jesus was born. 

We also completed our Science module 'Animals including humans'. We looked at what is needed to keep animals and humans healthy and alive including exercise. 

December was full of Art and craft including making prints from our Literacy topic - books from Julia Donaldson. 

We enjoyed making our own Christmas tree, Christingle, decorations and Christmas cards.

And of course, much fun and laughter was had as we enjoyed our Christmas dinner, lovely food, crackers and our own hats that we made.

We hope you have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We started the festive season with a special delivery of a Christmas tree which the children helped decorate. Our story focus at the beginning of the month was ‘The Christmas Pine’ by Julia Donaldson which retells the journey of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. We shared photos of our own Christmas trees from home and the children confidently spoke about their own trees and decorations.

Our role play areas of a Post Office and Santa’s workshop gave the children an opportunity to play out different roles and improve communication with their peers whilst sharing their own experiences from home.

Lots of Christmas crafting took place where we made cards, collages and decorations as well as reindeer food to take home for Christmas Eve.

We practised our pencil control using festive stencils and used our pincer grips to peel stickers and decorate Christmas trees.

We learnt about the true meaning of Christmas by reading Rod Campbell’s ‘My First Nativity’, along with a small world nativity scene and matching game to expand their learning and vocabulary.

There was some great hand-eye coordination on display with our sensory tuff trays; mixing up a foam Santa, scooping a cereal Christmas pudding and making fragrant Christmas ‘tea’.

We also read ‘Stickman’ and made our own stick people from twigs we collected in the garden and play dough. 

After a wild and stormy weekend, it has been a calm start to the week! A big thanks to you all for supporting our Rainbow Multi day on Friday. We had some generous and innovative coloured items and we are busy putting them together to make some gift hampers  (take a look at the photograph of the red hamper above.)  We will be raffling these on the final day of school with proceeds going towards some sensory equipment which we are going to install in a special space at school.This can be used if pupils need a quiet space to be calm if they are feeling angry/anxious and the classroom environment is just too noisy/bright/busy for them. Personally, I am currently favouring the purple hamper as it has lots of purple themed chocolate!
Thank you also to those of you who braved the winds on Sunday to have breakfast with Santa. There was a lovely festive atmosphere and the children (and the adults too!) enjoyed meeting Santa in his special grotto which has magically transformed back into the Infant school's stage- those elves must have been busy yesterday! Over £280 was raised by this event. This will also be used to furnish sensory spaces in both schools. 
We are looking forward to the Key Stage One production this Thursday and the postponed Carol singing at the Rifle Volunteer on Saturday 14th December at 4.00pm.

We returned from the Autumn half term and kicked off a busy November with some Halloween celebrations. The children worked collaboratively to follow a spooky recipe in the home corner, using their counting and number recognition skills. We also enjoyed looking at Halloween books and shared our own experiences from home.

This busy month also saw Bonfire Night. We made marks in a glittery tuff tray, copying patterns and creating some bright firework artwork using cardboard rolls.

We celebrated Remembrance Day learning about brave soldiers and using vegetables to print some poppy pictures. In our tuff tray we used various tools to scoop and weigh poppy coloured rice.

Children In Need gave the children an opportunity to engage in lots of Pudsey themed activities including lemon scented tuff trays and playdough.

We learnt about Road Safety, putting an emphasis on how the colours of the traffic lights give us instructions and help keep us safe.  We also spoke about 2D shapes and their properties using cars to move around different shaped tracks.

It's beginning to look a lot like you know what!

It is starting to look a little bit festive at the Infant and Nursery School. Rehearsals are in full swing for the KS1 end of term Christmas production- 'Christmas With The Aliens!' The children have been absolute stars and some have leant their lines already. Thank you to parents/carers for rehearsing with them. 
A reminder that there are parental consultation meetings next week. You can make an appointment with your child's teacher via Seesaw. 
Thank you to those of you who came to the Christmas Kahoot Evening. Great fun was had by all and it was wonderful to see so many of you in attendance. A huge thanks to Dave Cunningham of Dave's Chip Stop who provided the food at such a generous discount.
Please see below for our fundraising newsletter which details how much money has be raised so far and what we have spent it on/intend to spend it on. 
You should have received information about the 'Breakfast With Santa' event being held at the Infant and Nursery Base on Saturday 7th December. We hope to see as many of you there as possible.
We are looking forward to the Rainbow Mufti event on Friday 6th December. See Seesaw for more details.

October has been another busy month in Y2.

In maths we have been learning how to add and subtract ones, tens and two digit numbers. We are also learning about number bonds on a weekly basis as this forms the foundation for all of our number work. We are making sure we know them off by heart.

Literacy was all about the traditional story, 'The Lion and the Mouse'. We had fun getting to know the story really well and looking at the sentence structures in the story before changing the story slightly to include our own ideas.
We are very imaginative in Y2!

In art we sorted colours of paper and selected the correct colours to represent flames. We used this to make a background for our Great Fire of London collages. Then we looked carefully at Tudor houses and their features before arranging black strips of card onto our backgrounds to make Tudor houses.

In computing, we have been learning to use a drawing programme. We can now select different colours, different sized brushes and draw shapes and fill them. Have a look at our wonderful creations!

Science has been fun this month learning about materials. We learnt about the properties of different materials and how they are used. Then we used what we learnt to undertake a bridge building challenge. We were able to talk about what worked, what didn't and why.
We have also had fun investigating which materials are waterproof. We then used what we found out to design a waterproof coat.

Just before half term we really enjoyed a visit from the fire brigade who were able to tell us how they fight fires now so that we could compare it to how they fought fires in The Great Fire of London.

This month we have been learning more about materials and been testing their properties. We loved seeing what would float and sink and which materials would soak up liquids.
In art we completed our final drawing of our 'Wild Things' after trying out lots of ideas in our sketch books.
We completed our learning for our Big Question of 'Where on Earth are we?' We found our school and our homes on an aerial photograph and traced the flow of the local river. On World Mental Health Day we dressed in yellow and took part in activities that can support keeping our minds healthy such as yoga.
We finished the half term with a lovely Forest School session where the children lit fires and had some yummy hot chocolate.

We started off October continuing to look for signs of Autumn, collecting leaves from the wider school environment and then matching them to a Leaf Identification sheet. Using some of the leaves we collected, we made Autumn crowns and wore them when singing our favourite seasonal song ‘Autumn leaves are falling down.’

We rolled conkers and pine cones in trays to create paint effects on paper leaves. 

For World Mental Health Awareness Day we enjoyed a ‘Colour Monster’ themed tuff tray and spoke about colours and feelings. With the colour theme of the day being Yellow, we attempted to find yellow items across nursery, working together to fill a tuff tray. We read ‘Sometimes I Feel Sunny’ which explores the emotions that naturally occur in every young child's life.

We enjoyed a visit from the Fire Brigade and enthusiastically looked around the fire engine, which was the perfect fit for our children’s interest fire station area.

For Harvest Festival we learnt about food and where it comes from whilst playing the role of customers and shop keeper in our farm shop. We also made bread rolls and demonstrated great turn taking adding ingredients and mixing, as well as handling tools and using rolling pins.

We kicked off some early Diwali celebrations, tasting some delicious Malaysian food and smelling lots of different spices. We used scented playdough and decorated with Marigold flowers to create some fun festive designs. 

In the library we looked at the works of our current school author, Julia Donaldson, exploring her many books and characters and listening to our favourite stories.

October

We have had a lovely Autumn October. In Science we have been looking at Seasonal changes. 
During this time we looked at how the weather can change too. By making a Water Gauge and Wind Vane we were able to make observations throughout the week. We also took a look at the daily temperature. 

To check out the strength of the wind we created our own kites. We noticed that on the day we decided to trial them the wind had died down but had moments of gusty wind. At those times the kites lifted into the sky. 

The temperature stayed between 15 - 17C and our rainfall rose from 5cm upto 20 cm by the end of our observations. 

Throughout October we managed two Autumn walks, finding red, orange and yellow leaves. The walk was a peaceful one with the sounds of birds singing and a few last butterflies fluttering around. It was great finding the Wind turbine and watching the blades go round.

It will soon be Halloween, have a lovely halfterm and spooky halloween!