Week Ending 26/04/24
Date: 14th Apr 2024 @ 11:22am
Happy Friday! As the planet tilts us into a new spring, Earth Day is once again upon us! This week we have joined the mission to protect our beautiful planet and the amazing animals that call it home. This year's theme is Planet vs Plastics which ties in with our environmental Pathways unit, 'Clem and Crab'. Especially when we consider that 500 billion plastic bags were produced globally last year – roughly one million per-minute! To celebrate our amazing Earth and so we can make it a better place I have attached some activities you can do at home today or over the weekend. Dormice and Hedgehogs have made a pledge to try and go greener and think of the importance of environmental conservation and sustainbility. Earth Day encourages us to come together and take action for a healthier planet and brighter future. So what better way to start than think about recycling just like Clem does in our story!
- Create some environmental art using loose or recycled materials outside. Why not link this with St George’s Day, which was on 23rd April, to make a dragon from loose materials?
- Create nature’s perfume – With a pestle and mortar, crush a range of petals, leaves and berries together. Add a little water and grind again. Pour into small spray bottles and spray for a lovely smell.
- Plant some sunflower seeds. Plant a seed, in a compostable pot, and look after it. After a few weeks, have great fun measuring them to see how much they have grown.
- Cloud watching – How often do we slow right down and just observe the natural world? Lie on your back and watch the clouds pass by. Look at the different shapes and sizes. Can they see any pictures in the clouds? What happens to the clouds when there is wind/no wind? Read Eric Carle’s Little Cloud. Your child may want to make their own cloud pictures outside using shaving cream in tuff trays or, even better on glass or acrylic mirrors as children will be able to look at the reflection of the sky.
- Chasing the wind – Tie ribbon, or string, to the handles of re-suable shopping bags for children to run around on a windy day. Encourage them to observe any changes in the wind such as strength, direction and the effects that this has on their bag. Fly kites, make windsocks or tie long lengths of ribbon to shrubs or small trees. Throw some feathers in the air – observe what happens to them.
- Go for a nature walk – Take the children out and about and make a nature bracelet. Stick double sided tape onto a length of card and wrap it around their wrists. Children can collect leaves, small sticks and petals to decorate their bracelet.
- Go on a litter hunt in your local area. Sort the objects by materials on your return.
- Create bird baths, boxes and feeders by recycling plastic bottles – These are a great way for children to observe birds throughout the year. Provide them with some binoculars for a better look!
- Dig over the soil ready for planting for a great gross motor workout. Encourage children to lookout for worms when doing this and use information books to find out all about them. Throw some seed bombs around, particularly those that attract butterflies and bees! Worms can often be forgotten creatures in gardens. It is important to share the important jobs worms do to help plants grow. When digging your soil to plant your flowers or herbs, encourage the children to look out for worms, thanking them for the hard work they do.
- We’re going on a bee hunt – Look out for dandelions, as these are one of the first flowering plants in spring to attract bees. Observe bee’s carefully and ask open ended questions of the children. Use non-fiction texts to discover the answers to their questions together. Make a Bug Hotel.
- Flower Press. Pressing of flowers is an excellent way to study the features of different flowers or plants and even turn them into an everyday item like a bookmark. Encourage the children to choose a plant or flower (ferns are brilliant for this) and press the flower between the pages of a heavy book (with tissue or a paper towel on either side of the flower). Leave the flowers for over a week and admire them.
Please may we ask that you put in some spare pairs of pants and socks in your child's book bag. With the excitement of our new outdoor space opening this week, the water area has been a huge hit! If you would like to bring in wellies too then that's would be great too so we can spare your school shoes. You can never have too much fun as a 4 and 5 year old! Thank you.
Dates for the diary this half term:
Monday 6th May- School Closed (May Day)
Tuesday 21st May – Class Photos (Children to come in their smartest uniform please including a jumper/cardigan)
Friday 24th May – EYFS Sports Day 9am – 10am (weather permitting). We ask that your child come to school in either a yellow, red, blue or green top, this is dependent on which coloured house your child is in.
Beeston – RED
Cholmondeley – BLUE
Peckforton – GREEN
Chester – YELLOW
If your child doesn’t know which house they are in, just ask them which coloured house points they put in their pot and this should give you the answer! Alternatively, please come and see us and we can confirm.
Save the date - Park Hall Farm Trip
This will take place on Wednesday 5th June. Please ensure you have given permission via ParentPay for this trip as soon as possible.The children will need a packed lunch, comfortable walking shoes and trousers. Please book through the office if you require a school packed lunch on the day. Please also ensure your child wears a school jumper for identification purposes. If you are able to help on the trip, please let me know!
Little Wandle (Phonics)
This term we move onto Phase 4 in our phonics journey! The children do not learn any new phonemes or graphemes. Instead, they are taught to further manipulate the phonemes and graphemes they have already learnt. They will begin to explore more polysyllabic words (words containing more than one syllable) and read and spell words containing adjacent consonants. E.g. string, milk, brush, scoop etc. Phase 4 requires the children to blend an increasing number of sounds together. These words are often referred to in relation to how many vowels and consonants they contain.
E.g. CVC words (consonant / vowel / consonant) such as sad, net, him.
This week we have been focusing on CVCC words (consonant / vowel / consonant / consonant) such as went, help, tent etc. We have also learnt the tricky words like, love, do and so.
As always, please see the downloadable attachment below to practise the CVCC words and tricky words we have been learning this week.
In Maths, we have started to learn number bonds to 10! We decided that there are so many ways to make ten, that we needed to find a systematic way to find them. We started with 0+10 and then used lots of different resources to make 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6 and 5+5. The children spotted that as one side increased, the other decreased. We wrote them in number sentences systematically as well!
On Monday, we looked at what other things we could do with litter which led us to consider the term 'recycling'. We looked through the litter we had collected last week and sorted it into bins labelled 'plastic', 'paper', 'glass' (which was handled by the adults) or 'metal'.
On Tuesday, we thought about one of our main characters, Crab. We learnt about its different physical features, where it lives and how it protects itself from gulls. We also looked at the word 'habitat' and its meaning. The children decoded sentences from the book and matched them to the right picture to retell a part of the story. We all got to play in our brand new outdoor space which we are now calling The Garden. Please see pictures on Twitter for all the fun the children are having!
On Wednesday, we had another great PE lesson with Mr Elton where we learnt how to throw overarm and underarm to different distances. We are busy practising for our own mini-olympics!
On Thursday, the book took us on an adventure to the aquarium! We explained that an aquarium provides a habitat for creatures which is like their natural habitat. We sorted the small world animals into their different habitats. We then used this to support our writing about various sea creatures.
On Friday, we all continued our Sports Day practice. We introduced the children to three new races; running race, relay race and sack race. The children had lots of fun jumping over the finish line like bunnies.
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week, Elsie Le and George H!
Our mystery reader this week was Florentine's Dad! Thank you for coming to share your story with us!
Please speak to your child’s class teacher to put a date in the diary if you would like to be mystery reader. We are down to our last two Mystery Reader dates of the year. This will be on a first come first serve basis. If you have not had a chance to this year and would like to volunteer please speak to Miss Selwyn as soon as possible to book your place.
Friday 28th June 3pm
Friday 12th July 3pm
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Selwyn and Miss Woodward
