Week Ending 05/11/21
Date: 4th Nov 2021 @ 8:17pm
Welcome back! We hope you had a wonderful half term break. The children have been excited to share their news and tell us about their Halloween activities.
This week we have been learning all about Diwali, which is the ‘Festival of Light’. Each of the children has made their own Diya lamp which they have brought home today. We had a special visit from Mrs Gopinath (Rabbits class teacher) who shared her experiences of celebrating Diwali with her own family. Next week we will be reading farmyard poetry from the beautiful book ‘I Am the Seed that Grew the Tree’ and then we will be exploring The Three Little Pigs. Thank you to everyone who has returned their reply slip for our trip to the farm. Please make sure you hand it into the office (or one of us) as soon as you can.
This half term in phonics we are focusing on letter formation. At Tarporley, we use Kinetic Letters as our handwriting scheme. Some of you will already be aware of this from older siblings but if you are unsure, then please have a look at the page on our school website for more information: http://www.tarporleyce.cheshire.sch.uk/page/handwriting-kinetic-letters/51112 I have also linked a video below with some examples. We are starting by learning the ‘jumper family’ which contains the letters h, n, m, b, p and r. Kinetic Letters introduces writing on a line from the start and teaches them that all letters start from the ‘brave monkey’s branch’ (top of the line) or the ‘scared monkey’s branch’ (middle of the lines). No letters start from the ‘ground’ (bottom line)! To support your child at home, please encourage them to start their letters from the right place, hold their pencil correctly and provide lines for them to write on.
We will continue to set online reading books each week and send home books for the children to read to you at home. Please continue to practice reading everyday as the focus will be on fluency and recognition of high frequency words. Along with the rest of Key Stage 1, we will now be sending home a ‘reading for pleasure’ book each week. The children will be able to go to our school library on a Friday afternoon and choose a picture book to take home and share as a family that week. They may choose a familiar book such as ‘The Gruffalo’ or they may choose a book that they haven’t read before but are excited to try. We hope you enjoy sharing these books as a family.
In Maths we have been learning about more complex patterns and problem solving with patterns. We have painted patterns, made firework patterns and reasoned about patterns. If you see your child making patterns at home then upload your observation to Tapestry. We love showing you what your child can do at school but we also like to see your child using their learning at home. Think about moments that make you say ‘WOW!’
On Tuesday, we started to learn about Diwali. We began to make our Diya lamps using clay and developed our fine motor skills as we manipulated the clay.
On Wednesday, we thought more about Diwali and painted our pots. We read a story about Diwali and talked about Rangoli patterns.
On Thursday, we enjoyed a visit from Mrs Gopinath. We learnt about Rama and Sita and ho to make real Rangoli patterns. Some children chose to make their own with chalk outside.
On Friday, we had our first visit to the school library where we picked a special picture book each to take home. We learnt some classroom instructions in French and did PE with Mrs Line.
Nativity
A date for your diary! The EYFS Nativity will be on Thursday 9th December at 2pm at St Helens church. School provide the costumes but a note will be sent home in the next couple of weeks asking for a base layer for underneath. The children walk down to church for a 2pm start (dressed in costumes) and then we walk back to school to change back into uniform (we need the costumes back for the KS1 performance that evening!) and then they will be dismissed from school at 3:20pm as normal.
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week, Sofia and Maggie.
Our mystery reader this week was Jonah’s Mum. Thank you for coming to share a 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 fully booked for the next few weeks so please do let us know if you would like to come and we can put it in the diary.
Have a fantastic weekend!
Miss Nicholas and Miss Selwyn
