Week Ending 24/01/25
Date: 17th Jan 2025 @ 1:56pm
Happy Friday! This week we have been introduced to our new story book 'Let's All Creep Through Crocodile Creek' which takes us on an adventure through a creek. We have been thinking about the different journeys we make day-to-day (house to school, to the park, to Delamere forest). The children had lots of ideas about the journeys they had made over the Christmas holidays including visits to Santa, light trails and exploring new places.
Dates for the diary (Spring Term)
- Friday 7th February 3:30-4:30pm - PTA EYFS and KS1 Disco (school hall). The PTA are desperate for parent volunteers for the event. If you are able to, please let us know whether or not you can spare an hour to support this event. If the PTA don’t get enough help from each year group, the event will be cancelled. Thank you.
- Tuesday 11th/Wednesday 12th February – Parents Evening (face-to-face in school)
- Thursday 6thMarch – World Book Day
- Monday 31st March - Trip to Crown Bank Quarry Nature Reserve. Parent volunteers needed if you're available!
- Wednesday 2ndApril – Dormice class assembly (9am – school hall)
In Maths, we have continued looking at the composition of number 6 and thinking about how we can begin to record this. We have consolidating our understanding of how the number system looks like a staircase and how each number gets one block bigger each time. Riddles are a great way of practising one more and one less. Can you say 'my number is one more than 3, who am I? and your child reason about how they know. E.g. "I know that one more than 3 is 4 and one less than 5 is 4'. You may want to write numbers on pieces of paper and turn them face down, can your child pick up the card, read the number and say one more and one less? It's one thing knowing numbers by rote, but to deepen our understanding of these numbers it's all about the developing of why!
Little Wandle (Phonics)
This week we learnt four new sound OI, OW, UR and the trigraph EAR using the new Little Wandle grapheme cards and phrases. We have learnt that a digraph is two letters one sound, but a trigraph is three letters one sounds. Have a look at some of these words which mean three - triangle, tricycle and triceratops. The mnemonics for these new sounds are very catchy so if your child is struggling to recall the grapheme ask them to recall the phrase to help them remember. We practised reading these words by decoding and then saying the sounds in our head to read fluently. We have also learnt the tricky words MY, BY and ALL. To help the children remember these we say 'my with a Y and me with an E' to support understanding the difference. The more the children can see these words and remember them without needing to sound out, the more fluent their reading will become. Please ensure you remember to log each read in your child's reading record.
Drawing Club
This week we have really hard launched our Drawing Club! Drawing Club is an approach designed by Greg Bottrill (former Early Years Lead and Assistant Headteacher) that immerses children into a world full of imagination. We at Tarporley have fully embraced drawing club and can see the joy it brings to our children. It is through drawing club that we open up the magic world of tales and story to children whilst at the same time enriching their language skills, developing their fine motor and share a really special time with them. Drawing Club is a fantastic place to start a child’s experience of school ‘Literacy’.
We use a book, traditional tale or an animation as a portal for the week. Children learn new, exciting vocabulary that we revisit each day of the week. We draw characters on a Wednesday, settings on a Thursday and we ‘wonder’ on a Friday where we take the story on an adventure of our own. This week we have been reading 'Lost in the Snow' by Ian Beck.
On Monday, we started our brand new story 'Let's all Creep Through Crocodile Creep' by receiving a letter that had been left for us in the classroom by three friends, Rabbit, Tortoise and Mouse who had been on an adventure. We discussed the different journeys we had been on both near and far.
On Tuesday, we discussed a journey we had all made together recently, to the Church! We looked on Google Maps and then drew our own simple map and labelled key physical features of our walk to Church including shops, traffic lights and even The Swan!
On Wednesday, the children were challenged to traverse the equipment with an added ladder as a challenge. It was time for the children to make their own map of their journey to Church and label it by applying the sounds that they have learnt so far. They did a fantastic job!
On Thursday, we reviewed the meaning of the words ‘tempo’ and ‘beat’. We played a tempo game where I showed the children three colours. Green meant a fast tempo, yellow was moderate and red was a slow tempo. The children had to listen to a variety of songs (including Vivaldi's Four Seasons!) and run to the traffic light that represented that piece's tempo. I was incredibly impressed with their musicality!
On Friday, to continue our topic on journeys we discussed modes of transport and made a variety of vehicles to transport us on our adventures. We looked at numerous modes of transport through time and sorted them into 'past' and 'present'. My favourite was the look on their faces when they saw the man on the penning farthing!
Congratulations to our Star of the Week, Rose V!
Our Mystery Reader this week was Hari’s Dad. Thank you for coming to share a story with us!
Dates available for Mystery Reader:
Friday 31st January 3pm (NEXT WEEK!)
Friday 7th March 3pm
Friday 14th March 3pm
Friday 21st March 3pm
Friday 28th March 3pm
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Selwyn
