Week Ending 28/02/25
Date: 22nd Feb 2025 @ 5:28pm
Happy Friday! We have really enjoyed welcoming the children back to school this week. They had so much to tell us about their exciting half term breaks that we had a very long Show and Tell on Monday! This is a short but busy half term so please see the key dates below for EYFS and look out for emails from the school office. This week we have been on the look out for minibeasts that are hiding in our gardens.
Some ideas of how you can embrace our topic at home:
- Research your favourite mini beasts - can you find any fascinating facts to share with the class?
- Make your very own bug hotel! There are lots of great designs online- but they can be made from things such as: old plant pots, small rocks, sticks, stones bark and leaves... You'll soon have lots of mini beasts checking in!
- Go on a mini-beast hunt in your garden or local area/park - what can you spot?
- Share any mini-beast related stories you might have at home or spot at the library.
Spring Term Dates
- Wednesday 5th March – Reception Vision and Hearing
- Thursday 6thMarch – World Book Day (Dress up as your favourite book character and bring in that book or choose to wear your pjs to school with a bedtime story). Please see World Book Day email for more information.
- Friday 13th March – PTA Cake Sale Cholmondeley cake donations please!
- Friday 21st March - Comic Relief (Come dressed as a decade of your choice - 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s,
- Monday 31st March - Trip to Crown Bank Quarry Nature Reserve. Parent volunteers still needed if you're available!
- Wednesday 2ndApril – Dormice class assembly (9am – school hall)
Little Wandle (Phonics)
This week we have been revising the digraphs we learnt last half term such as AI, EE, IGH, OA, OR, UR and OO. Thank you to all the families who returned their book on time this week, it was nearly a 100% success rate. We are so grateful for the care taken over with our books, we want to ensure the children learn to take good care of them too. When reading with your child encourage them to turn the pages themselves and hold the book carefully, thank you.
Kinetic Letters
At parents evening, we spoke with lots of parents about the importance of fine motor skills on a child's writing journey. By enabling handwriting to become automatic, we remove that from a child's cognitive load when writing. This way they can focus on sentence construction and spelling. We do Kinetic Letters each more to give each child automaticity in their handwriting as soon as possible. You can help at home by encouraging play that strengthens little hands; playdough, tweezers, lacing, tying shoe laces, doing their own zip up, opening crisp packets/food boxes. In fact, developing independence and fine motor skills go hand in hand!
Challenge Time
Can you write a few simple sentences about your favourite minibeast? My favourite minibeast is certainly a butterfly. I just love the beautiful symmetrical patterns on their wings. What can you find out about that you didn't know already?
In Maths, this week we met number 9! We learnt that number 9 is easy to subitiise (recongise without counting) as it’s one less than 10. Can your child quickly show you nine fingers and explain why they could show the amount so quickly? We used numicon and unifix to find number bonds to 9 and recorded them in number sentences. We challenged the children to finx the number bonds systematically and try to spot what happens to the parts each time. We found out that number 9 is a square (3x3) like number 4 (2x2). I wonder if you can find any other square numbers with your child? Can you prove your findings using objects and then upload to Tapestry?
On Monday, we started our week-long poetry unit using the book ‘Mad About Minibeasts’. The children went on a bug hunt outside in our grounds. They managed to find worms, woodlice, centipedes and spiders. What a great first day back for our Dormice!
On Tuesday, we thought about how insects move and acted out some of the poems. We saw some great acting skills as the children had to guess what bugs we were being without using any words.
On Wednesday, we played ‘Silly Soup’ to give us some inspiration to write the poems and worked in teams to record our ideas.
On Thursday, Jack taught us about the parable of the lost sheep and taught us the word 'perseverance' and how the shepherd didn't give up looking for him. It illustrates the love and compassion God has for those who are His.
On Friday, we explored the signs of spring that are beginning to appear all around us. We looked at the flowers such as daffodils and snowdrops. We made our own observational flower drawings which are proudly on display to also celebrate St David's Day. Spring is definitely coming! We also made some crocodile cakes to sell at our cake sale after school.
Well done to our Star of the Week, Ezra!
Our mystery reader this week was Holly’s Mum. Thank you for coming to share a story with us!
We hope the weather will be nice over the weekend so that we can go out and find our own mini-beasts in our gardens and local area
Have a wonderful weekend and Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus (Happy St David's Day from Miss Selwyn)
Miss Selwyn
