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What a jam-packed week it has been!  Parent’s evenings, Christmas decoration making, sewing and lots of Nativity rehearsals!

 

We are doing well with our nativity songs, lots of us are remembering to sing in a big voice without shouting and we are using lots of actions to be expressive!

 

We are also getting a little better at remembering our cues to speak; some of us are still having some trouble remembering our lines so please continue to practise with us at home and check we can recall our lines without the cards in front of us and that we are reading in full sentences.

 

Costumes for the play have all been sorted and tried on and the stage is ready to go; we were very excited to get our first glimpses of what it looks like and to practise walking on and off of the steps.  Thank you to all who have bought in their tights, t-shirts and smart narrator clothing from home for the nativity

 

Our Christmas stockings have now been completed.  It was a tricky process first drawing around templates and cutting out the two pieces and then sewing them both together but we all did very well. We have now decorated them and they are hanging proudly in our class role-play ready for when we can take them home on the last day of half term.

 

REMINDERS/ OTHER.

 

Our Christmas nativity is next Thursday afternoon!  We look forward to seeing you all there.

 

Can you please ensure that water-bottles are not being kept inside books bags; we have had quite a few leaks over the last couple of weeks and books/ belongings getting rather soggy.

 

 Thank you for your Christmas Fair donations and to all those who came along to parents evenings.  Enjoy you weekend. J

 

Christmas has arrived in Class 1 this week and we have all been very busy, preparing for this Year’s Nativity called, ‘The Sleepy Shepherd!’ The children are all very excited and they enjoyed being able to pick their parts; we have shepherds, a donkey, lots of cheeky sheep and of course Mary, Joseph and Kings all raring to go with rehearsals over the next few weeks. Costumes will all be supplied by the school for the Reception Children so you will not need to supply these. Nearer the time, Year One children may bring in smart clothes from home for their narrator roles but you may keep them at home for now until we begin dress rehearsals.

This week, we have been looking at traditional tales. We learnt that traditional tales are very old stories, usually told from person to person. We also learnt that most traditional tales have similar features…1. They usually contain a wolf or other talking animal. 2. They have a part that repeats (usually 3 times) 3. They contain a moral for children to learn from and 4. They usually happen in a wood, village or jungle. We have enjoyed re-enacting some of our favourite stories and some of us performed a brilliant version of ‘The Gingerbread Man’ to the rest of the class. We have also been in role as the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood in our outside wendy house and making our own gingerbread men using dough and cutters and the Year One children did some excellent rhyming, based on the gingerbread man!

We have also been thinking all about adding doubles this week. We performed our own doubles rap to help us remember. If you want to find it at home, just type ‘Doubles Doubles (I Can Add Doubles!)’ into youtube. We doubled so many things in class, cups of water in the water area, cubes, made models with double instructions and even double dance moves! In preparation for Christmas, we have been busy creating our own fabric stockings. We found that using templates can be very tricky and when we came to cut out our two pieces using felt, we really had to concentrate on our scissor skills. Next week, we will begin to sew the front and back together so we can then decorate them.

Reminders.

Inside some of the book bags, some of you have words for the Christmas Nativity. These are for you to keep at home and learn. Remember to try to use your BIG voices and expression as you read them and practise them whenever you get the chance!

We are also missing library books from Class 1 children; if you happen to have one at home, could you please return it so that your child can then swap it for a new library book. Thank you.

We have had lots of lovely WOW forms in this week; they have been a joy to read and share to the class and we appreciate you sharing them with us.

In our literacy this week, we have been having lots of fun, continuing our theme of poetry.  We learnt a poem all about winter, which was full of onomatopoeias and some of us even added our own actions to it. We have enjoyed talking about the poems that some of the reception children researched at home and reading some of them in class, especially ‘I scream for ice-cream’ which was John’s favourite, ‘The peanut’ from Elliot, ‘The Spider and the fly’ from Oliver and ‘The chubby snowman’ from Romey.  Another one we liked was Ella’s favourite, called ‘sting a ling’ by Roald Dahl and this started off some great discussion work about scorpions. We looked up lots of facts about them on the computer and talked about some other dangerous animals.

In Maths in Year One, we have been solving investigations all week.  Our favourite one was called ‘Maisie’s maze’’ where we had to navigate a mouse around the maze in as many different ways as possible.  We knew that there were six ways of doing it but the tricky part was working in order, so that we didn’t repeat any of the possibile routes.  We also tried hard to find shortcuts in our workings.

In Science, we have started our new topic of ‘seasonal changes’.  We learnt that the sun is a star, we designed our own hats  and sun gadgets to protect our skin from it and we also went on a ‘shadow hunt’, to investigate sun light.  It was interesting to see that we only had shadows where the sun couldn’t reach and that they became longer at different points throughout the day.  We have also been creating our own ‘shadow dens’ in the classroom and some us of in reception were investigating what happens when we put coloured filters in front of the torch; we especially liked the green filter to make our faces look spooky!

Thank you to all of you for your kind 'Children in Need' contributions today.  We have loved being heroes for the day!

 

No Reminders this week.

Wow, what a fun filled, busy first half term it has been.  The children have come so far already and it is fantastic to see how well they have settled into their new school/ routines. 

This week our focus has been on 'people who help us when we are poorly' and we were lucky enough to have a visit on Wednesday from a real life nurse, Miss Fletcher.  The children were full of questions to ask her and they particulary enjoyed trying on all of her hospital uniforms; we had a class full of nurses, radiographers and even surgeons!  We also had a few 'injured patients' who enjoyed being wrapped up in bandages and wearing pretend slings on their arm, it has been a joy to see them all acting in role in our hospital role-play throughout the week. A special thank you to both Miss Fletcher and Mrs Fletcher-Deuchar for arranging the visit for the children.

We also thoroughly enjoyed having you all in for family week on Tuesday.  It was great to see so many of you attend and we hope you enjoyed some of the activities as much as the children did.  The 'X-ray' pictures you made with your children have been hanging proudly in Class 1 all week and we have also been lucky enough to look at some real X-rays, thanks to Ella's father, Mr Foster, who provided the class with these for us to look at.

As you may have noticed from your child's book-bags, all home-learning books have been kept in school over the half term and there is no home-work set for Class 1 and Class 2.  We hope that this will give the children (and yourselves) a break and chance to enjoy their half term after a long and busy half term.

 

After half term, our topic will be changing to 'Changing Seasons'.  Our Arctic role play is now all set up and ready to go for the children when they return to school.  If you have any items at home which you would like to lend the class for our Arctic role play area, such as old winter scarves and gloves or stuffed toys, they would be very much appreciated.

 

Wishing you all a happy and safe half term!

 

Miss Ingle.

 

In our learning this week, we have been continuing our topic of ‘people who keep us safe’.  Our week got off to an interesting start when we came into school to find police tape and pictures of robbers hidden all around the school!  We decided to use our detective skills and go on a police-search to find them all.  We took our clip boards with us and created a tally chart; we had to try to remember to ‘cross the gate’ when we got to number 5.   We then counted up each line to find totals, we had lots of fun doing this.

The adventure continued on Tuesday when we discovered that lots of our teddies and toy money had gone missing.  Even Mrs Jones’ lunch had disappeared!  We decided that it would be a good idea to make WANTED posters to catch any robbers and so we drew what we thought they may look like and wrote what we should do if we see anything suspicious.

In Year 1 History, we have been learning all about the British monarchy and we all researched our favourite member of the Royal family.  Most of us chose to find out about Kate or baby George but some of us also found out a little about Henry 8^th and we decided that royals these days are much nicer!  One of our favourite things this week was when we made our own cardboard castle in the outside area.  We had to work as a team, to check we had delegated fairly.  We added, ramparts along the top of the castle, a drawbridge, a moat, arrow slits and even a portcullis!  We also discovered that the safest part of the castle is the tallest tower; sometimes called a ‘Keep’.

 

Reminders/ AOB:

*  We look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday for a fun filled afternoon of activities.  We will be doing some arts and crafts as well as some other exciting things.

*  Now that it is getting cold, can all parents/ carers ensure that children are coming to school with some form of coat/ waterproof or their St Ippolyts fleece every day please.  As part of the early years curriculum, the outside area is considered part of the classroom and should be accessible to children in all weathers!  This also applies to the Year One children in Class 1 who still use this area. Wellies are very welcome should you wish your children to have a pair at school.

*  Well done to all for your effort with the home-learning tasks this half term.  The police artefacts were outstanding and the children have been using them all week in their learning.  There will be no home-learning set in KS1 and Early Years throughout the school next week, to give children (and parents) a chance to relax and enjoy their half term.

*  A reminder that all show and tell items should be linked to our half termly topic OR of a special significance please. 

 

 

 

This week, we have been starting our topic of ‘people who keep us safe’, which will last until the end of half term.  We started the week by thinking about fire-engines and we added our own labels to say some of the things we would find inside.  We discovered that fire-fighters need a pump, hose, a first aid kit, sirens and special cutting tools which are sometimes called ‘the Jaws of Life’!

The Year One children have also been writing instructions this week and have been trying our best to use ‘bossy’ verbs such as ‘put’, ‘walk’, ‘make’, ‘stay’, to write a set of instructions of what to do in the event of a fire.

In Reception, we have been doing some excellent role play to do with the fire-service.  Some of us decided to transform a huge cardboard box, into our own fire-engine; we drew on blue circles for sirens and wheeled out the tyres for either side so it looked real.  We also made some cup and string telephones and made 999 calls; we had to remember our address and to ask for the correct service.

One of the most exciting parts of the week was our visit from a real fireman.  We enjoyed trying on his safety clothing and we learnt that the proper name for a fire-engine is a ‘fire-appliance’.  We tested out some of our question words on him and many of us now want to become fire-fighters!  Thank you to our visitor for sparing the time to come in and also to Mrs Laws-Randall who kindly organised the visit for Class 1.

Another thing we have been doing this week is going money-mad!  We have been learning the shapes and colours of coins in England and understanding that some amounts can only be made by adding coins, (for example there is no such thing as a 3p coin but we can make 3p using other coins).

We have been trying hard to tap twice on 2p coins and 5 times on 5p coins, to understand the value of each.  We also found it really interesting that some of the smaller coins are actually worth more than some of the larger coins!

Some of us made up our own shop in the outside area to use coins in a real context and most of us can now even count in 2ps by tapping on the coin twice!  We noticed that some of the money in class was real and some was fake so some of us were very clever and used magnets to find all of the real money.

This week has also been friendship week.  Each day we have had a different focus and we have been doing lots of fun activities to help us think about positive behaviour and how to be a good friend.  One of our favourites was making ‘friendship pie’, where we mixed up ingredients to create the perfect friend.  You may have noticed ‘friendship tokens’ in our pockets or book-bags; we have earned these throughout the week each time we have been spotted being a good friend to others.

No reminders this week, just a big thank you to all for your continued support with home-learning, spellings (Yr 1) and reading at home, so far this half term!

 

 

 

In our learning this week, we have been focussing on ‘people who help us in the community’.  We started the week with a fantastic visit from Mrs Conway the dentist, who bought with her lots of activities for us.  We dressed up as dentists, sorted foods which are good for our teeth and those which were sugary and we all had the opportunity to ask lots of questions about the dentist and how to look after our teeth.  A huge thank you to Mrs Conway from sparing her time to come and visit us! We have also been thinking about the role of postmen this week.  On Tuesday we found a mysterious bag on our playground.  We worked out the clues inside, to find out that it belonged to a real postman and we wrote him letters to tell him we found it.  We have also been making our own stamps and post-boxes in our creative area!

 

For our maths focus, we have been thinking about shape and measuring this week.  On Monday we went on a 2D shape hunt around the schools and we learnt that the term ‘2D’ means a flat shape.  We began to learn the names of the various shapes and we counted the sides of each.  We also arranged our 2D shapes into some brilliant pictures.  We have also been using cubes and metre sticks, to measure items from around the classroom and have started to look at 3D shapes.  One of our favourite maths activities this week was learning about symmetry.  We have been designing our own symmetrical patterns using the CBBC Charlie and Lola butterfly game online; feel free to try this out at home too; it is great fun!

In our afternoons this week, we have been thinking about what Harvest is and discussing what happens at our annual Harvest festival.  We painted Harvest pictures ready to show in this year’s festival and learnt a little about how farmers need to prepare for the Harvest time. A big thank you to all who attended this year’s Harvest Festival and for all of your kind donations.

 

 

REMINDERS FOR WEEK AHEAD:

 

Friday the 10^th of October will see the first of this year’s cake sales (Class 5’s turn this time).  Cakes are usually sold to the children at a price of 25p each.  Should your children wish to purchase a cake on this day, they may bring money in to do so. We ask the children bring a maximum of 50p only and that this is kept within a named envelope.

 

Thank you.

 

In our learning this week, we have been focussing on ‘people who help us in and around school’.  We have been lucky enough to have a visit from Mrs Stokes, who taught us all about road safety.  We enjoyed looking at her road signs and linking this to our home-learning from last week.  (Thank you to everyone for your hard work with this; I have loved looking at your photos and illustrations!)  We have also had visits from Mrs Pepper our school secretary and also Mrs Wong, our school cook.  We made some fantastic stick puppets of members of staff and have been having great fun using them to create our own puppet shows. 

 

We have also been doing lots of number work this week with adding 1 and 10 to numbers.  We have used mathematical language such as ‘more than’ and ‘less than’.  Some of us also began to find 1/ 10 less than a number which was very impressive! 

 

 

In RE, we have been learning about the Christian creation story.  We learnt about how God made things in 6 days and then rested on the Sunday and we said thanks for nature and the world around us.  Well done to all who have received an award in Friday work assemblies so far this half term, it is a joy to see so many of the Class One children demonstrating this half term’s value of ‘Generosity’.

 

Reminders/ Other:  Year One spellings will be tested each Monday.  New spellings will also go out the same day.  Thank you for ensuring your children are bringing their spelling books into school ready for this.

 

A big thank you also for some of the WOW slips we have received already for some of the Reception children.  These really help us to get to know your child even better and share their success from outside of school; please keep them coming!

 

Next week in Class 1 we will be making our own post-boxes in lessons, as we learn about the role of postmen.  If you have any cardboard boxes which you no longer need, we would greatly appreciate anything you can bring in for us!  Any tubes, plastic bottles or egg cartons etc are also always very appreciated throughout the year as we always have use for them within our 'model-making' area.

Thank you,

 

Miss Ingle.

 

 

 

A huge well done to all of Class 1 for a fantastic first few weeks! The children have amazed me with how well they have settled into the new routine and how sensible they all are; I am extremely proud of them.  We have had a jam packed first few weeks learning about 'People Who Help Us'; thank you to everyone who has offered to come in for visits/ suggested people they know, we are very grateful for your support.

 

This week in our learning, we have sorted pictures of those who help us and those who don’t, written ‘gift vouchers’ to our special adults to suggest ways we could help and we have even designed and labelled trophies, to show these people how much we appreciate them.  We hope you will like them when you look through our books on Monday Open session!

 

Our focus this week in our maths/ number work has been on recognising number and beginning to add them together.  We have been remembering to tap each object as we count it and also learning the maths karate for adding.  Our reception children have been showing off their fantastic estimating skills and the Year Ones are making fantastic progress with their Friday Big Maths Quizzes! They have been trying hard to see how many answers they can work our correctly, within 100 seconds!  Don't forget to ask your Year Ones at home what their score was this week.

 

In Class 1, we have been learning all about materials.  We went on a material hunt around the school and recorded the different types we spotted.  We have also been describing common materials such as metals so that next week, we can have some fun with magnets.  We are trying hard to use scientific words such as 'transparent' and 'opaque' to describe their properties.

 

In RE, we have been learning to say thank you for what we have.  We thought of our own thank you prayers and have been trying hard to always say thank you to others, as part of our ‘generosity’ value this half term.

 

REMINDERS!

Please don't forget to make sure all children have their library books inside their book bags, ready for changing each Friday.  Also, if you have any 'effort' or 'achievement' pin-badges at home, we would greatly appreciate them back as we are running a little low.

 

Lastly, a huge THANK YOU to all who attended the Class 1 Curriculum Evening.  It was fantastic to see so many of you there and thank you all for your positive feedback and questions...I hope you have been practising your dough disco at home!

 

 

A huge thank you to all the parents, grandparents and families that turned up for Class 1's assembly on Friday. The children were very excited and could not wait to show you what they had been learning. I am so proud of them all as they definately rose to the occasion using those big, clear voices that I know they have.  Also, what better way to finish the day after being in the hall, than to eat a yummy ice lolly from the PTA!

Reminder for Year 1 children. Tomorrow morning the Year 1 children will be joining Class 2 to have the opportunity to learn a Brazilian World Cup dance with Thabani. You may have seen in your weekly newsletter that the children can bring in a football kit if they have one or brightly coloured T-shirt. Please do not buy something especially for the occasion. Children will be in the hall so no trainers are required. With this in mind, this week's show and tell will be based on countries that are taking part in the World Cup and providing us with a few facts about the country. Together in class we will look on a World map to locate their chosen country. Year 1 children may have the opportunity to do their show and tell throughout the week so that they can take part. See you all tomorrow!

Mrs Stewart 

 

Class 1 have been so excited by the latest new arrivals to St Ippolyts. We have had the chick cam on watching throughout learning time. We have been taking note of the times of arrival and predicting whether it's going to be a boy or girl. To get used to using capital letters we have been selecting names for them. Mrs Stewart suggested Shelley as the first born. Next week our learning will focus more on our chicks, so keep watching.

After having our PE session today we have been having some clothing issues. As you know we are always encouraging independence in Class 1, both dressing and undressing. However we have been finding more and more clothes are not labelled, which makes it difficult for both your child and adults. Please over the Easter holidays can you make sure that all items of clothing are named. If you have any school clothing that your child has grown out of we are always looking for donations. Thank you for your support. Mrs Stewart.

We have been talking about the internet today in Class 1. First thing this morning Mrs Racher gave an assembly to the whole school discussing how we can stay safe while being online. Later in the morning, Class 1 heard the story of Smartie the Penguin, who was given a new laptop for his birthday, and learnt how to be safe online. We also sung a song about internet safety and have composed a few extra verses ourselves.

To hear this story, visit www.kidsmart.org.uk/teachers/ks1/ and try some of the activities at home. You may like to share the story again at home and have a go at answering the questions together.

This afternoon we had a special treat by watching ourselves on DVD. The children were really proud of themselves, much better than any Disney film. Please check your childs book bag tonight as ordered copies have been sent home. All the children in Class 1 had a lovely time at our school Christmas dinner today. Watching their happy faces and pulling crackers and wearing their special hats that they had made in Class. It was so lovely to see them enjoying themselves. We would like to thank Mrs Harrington Smith for a yummy dinner. THANK YOU from Class 1. Please remember it is Christmas parties tomorrow afternoon.

Dear Parents. Class 1 have been very busy since coming back from half term. We are well on our way with our Christmas Nativity. Everyone is busy learning words and songs. We are enjoying our traditional stories and are getting very good at storytelling. We have taken pictures of some of our bears and have measured them and looked at the different materials. The children would like to carry on with Goldilocks and invite their bears back next week on Wednesday for breakfast and taste different kinds of porridge. Our next festivals will be Hannukah and soon Advent. As we have been so busy on assessments we will not have homelearning this week but please continue to keep reading, year 1's spelling and having fun with learning. The children are becoming so confident at speaking and more independent that we decided to write this blog together as a class.

We are looking forward to our trip tomorrow. We have been getting ready and have been asking some very good questions. Weather is looking good so please remember to supply the children with a sun hat and apply sun cream in the morning. We hope that the children will find the trip very enjoyable and a great educational learning experience. Class 1 hope to return by the end of the school day.The children will arrive back and will be taken straight into Class 1 via our gate and then handed over to parents. Pictures and blogs to follow.

We had a lovely surprise at the beginning of the week. A card arrived from Mrs Stannard. We were really pleased to hear from her and wish her well. We have been busy 'Going Places'. We started the week by looking and discussing postcards and thinking about holidays and trips out. Next we designed the photos and will be writing some postcards soon. If you have any old postcards at home and are happy to donate them to us,could the children bring them in to school. We are looking forward to locating places on a World and UK map. Our Travel Agents (indoor role play area) has a bureau de change. If you could also have a look at home and would be happy to send in any examples of different currency, we would be delighted. I would like to thank the children as this blog was part of our shared writing in our Literacy session today.

 

Mrs Stewart and Class 1

Class 1 would like to thank everyone who managed to join us on Friday afternoon for our Class assembly. The children were very excited and could not wait to share their learning with you all,especially our 'Walk the Dinosaur' dance. We will be putting our artwork up on display and will post some pictures of our work when it is finished.

Tomorrow in Class 1 we will be making Hot Cross Buns. A letter has been sent out with your child this evening and replies need to be back in tomorrow, in order for them to participate. We have been looking at items that are associated with Easter and how these relate to the Easter Story.Look out for our next blog to see how we got on.

 

Mrs Stewart