5th January 2018
Dear
Parents/Carers,
Happy New Year! Many thanks for the Christmas
cards and lovely presents you so kindly gave me. Christmas already seems a
while ago now.
Topic: After
a few weeks looking at our year and the changing seasons, our topic this term
is Percy the Park Keeper (you may be
familiar with the range of stories about this lovely character and his numerous
animal friends). It will lend itself beautifully to work based on the changing
seasons, growing and life cycles amongst many other things. Our role-play
corner will predominantly be Percy’s Hut but will also involve chances for the
children to practise their gardening skills and will become a garden centre
too. Our classroom will become a mini version of a park, complete with a duck
pond and bandstand.
The children will again be spending lots of time
outside so if they have a spare pair of wellies in a named carrier bag
that we could keep in school for the term we’d be grateful. We do have a number
of spares so please don’t worry if this is a problem. Also please could your
child have a coat every day with a hood or hat as rain won’t necessarily keep
us indoors. We will take part in maths, art, science, geography and drama
activities outside as well as working on teamwork, problem-solving,
communication and of course, gardening and expanding our nature knowledge.
Literacy: The children will
continue to choose books each day. Please keep up the wonderful work you are doing
as your support with reading practice is making all the difference to your
child’s progress. Your comments in the red Communication Book are extremely
valuable so again, many thanks. I enjoy reading what your children are getting
up to at home and it helps me in monitoring progress.
We will continue the
introduction of sounds that letters make in words, now moving onto the tricky
long vowel sounds e.g. –ai, -oo etc. It
is at this point in the year that some children can start to find retaining
these sounds difficult so I would like to stress the value of regular practice
e.g. playing the Pairs Games and going through the book to reinforce these
skills.
We will be developing
knowledge on how to segment words into separate sounds for spelling (e.g. cat
is c-a-t) and gradually increasing the children’s independence when writing
simple phrases and sentences including the use of full stops and spaces between
words.
Tricky Words will continue
to be added to the children’s packs as your children are ready for them so
please ensure these are kept in their book bags. Please start asking your child to spell these words but only once they
are truly competent at reading them.
Maths: This
term the children will be building on the skills that they acquired last term;
they will be developing their understanding of counting, adding and subtracting
through practical activities, games and discussion, investigating shapes and
comparing the weights of different objects.
The children will continue
to use our ‘lending library’ of maths games which need to be returned on a Wednesday please, so that the contents can
be checked before the games are re-issued on a Friday. Thank you for your
valuable support with these maths games. Please feel free to use the
Communication Book to comment on your child’s level of enjoyment and success
with the maths games as well as their reading experiences. As before, please
don’t be afraid to change the rules of the game to make the game more
accessible or more challenging for your child if necessary.
R.E: We will be thinking about why the word ‘God’ and Easter are so important to Christians.
Show and
Tell
time will continue to be on a Monday which is an opportunity for the children
to show and talk about something relating to our topic or something that
they’ve taken time to make at home. Again, no toys please unless topic related.
Lunches: Children
will now be asked to choose their own lunches each day in preparation for next
year so the lunch register will no longer be available in the lobby. If you
would prefer to continue choosing lunches for your child, please see me and I
can let you have it. If you have already been very organised and chosen ahead
this term please don’t worry.
If
you have any concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to ask,
Mrs Liz Bradley
