From The Head Of Pre-Prep
A very Happy New Year again to all our families, it has been a pleasure seeing so many of you again this week!
The first week back with the children has been truly delightful, I know I speak on behalf of the whole team in saying we have really enjoyed being with the children again. It has been lovely to hear about the excitement of their breaks and the buzz in the building as we look forward to new learning at the beginning of 2019.
We have kicked off the year with some fantastic ‘Golden’ work with no less than 15 children to visit me; a new world record! This week’s entries for the Golden Book of Greatness include:
Tigers
Apple
Sharks
Esperanza
Libertad
Clare
Crayons
Alfred
Theo
Sophia
Selin
Raelyn
Mae Grace
Jacob
Nolan
BFG
Leia Der
Andreas
Sachin
Congratulations to all our Golden children this week. I look forward to another promising week next week.
If you are interested in booking a session for February half term holiday club (Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th) please speak to Mechelle or Clara.
I wish you all an enjoyable weekend.
With best wishes,
Nicola Henson
Gruffalo
It has been lovely watching the children return from the break so enthusiastic and interested in the activities on offer. We have been busy exploring ice, bubbles, paints and glue. Next week we will be exploring jelly, colours and foam. We welcome Kai and his family to our group.
The Very Hungry Caterpillars
The Caterpillars have settled back into our Baby Unicorn routine well after the Christmas break. We all welcome Andi and his family this year who will be continuing his settling in sessions next week. In our home corner, the children have enjoyed the builder’s yard, we have seen some good roleplay amongst the peers and building using the wooden bricks. The children were all busy in forest school exploring the area around them, one group were finding stones and sorting depending on their sizes. Next week we will be going on a bug hunt in forest school.
Elmers
The children have settled well, back into the school routine. We’ve enjoyed hearing about what they’ve been up to in the holidays through pictures and words, which we have displayed in the classroom. They have enjoyed playing in our ‘office’ home corner, which will expand into next week as they’re enjoying “Doing work like Mummy and Daddy!” We will be taking the children up to our school office to see the grown ups at work, if any parent works in an office in walking distance and wouldn’t mind a visit please let us know! The children are showing interests in unicorns and firefighters which will become part of our planning for further activities.
Tigers
We welcome Jamie and his family to Sancton Wood this week and we also have Isabella and Shiying joining us from Elmer room. The children in Tigers have been working very hard to make sure their new friends settle in quickly.
This week the children have come back to Nursery very keen to work on their writing skills. We have been practising letter formation as well as pencil hold during our ‘squiggle while you wiggle’ sessions. The children were excited to mark make by creating a large road scene using flattened cardboard boxes. We also made sandwiches to help us learn the ‘m’ sound in phonics (‘m’ for ‘munch’, ‘munch’, ‘munch’!)
Reminder: We lock the entrance to the nursery at 9.15am. If you arrive after 9.15am please ring the bell at the main front door.
Children can be collected from nursery from 2.45pm onwards. If your child does not attend late stay please collect your child by 3.15pm at the latest.
From Reception
Sharks have welcomed two new starters into our class this week. Esperanza and Libertad have joined us in Reception for the ‘Lent Term’ and the children have all enjoyed getting to know the girls and have been busy building friendships which has been lovely to see.
We have launched our new topic on Space; ‘To infinity and beyond!’ We are starting with the text ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ and the children will be focussing on using adjectives in their writing to describe a specially designed pair of pants! In mathematics, we are consolidating our work on recognising and ordering numbers 1-20 so please look out for a Tapestry observation coming your way so that you can see what your child has achieved and what are the next steps in their learning journey that you could support us with.
We have nearly finished covering all of the sounds in Phase 3 phonics which include, oi, ear, er, air and ure. After this, we will be consolidating all of Phase 2 and 3 and using our knowledge of letters and sounds when reading and writing.
This term the class will have a specialist art session with Mrs. Sobanda and Mrs. Zermane on a Friday afternoon so they will be able to learn and master basic art skills using a range of different media.
From Year 1
This half term our topic is Houses and Homes so please do talk to your children about the various homes you see while out and about. Next week in Literacy we will start to look at the story ‘That Pesky Rat’ who is trying to find somewhere to live.
In Phonics next week we will be consolidating our sounds from this week and then moving on to ir (girl), ue (blue), aw (saw) and wh.
In Maths we will be adding numbers to 20 in a variety of ways.
Show & Tell (Thursday): Scott & Theo
Book of the Week (Friday): Raelynn
From Year 2
Year 2 enjoyed a lively start to our topic. Having gathered evidence from clues they were excited to find that we will be focusing on the polar regions this half term. We located them on our maps and learnt about the differences between the two poles. In English, we have worked on instructions using ‘bossy’ verbs and time connectives and we finished by writing instructions on how to make hot chocolate for a cold day and drinking it!
In our maths we have concluded our work on money with a focus on giving change. Our Science topic this half term is ‘Animals Including Humans’ and we began by looking at food groups and eating healthily. Our first swimming session went extremely well with all the children participating with huge enthusiasm and ability.
We are looking forward to our trip to the Polar Museum next Tuesday. Please ensure your child wears their storm coat.
Dates For Your Diary
Forest school:
Please ensure your child has clothes for Forest School including wellies – they get so much more out of the session if they are able to fully participate.
Caterpillar: Monday and Thursday
Elmer: Friday
Tigers: Tuesday and Thursday
Sharks: Monday
Year 1: Tuesday
Year 2: Monday
Specialist subjects
Reception class
PE: Wednesday and Thursday
Spanish: Wednesday
Art: Friday
Year 1
PE: Wednesday and Thursday
Spanish: Wednesday
Art: Thursday
Computing: Friday
Year 2:
Swimming: Wednesday
PE: Thursday
Spanish: Wednesday
Art: Friday
Computing: Friday
