Newsletter – 22nd April 2022 Our News Thank you to all of the parents and family members that came along to our open afternoon in the last week of the spring term. The children loved sharing their learning with you and showing you where they learn each day. The children were all amazing at returning to school and settling back into their routines after the holidays. They have enjoyed sharing their holiday news with us during our speaking and listening times. The children were thrilled to see how our frogspawn has grown and changed into tiny tadpoles during the holidays. They are looking forward to watching the transformations over the next few weeks. We celebrated World Earth Day by talking about our pledges that we will try to do to help protect our precious planet. We will be planting bulbs and seeds in our garden area to help attract different minibeasts and we have a lovely new bird feeder to look after too.
STARS OF THE WEEK Darcy from Yellow Ducklings and Zayn from Brown Ducklings Our Learning This week the children have had a surprising start to their new topic, ‘What’s in the Garden?’ The children came across some clues, left by a mystery visitor – giant footprints, beanstalk leaves, magic beans, gold coins, feathers and a large golden egg. After lots of discussion the children decided that it was the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. They will be keeping their eyes open over the next few weeks for more clues. We have enjoyed reading the story of Jack and the beanstalk together. Both Little Chicks and Ducklings have been set the challenge of using their creative skills and ideas to create a beanstalk which ‘grows’ through each classroom and helping to design and create the giant’s castle for our new role play area. We will put some photographs on the blog when it’s all complete!
Little Chicks have been… • • •
Finding objects that begin with the letter s. Subitising the number of beans. Drawing and painting giants.
Ducklings have been… • •
•
Drawing and writing about the giant might look like. In phonics, we have been finding out which letters of the alphabet are vowels and which are consonants. We have then been looking at reading words that end with consonants together, such as tent, camp, milk and gift. In mathematics we have been counting beyond 10 and looking more closely, using practical objects, how to make the teen numbers using tens and ones or units.
Our Learning – What next? We will continue with our Jack and the Beanstalk story and will be reading lots of different versions of this story, comparing and contrasting them. We will get to know the story so well enabling us to be able to act out and re-tell the story in our own words and using the familiar story language.