Our topic over the next half-term is called "Starry Skies"

We do this at this time of year for several reasons.

There are lots of festivals at this time of year that use light and dark as part of their celebrations.

The stars are particularly noticeable at this time of year.

But most importantly, all of a sudden the nights have drawn in,  it even gets dark as we are finishing school. Soon even the mornings will be dark too.

Lots of the children find the dark quite a scary thing and we want to provide a safe environment where they can talk abut their worries with each other and see that they are not alone in their fears about the dark.

Some stories in our topic are chosen to start conversations about whether they like to have a night light on because they are afraid of the dark or possibly worry about the shadows they see when the lights go off. This is part of their PSED curriculum (personal, social and emotional development) We always put the story on the website on the Friday before so that you can get to know the story too at home with your child and should they have any questions or worries you can let us know via tapestry. Mostly children find stories a comforting way to work through their fears but there are times when a story can worry them ... so just drop us a line on Tapestry or let us know when you see us in the morning  if your child has not responded well to the story. 

As you will see below........ even astronauts can be afraid of the dark.

This story was actually written by a real astronaut! Someone who has actually been into space and seen how dark it really is up there! As a child he was a little worried about the dark, so he thought he would write a story for all of the children who perhaps need a little help getting to sleep at night. Here he is reading his own book and introducing you to his dog Albert!

The sounds linked to the stories this week will be the single letters d and k found in the word dark.

I wonder if d d dinosaurs were afraid of the dark?

  

For the children learning "special friends"  we will focus on the Trigraph (three letters, one sound) "igh" This trigraph is used in lots of the words we will be introducing over the next few weeks such as  night, light, bright, sight, fright!

Our 5 minutes of movement each morning will be "Little Pluto"

Later in the week when we do Our PE lesson we will be reinforcing the letter d in our warm up. Why not have a go at home and get your exercise in.

 

Our signs of the week will all be about day and night.

 

For more information about our "Big Ideas' for this half-term take a look at our posters below.

They show you the knowledge we are going to be teaching the children. The enquiry questions that will lead the learning and the key Vocabulary that we will be teaching.

We are combining two projects "Starry Skies" and Sparkle and Shine"

For a clearer version scroll down to the bottom and open up the documents.

As part of our RE topic about the world around us we have been learning  all  about Baptism

 

You guessed it one of our sounds of the week is definitely going to be the letter 'b'!

We are going to be talking about big and small, so our other letter of the week will be the letter's'.

Don't forget to visit Evie and Dodge if you want to have a go at these sounds at home or sing a long with the alphabet songs to match the letters.

    

Can you join some of the letters together to make simple words with the alpha blocks?

We will also be talking to the children about how the letter 'x' can sometimes sound like the letter 's'!

For children starting to learn their special friends we will be focussing on  'sh'

The tongue twister She sells sea shells is going to be a challenge this week but will really get the children focussing on pronouncing the 's' and 'sh' sounds correctly. Why not have a go yourself at home?

 

This week our exploring skills are going to lead us to investigate lots of  mathematical opposites!

big, little            short, tall,          fat, thin,               more, fewer

We are also going to be using all of our sense this week whilst learning the letter s!

Starting  every morning by asking the question - What's that sound?

We will also be using 'Ranger Hamza and his explorers' to investigate even more sounds that would be found at the seaside. Click here to be taken to bbc iplayer if you would like to watch at home.

What other senses do we use?

The children will be finding out about our 5 senses

Seeing, smelling, touching, tasting and hearing.

We will be going on a sense safari!

Our signs for the week are all signs we use at school

 

We have been finding out about making patterns and matching objects. 

This week we talked about what an explorer is?

The children came up with some amazing answers. Answers that showed they had discussed their new class name at home. Take a look at some of the children's explanations.

Explorer’s “look for things”    (Jacob Z)

Explorer’s “find new things”       (Austin)

“They find different lands and places”     ( Marley)

“It is good to be an explorer because we can find things in our woods”  (Lilly)

“Explorers find cool things…. Treasure” (Edward)

“Explorer’s find corn and bring it home to us”. (Harry)

“They bring us chocolate too!” (Sam)

“Explorer’s find new places and new houses”  (Matthew)

Well this week we are going to talk about what an adventure is! How would you explain what an adventure is? Here are some slightly older children explaining their ideas

 

As we are going on adventures............... our focus single sound  is going to start off as  'a'

Later in the week we might also be talking a little about the letter 'h' too as we will be looking at houses and homes.

  

At home you could visit Evie and Dodge or the Cbeebies alphabet songs to reinforce our focus sounds.

Take a look at the Alphablocks blending sounds together to make simple words

For the children learning 'special friend' sounds we will be looking at 'ay' May I play?

Now that the children are all getting to know each other we thought it would be nice to learn the actions and signs for things we play with together

 

Next week in maths it's all about matching and sorting. This is a great one to do at home. Simple tasks around the house are really good to help developing their sorting and matching skills. It might be 

Tidying their room 

Helping to put the shopping away in the right cupboard. 

Matching pairs of socks 

A game of snap

A game of pairs

Matching and sorting different types of apples

To stretch their thinking you could ask them to decide how to sort objects and items. Discuss where they could put objects and why they should go together.

A simple you can also do online is https://pbskids.org/sid/games/sorting-box

 

We will be learning a rhyme about an apple tree too.

For our movement each morning we are going on an adventure to the rainforest!

Good old Aunty Mable will also be taking us on an apple journey  when we watch an episode of come outside