What an exciting week we have ahead! We are celebrating Chinese New Year! We will be finding out how and why this tradition is celebrated, sharing stories and joining in with some celebrations ourselves.  The Chinese/Lunar New Year is celebra

Hopefully you've had a chance to check out our new big idea for this half-term: Keyworth Primary and Nursery School - BOOKS, BOOKS, BRILLIANT BOOKS!

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be exploring these big idea questions: 

• Can you re-tell a story?
• Can you describe the setting of a story? (using We're Going on a Bear Hunt to support this)
• Can you describe the characters in a story? (Using Goldilocks and the Three Bears to support this).

We will be drawing simple story maps and acting out the stories to help the children remember and re-call them.

Last week we shared the brilliant book 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. The children loved it! They were so confident re-calling  key parts and using story language from the book. We particularly liked their different voices for the different characters!

This week, we will be introducing our talk for write a story to the children.... 'We're going on a bear hunt'. 

Watch the Author, Michael Rosen performing the story below:

Here is the vocabulary that we will be sharing with the children for 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'

• Can you have a teddy bear picnic? 
• Can you share any books from home or find any in the library that feature a bear in them?
• Watch this episode of Andy's Wild Adventures about bears that live in North America.
• Can you play hide and seek with a teddy bear in your house? Can you or a grown up use positional language to describe where the bear is hiding (e.g. under, behind, next to, between, on top, in front etc).
• Can you play this Teddy Bear's picnic counting game?

• Remember to enjoy sharing stories and record these in your reading diary-the school expectation is to read at least 3 times a week and get along the way to collecting the next reading award!
  (F2) practising your speedy sound cards, or doing any reading or writing activity can also count as an entry.
• (F2) Keep up with those doodles! Little and often. Mrs King is monitoring. 

Over the next couple of weeks we will be talking about winter and, of course... All things Christmas!
Here are the big idea questions we will be exploring: 

• What does winter feel like? 
• What is the weather like?  
• What clothes do we wear outside when it is cold?
• How can water change? 
• How do you celebrate Christmas? 

We will be sharing lots of wonderful stories linked to these big idea questions. Have a listen to some below: 

You can also watch a lovely animated version of this story here on BBC iPlayer.

 

 

The 'Winter wonderland' vocabulary that we will be sharing with the children over the next couple of weeks:

Here are some winter-inspired ideas that you could get busy with at home. As always, we love seeing what you get upto on Tapestry (and the children enjoy showing their friends in school).

• Can you play these winter-themed games with the Sesame Street characters? 
• Can you do some careful counting with this Gingerbread Man game?
• Can you make some festive-inspired treats? Here are some ideas:

• (F2) Reminder that we will be going to Loughborough Town Hall for our panto trip on Monday 16th December.  All children in F2 will need to have a packed lunch on this day. For more info, please see this post. 
• Remember that we are hosting a storybook café on Wednesday 18th - we invite EYFS parents to join us first thing to share some stories in the classroom. 

 

Thank you for your continued support 😊

Over the next couple of weeks for our long ago topic... We are blasting back to the past (over 200 million years ago) to find out all about dinosaurs! Our 'big idea' questions are:

- What does extinct mean? 
-What does a palaeontologist do? 
-What is a museum? 
-Who is Mary Anning?

We will be sharing lots of books linked to these questions, but here are a couple of our favourites to share at home:

Dear Dinosaur 🦖

Winnie's Dinosaur Day 🦕 

We will be finding out who Mary Anning is, the woman who helped to discover that dinosaurs did once exist! She was a Palaeontologist and collected lots of fossils.

We will be singing along and doing the actions for this song!

Check out the Cbeebies website for lots of dinosaur-inspired fun!

 

• Huge thank you to everyone that sent in baby/toddler photos- SUCH adorable photos! The children have loved sharing these with their friends, and it really brought our 'big idea' questions to life. 
• (F2) Remember to keep up with your doodlemaths, little and often is great! (we are currently in last place in school - let's try to move up for next week). 
• Feel free to have a go at some of these dinosaur-inspired activities at home, or think of your own. We love seeing what you get up to on Tapestry!

We hope you have all had a lovely half-term, having lots of fun and some well deserved rest! 

We would LOVE to hear what you got up to over the holidays. It might have been having a film night, sharing a favourite book, exploring on an autumnal walk or dressing up for Halloween! We would love to see a few photos that the children can talk about with their friends in school.

If you could upload these photos in one post on tapestry that would be amazing.  We will print these and use these for our next topic, which will be... *drumroll please* 

OUR NEW BIG IDEA FOR THIS HALF TERM... LONG AGO... 

Time is such a tricky concept for children to understand... In this 'Long Ago' topic, we will help children grasp time by talking about their recent past (e.g. what they did over half-term, so those photos on Tapestry will be really helpful). 

 
We will talk about their history and how they have changed from when they were babies. We will bring this to life by seeing baby Rex again (Miss Inglis' baby), and talking about what he can do and is still learning to do/will be able to do when he is older, like the children in foundation!

We will be sharing sorties that have been told for hundreds of years such as Cinderella. We will be looking at castles, how old they are and how they are different from the homes that we live in.

We will also be finding out about dinosaurs! Your child will find out about the amazing prehistoric animals that lived on Earth. We will learn facts and discover how big some of these gigantic creatures were. They will learn about what we might find in museums and what the word 'extinct' means. 

We will also be sharing lots of different books, videos and photographs that help us explore the past.

Ways you could support our topic at home:

• Look at photographs of children as babies and talk about how they have grown and changed/what they can do now that they couldn't before. 
• Talk about and share photos of what your life was like when you were a child/grandparents were a child.
• Go to the CBeebies Dinosaurs website and explore the games and videos together. Can you find out any fascinating facts to share in school? 
• Visit a local castle or historic building (remember to share your photos with us on Tapestry!)
• Share traditional tales and see if your children can re-tell the key parts from the story (Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel etc).
• Share and discuss the ‘Big Ideas’ poster below (also attached as PDF for clearer version).

Thank you for your continued support 🙂 

This week our big idea questions are:

What do robots do?

What technology do we use at home?

We will be looking at different robots and machines and talking about how clever they are!
Including hoover robots, robots that can build cars and machines in factories that make things that we use every day.

We will be sharing this story with the children:

Along with the sequel... No Bot-The Robot's New Bottom!

We will be moving and grooving to these vintage Barney tunes:

Along with making our own 2D shape robots and of course doing lots of improvised robot dancing!

  

(F2) We are SO PROUD of how brilliantly the children are doing with their phonics. We are getting extra speedy with our sounds and trying really hard to form them correctly. We are starting to blend sounds together to read words! Keep up the super work Little Adventurers! 

The sounds we will be learning to read and write this week are: 

• Remember to book a parent's evening slot (links should be in emails from no-reply@mail.arbor-education.com) for a 10-minute appointment on either Monday 14th October or Thursday 17th October with Mrs Boon (F1) and Miss Inglis & Mrs Gerrard (F2). 
• Reminder to keep working towards those bronze reading awards, signing home school diaries and marking off the award page at the back. This can be done each time you share a story/practise speedy sounds etc. 
• To round off our topic, we will be having a 'Marvellous Machines' show & tell... Please let us know your child's favourite machine and send photos of some of the technology that you use as a family. This could be a photo of your car, the oven, a hoover, the freezer... The possibilities are endless! Send these photos on tapestry and the children can share them with their friends before half-term.