Month: November 2014

Preparations for our annual Christmas play has begun!

You should all have found a letter in the bookbags to order tickets for our performances which will take place on Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th of December. The play will be called “What is the World Coming To?” and all of our class will be animals in the stable. We have a limited number of donkey, sheep, camel and cattle costumes at school but if you have any other animal costumes (farm animals, cats, dogs, etc) lurking about at home that we could borrow then we would be very grateful. Please let Mrs Saeed or Mrs Nicholls know if you can help with this.

Our topic this term is Shorter Days, Longer Nights, with a focus on seasons, weather and day and night. In the classroom we have been camping out in our autumn woodland. The leaves have fallen from the trees and next week winter will begin to arrive and we may be lucky enough to get some snow (well Christmas is coming!). We have been reading lots of stories about the dark and going to bed. Some of our favourites are While You Are Sleeping by Alexis Deacon

and I Want My Light On by Tony Ross

The story that we are learning to retell this term is Can’t You Sleep Little Bear? by Martin Waddell.

We have talked about the two characters and can describe both Big Bear and Little Bear.  Mrs Saeed is impressed with how quickly we have all learnt to retell the story and next week we hope to share our story with Nursery.
I’m sure that the children would all be able to retell our story at home too!

We are zooming through our phase 3 digraphs.  So far we have learnt ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, oo and oo. Some of us are already writing these sounds with beautiful joined up, cursive writing. Please continue to practise the sounds at home, not forgetting to read the words on the back of the sound cards that we have sent home.  We have also been learning tricky words (words that cannot be sounded out). For a list of these words and other high frequency words that we need to practise please click below.

To reinforce learning why not play some of the games on the following link.

 

On Tuesday we had a fabulous time in our pyjamas.  Some of us even had dressing gowns, slippers and teddies too! We started the day thinking about all of the things we need to do before we go to bed and came up with lots of ideas – having a bath, brushing teeth, getting changed, sorting out teddies, choosing a book, drinking hot chocolate and settling down with teddy to listen to a story.

We then went on to think about our own bedrooms; whether we share with our brothers or sisters or have our own rooms, furniture in our rooms, what is on the floor and the walls (pictures, wall paper, carpets, rugs), our lights and bed covers.  We all drew our rooms and then drew ourselves in our pyjamas to place in the room.  We had some lovely finished pictures.

After lunch we went into Mrs Hugginson’s room which was rather warm. We settled down with cushions, blankets and teddies to drink hot chocolate and listen to some bedtime stories and music. It was a lovely (quiet) afternoon and some of us almost fell asleep but unfortunately it was time to go back to class and get ready to go home.

It was a super day and we look forward to our next pyjama day.

We have almost covered all of the letters of the alphabet – just qu, y and z left to learn this week. I am very impressed with how quickly the children are picking up their new sounds and many are now beginning to blend the sounds together to read words. Please keep practising the sounds, particularly the latest few ie h, b, l, j, v, w and x and continue to read the words on the back of the sound cards that we have sent home.
To reinforce learning why not play some of the games on the following link.

 

Following our trip to the church, we made our own church role play in the classroom and we have had lots of fun in there this week.

We have been giving sermons at the lectern

           

Singing hymns and playing the organ

Cleaning the windows and polishing the woodwork

Reading about Reverend Freddie Fisher and his mischievous cat Puddles

                   

and saying prayers with candles and jewels.