It has been lovely to have everyone back in the classroom again this week! The children have been working very hard and we have done lots of super learning!
In literacy we have covered:
‘My Holiday’ – writing super sentences,using capital letters, full stops and finger spaces
Writing Challenge Star Step: use a connecting word to extend the sentence
Writing super sentences about what makes us happy
Sounding out/blending/spelling CVC words
oa and ow Diagraph
Example oa words – boat, goat, float, soap
Example ow words – bow, arrow, snow, throw
Reading sentences and drawing pictures to match
Tricky Words (Block 1 – 8 PowerPoints are attached to this post, if you would like to practise at home)
Letter Formation – cursive
Word searches and Boggle (word building)
Reading Groups – in class
Reading sent home
Reading:
Reading groups
Reading out loud to the teacher
Reading with expression
‘Fastest Finger First’ for tricky words and punctuation
Predicating and recalling information
A reminder that reading groups have been set up and are based on in-class assessments – these groups are fluid. Please don’t be alarmed or worried if your child moves groups – changes are only made in order to support your child’s individual development and engagement
Here is a link the PowerPoints of our Block 1 -8 tricky words:
We really enjoyed seeing all the wonderful and creative pumpkins in school today – thank you for sharing! I hope you have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday.
It was a short week in school, but we have still been busy.There are only one or two children still to return their indoor shoes – please try to do this as soon as possible. It really does help to keep the carpet clean for us to sit and play on comfortably.
Literacy
I am lifting weights. I have a six pack. Actually, it is a four pack.I pretended my stick was a pumpkinI am holding two big sticks and catching a whale.I am fighting a dragon. I won.
We drew detailed story pictures about using our imaginations – see more information under outdoor learning.
We continue to read books in school – we love discussing the funny illustrations and making predictions about what might happen next in the story. We are excited to be taking the first steps on our reading journey.
We continue to introduce and reinforce some single sounds and have been using them to create and read words. This week’s letter was g, and we made words including gap, get, pig, got and dig
We enjoy listening to and discussing a wide range of texts
Home learning ideas:
Please support us by spending some time at home practising the skills of blending the sounds to create and read words – a little often is the best way.
We will occasionally send an home learning activity idea in the purple folder, so please continue to empty the bag and check the contents regularly.
Download this Home Learning Template d o g On the sheet you will find the letters we have been learning this week along with a list of words to create. You can choose to print the sheet, or simply write out the letters of small pieces of paper. Use the letter cards to create simple words and ask your child to firstly, identify each sound, count how many sounds (phonemes) they hear, then blend or squish the sounds together into one word. Next, say a word which can be made using the letters. say it slowly and clearly – asking your child to identify the sounds they can hear before they ‘make’ the word with the cards.
Go on a letter hunt. Look around you for places where you can see any of the letters you know. Remember to say the pure sound of the letter not the name. ( so a= ah, not ay )
Ask an adult to write all the names of the people in your family. Who has an ‘i’ in their name….. who has an ‘ a’ (etc)
Play a game of “I spy” with our focus sounds.
Encourage your child to make their name in different ways: in the sand, with flour, play dough, etc.
If your child cannot yet write their own name, please practise this at home. Lower case letter please ( apart from the initial letter of course)
Numeracy & Maths
We have been learning our ,number bonds of 10. These are the pairs of numbers which fit together to make ten
e.g.
1 +9 / 9 +1
2 +8 / 8 +2
3 +7 / 7 +3
4 +6 / 6 +4
5 + 5
10 + 0 / 0 +10
Play this game to help you practice
Roll a dice, and count out the right number of small items ( 1p coins/buttons/raisins etc) Now put out some more until you have 10 altogether. How many more did you need to put out. Can you write the pair of numbers you made.
Challenge – write them as a sum 3 + 7 = 10
We have also been practising instant recall of doubles facts to 10, and some people have been trying doubles to 20 as well.
Play the HIT THE BUTTON game, then choose either number bonds (make 10) or doubles,( to 10)
We ave been exploring numbers to 10 20, or 30 with matching activities.
We have been practising instantly making and recognising finger patterns. Doing it on our head ( the bunny ears game) makes it a bit tricky as we can’t see our fingers, we just have to feel the pattern.
We have been working on recognising numbers and identifying pairs patternsPairs patterns
We have explored numbers to 10 (and beyond for some)
We have worked on sequencing numbers.
We have worked on counting forwards and backwards from different starting points.
We have been naming the next number in a forwards or backwards sequence
Home learning ideas
Count items using 1-1 correspondence. Put down a quantity of small items, for example raisins, buttons, counters, small stones or lego bricks. Ask your child to count them carefully, pointing to, or moving each one in turn. can they count the total accurately? Increase the level of challenge by using a larger collection.
Number hunt: Ask your child to look for specific numbers in the street: buses, house numbers and ask your child to say the number that goes after and before that number.
Practice number formation of the numbers 0 to 10 (or more if your child is confident with this already)
You may choose to play this game. Please choose from sequencing or ordering (forwards) from 1- 10 or 1-20
Play Three for me, one for you . The adult says three numbers in a sequence, either forwards or backwards, the child says the next number in the sequence. e.g. 6,7,8………9 or 14,13, 12…….11. You can choose the level of challenge by staying within 10, or going up to 20.
Play this game to help you create and name regular 2D shapes. We have used an ipad version of this in class.
Other areas of the curriculum:
Learning to use the ipad to record evidence of our learning activities.
Spider facts – we have been learning to appreciate spiders. Did you know that a Wolf spider does not spin webs but lives under logs?
PE – we did some fitness stations in the playground to raise our heart rates and keep wam
On PE days the children should come dressed for outdoor PE, there is no need to bring a PE bag with a change of clothes. On these days, we would ask that the children wear trainers or similar for the playground and PE. It is really hard to hop when you are wearing wellies ! (Wellies are ideal on non-PE days though)
Outdoor learning:
We tried to make Mandala patterns, but it was too windy and our leaves kept blowing away! We still had lots of fun collecting leaves and planning how to stop them blowing away.
We went to the woods and read the story ‘Not a stick’
We collected sticks and used our imaginations to find different ways to play with them. We used our ideas to help us draw visual stories when we got back to class.
Independent learning:
These are some photos of the learning through play that we had the opportunity to experience this week: we particularly enjoyed exploring our fantastic new Kapla box. It has 1000 pieces !
Other things….
NUT FREE reminder – As we have a number of pupils in school with nut allergies, please help us to ensure their safety by keeping nutty snacks at home. This includes nut-based chocolate spreads in sandwiches. Many thanks.
We are very proud of our Terrific Tigers!
Thank you for your continued support in your child’s learning.
It was lovely to see all the children today and hear their news from the holiday.
Can we please gently remind everyone to bring a pair of indoor shoes to wear inside to help keep our carpets clean, and to wear wellies or old trainers for enjoying the ever increasingly muddy playground .
This week, our focus is on words containing ‘igh’ or ‘-y’. As usual, we also have two ‘tricky’ words to learn / revise. Please work on the list you chose in class.
light night right sight tight spy try why fry shy what when
Challenge Words
mighty sunlight goodnight alright sighting buy by frying spying trying what when
We completed a maths assessment which covered the areas of numeracy we have been working on since the start of P3.
‘We have been counting in 3s and 4s’
‘The assessment was quite tricky’
‘It was a bit fun too’
We created 3D objects using 2D drawings, art straws and plasticine. We discussed vertices, edges and faces.
‘It was REALLY fun but quite tricky to make a cube’.
‘I found it easy and I was the first one finished’.
LITERACY
We used ‘Tunnel in a Hedge’ as a story start and wrote the rest of the story focussing on full stops and capital letters.
‘This was very fun’.
‘We all like to add a lot of detail’
We summarised the story of ‘The Three Little Ghosties’, trying to divide the story into beginning, middle and end without using too much detail.
‘We used the summary words to help us.’
‘It was a good story’
.HWB
We looked at the Building resilience PowerPoint and in a circle time shared occasions which we have found difficult and talked about the things we did to help us cope
.’We were talking about things we find difficult and discussed lots of lovely ways to cheer ourselves up.’
We enjoyed our fitness sessions in the playground and played lots of games to make sure we were running about.
I
HOME LEARNING
Please remember to look at the blog post from Monday 12 October. This has all the information about the book talks which are due the week beginning 2nd November.
It’s been a fun final week in P3. Hard to believe we are at the October break already! The highlight of this week has been creating the building from the Giraffe, Pelly and Me (Hampshire Estate) in the style of the artist Paul Klee. They are excellent! We completed reflections for this term this morning and shared favourite memories from this term:
“I really liked drawing and writing stories.”
“My favourite thing was Loose Parts because it was fun!”
“I liked Loose Parts and The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me.”
“My favourite memory was seeing my friends on the first day.”
“I liked playing Wink Murder in Circle Time.”
“My favourite was The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me.”
“I liked the singing – I love the Bog Baby song.”
Have a fantastic holiday and I’ll look forward to seeing you all when we’re back at school! Have fun, stay safe and be kind 🙂
We continued our learning on symmetry this week, focussing on shapes and patterns with more than one line of symmetry. We have also enjoyed transferring our skills to some art activities.
We have also been revising how to complete written division calculations using the bus stop method with answers including decimals.
Literacy
We finished researching our chosen icons from Black History Month and used our notes to write biographies.
We used blooms questions started to create a set of open ended, discussion provoking questions about our whole class novel, Friend or Foe. Questioning is part of the discussion director role for literature circles; which will be starting with our new group novels after the October holiday.
Our spelling pattern this week was ‘ar’ as a suffix.
Please see the attached sheet for this week and the previous weeks’ spelling rules.
We developed our line drawing skills completing half a symmetrical animal face.
We used our note taking skills to research microorganisms and recorded our research in mind maps.
We concluded our bread experiment, we found that the slices which had been touched by our hands and the sole of our shoes grew mould. It has shown that even though we have been frequently washing our hands, they were still dirty!
We learned about the importance of plants and animals to our society.
Home Learning Ideas
All reading groups are now at the end of their group novels and new novels will be issued at the start of the week back. When you have finished your novel, write a book review or recommendation for your novel.
Create a poster explaining the method for completing written division calculations with decimal answers.
Research the importance of bees to our society and create a power point with your findings.
The Lion’s have had another great week in Primary 1! We have had lots of fun playing with our friends both inside the classroom and outside in the playground.
Literacy
This week we learned two more sounds: ‘m’ and ‘h’.
We had lots of fun watching Geraldine the Giraffe, playing lots of games about our new sounds and singing the Jolly Phonic’s songs!
We also continued with our reading this week and read a new book together. . We are learning how to make predictions about a text with the information we have in the text and in the illustrations, we are using the words that are on our books to make sentences. We are working very hard on developing all our reading skills.
This week we continued the SEAL maths programme which teaches children the foundation skills in maths. We practised counting forwards and backwards to 10 and beyond together, counting claps, recognising dice patterns and random dot patterns and counting in sequences. The children are already showing that they are retaining the knowledge they are learning, which is showing greatly in our small group time.
The video below is also great for practising the skills we are currently learning in numeracy. Have a go at home and challenge someone in your family to have a go with you.
Other Areas
P1 has also been having lots of fun playing outside in the playground. In P.E we have been working on our fitness and spatial awareness when running around the playground. We also have been learning about different ways to move around the playground such as running, jumping, hopping, skipping etc. This week we had lots of fun practising the different ways we can move our bodies. Why not practice some of these at home for fun?
This week we also continued our outdoor learning autumn topic. We went on a scavenger hunt in the playground for signs of autumn and we were so excited to find a pumpkin there! We had lots of discussions about how it got there and where the children thought it had come from. We also got messy painting and painted autumn leaves using our hands to create them and then used a black pen to add detail.
We also continued to practice our funky fingers. This helps with holding pens and pencils to get ready for writing, we started using playdough to help make our hands and fingers stronger. We have been having lots of fun following, the videos below. If you have any playdough at home why not practice at home!
We had a lovely end to the week and the term by getting muddy and having fun playing with the loose parts outdoors. The children played and explored the different types of equipment. It was so lovely to see the children experimenting with water, making slides, bridges and even digging for treasure!
We have had lots of fun developing our social skills by playing with our peers in the classroom. We have lots of fun drawing pictures and making crafts, playing in the home corner and reading in the book corner. We also have lots of fun building castles and towers with the construction blocks. There is always lots of fun things to do in the classroom to support our learning and play.
Things to Try at Home
Play Three for me, one for you . The adult says three numbers in a sequence, either forwards or backwards, the child says the next number in the sequence. e.g. 6,7,8………9 or 14,13, 12…….11. You can choose the level of challenge by staying within 10, or going up to 20.
Practice using your ‘bunny ears’. Ask your child to show you a number on their fingers using the bunny ears method. They should practice holding up the number of fingers straight away without needing to count each finger. They then look at their fingers to check if they are correct. This is great for numeracy development.
Count items using 1-1 correspondence. Put down a quantity of small items, for example raisins, buttons, counters, small stones or lego bricks. Ask your child to count them carefully, pointing to, or moving each one in turn. can they count the total accurately? Increase the level of challenge by using a larger collection
Practice making words out of the sounds we have learned so far – ‘a’ ‘t’ ‘p’ ‘i’, ‘e’, ‘s’ ‘r’ ‘d’, ‘o’ ‘m’ ‘h’ and ‘n’ – for an extra challenge can you write and sound out the words you have made?
Could you find out any interesting facts about autumn? Look outside for signs of autumn, can you take a photo of them or draw them?
HappyHolidays!
A reminder that next week it is the October break. Children are back to school on Tuesday 27th October (Staff will be working on Monday 26th October).
Ms Leach will be teaching the class on Tuesday 27th of October. We will have P.E on the Tuesday this week.
P.E will be on Mondays and Thursdays – please come dressed and ready for P.E.
The children are taking home today the bag with the spare clothes. This will give you an opportunity to check the items needed for next term.
Please remember to label all items with your child’s name. We still have items that haven’t been claimed since August. Remember to label hats and gloves too!
This term has been very exciting and full of lots of lovely learning, new friendships and fun. It was so lovely to have your children for their first day of school and see their development over the last 10 weeks! I am really excited about working with the class for the rest of the year and can’t wait to hear all about your holiday adventures! Please take photos and bring them in when we are back at school as I would love to hear about all the fun things you get up to!
Have a lovely holiday, stay safe and I will see you on the 27th.
Buckstone Primary School 
