W/C 24th February

All of the children in Holly Class have made such a super start back to school after the half term break. They have particularly impressed me with how enthusiastic they have been about their learning and how beautifully they are playing together - keep it up Holly Class! 
 

We have started out new topic, 'On the Farm', with the fun story of 'What the Ladybird Heard' by Julia Donaldson. The children enjoyed joining in with the animal noises and hearing about the cheeky thieves' plan to steal the prize cow! They especially enjoyed thinking about what might happen to the thieves after they were caught by the police - let's just say, it involved a spade and lots of cow manure! 

In phonics, we have continued to revise the sounds we have learnt in Phase 3, which includes most of the digraphs (two letters, one sound) and trigraphs (three letters, one sound). Children are working hard to be able to recognise these more difficult sounds within a word. For example; 'ai' in rain, 'igh' in light etc. There have been no new tricky words introduced , so we are practicing reading and writing ones that have already been taught. 

In maths, we have been going over doubling again, before moving onto adding two groups together to find the total. We have been doing this practically (using objects) as well as using pictures and counters too. We will continue to go through this again next week. 

In R.E. we shared the story from the Bible about The Parable of the Talents before talking about our own God-given talents, which each child then drew. It was lovely that all children could recognise at least one thing they felt talented in, which is an important part of building their confidence. 

In PSHE, we shared a story about kindness and children were great at recognising which actions were and were no kind things to do. 

It sounded (and looked) like Holly class had a great time at Forest School this week! Despite the glorious sunny weather, there was still a lot of mud up there, which was a very attractive prospect for many children! It sounds like there was lots of sliding and jumping in muddy puddles, which made many children very happy indeed. Hopefully there are all nice an squeaky clean again by now. 
 

Hopefully you have seen my previous memo about our trip to Malvern Theatre to watch the new Paddington Bear film on Wednesday 12th March. Apologies for this letter not going home on Friday, but you will get it on Monday. This trip will be a lovely opportunity for us to experience the theatre together - I can't wait! Please can all consent slips and voluntary contributions of £2.50 to cover the coach hire be in school by Friday at the latest.