Year 4 were really lucky to have a visit from our local firefighters. They learned all about fire safety and how to keep safe around the home and what to do if there was a fire. Thank you so much for coming to visit. The children had a very informative morning.
Today Year 2 visited the Singh Sabha Gurdwara. We had great fun learning all about Sikhism and how Sikhs pray. Some of our children also shared their own knowledge of their religion – Sonjo even played the drums in front of us all!
Many of us had a delicious lunch and snacks too! We would like to thank the volunteers at the Gurdwara for their hospitality. All the children were role models and were very respectful.
Where is the bear? in front, behind, on or under the chair?
Exploring texture
Ice, mud, sticks
Acting out the story on the field
Our bear cave
Year 5 took part in a Skint to Mint Workshop ran in conjunction with Coventry Building Society. They learnt about branding, saving and making money. They had to resell a potato thinking about its selling points.
We are continuing on with our topic of ‘Celebration’ this week by looking at ‘Advent’. The children will learn about advent and how it is celebrated and will be able to link this to the advent calendars that they may be opening at home. We will talk about the countdown to Christmas and will link the season of Advent to their Nativity play as we continue to rehearse ready for their production later this term. The children will learn about the significance of the candles in an advent wreath and we will be talking about advent calendars being more than just a chocolate treat. In class we will be making our own ‘Kindness’ Advent calendar that we will open each day throughout December with an act of kindness that the children will be encouraged to carry out. Use this topic as a time to talk to your child about Christmas and what they know and have learned.
The children are all progressing well in their phonic groups and those children practising their sounds and word blending at home are showing increasing confidence. We have started to write simple CVC words in our writing sessions so please continue to work with your child on blending sounds together as this will also help them to then segment words to be able to write them. Please continue to watch the videos below which show how to use the sounds to blend.
https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/kmjuSM2j/jJzxCxlN
https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/QiZfS3RY/NSMOFZWS
https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/Pk2im77W/7cW4OaOQ
The comparison of quantities is something that children begin to do as babies. When comparing, children notice attributes and begin to understand similarities and differences. This week’s activities focus on further developing these innate skills. The children will be encouraged to compare the number of objects in 2 sets by matching them 1:1. Seeing that objects in some sets can be matched without any being left over will draw the children’s attention to instances when the quantities of objects are equal.
Language is a key focus and adults will need to reinforce the language of ‘more than’, ‘fewer than’ and ‘an equal number’ to describe how many objects there are in each set. As the focus this week is on countable things, ‘fewer than’ is used rather than ‘less than’ and ‘more than’ is used rather than ‘greater than’.
The children are very excited for their trip to Ash House Children’s Farm on Thursday. You should have received a letter by now outlining key information such as clothing and lunch. Please make sure you have read the letter and follow the actions suggested. Please do not send your child in with lots of food. They only need the same amount of lunch they would have on any normal day. The lunches will be kept on the coach until lunchtime and any remaining food will be disposed of after lunch so they will not be able to access it throughout the day. The children are set for a lovely day where they will get the opportunity to see and feed some different animals as well as get to hold a baby chick. They will also take part in a Nativity story as well as meet Father Christmas and receive a lovely gift. Please talk to your child about the trip before they come so they know what to expect. It would be really helpful if you also talked to your child about keeping their hands out or their mouths and noses as they will be feeding animals and we do not want children transferring anything into their own bodies. We will be washing hands regularly but we seem to have quite a few children that have their hands in their mouths or regularly up their noses, so we would be very grateful for help with this message
As we now move in winter and the colder weather can we ask that your child comes into school ready for the drop in temperature. Please send your child into school with a warm waterproof coat with a hood, a pair of gloves and a hat. All these items should be clearly named. We do not recommend scarfs as they are often left trailing on the floor and can become dangerous on the equipment. Encourage your child to put their coat on first, then their hat and finally their gloves. When taking their outdoor items off they should remove their gloves first and put them into their coat pockets. They should then remove their coat and put their hat into the sleeve of their coat so that it doesn’t get lost on the floor and is easy to access when then need to get ready to go outside. Please do not ask your child to put their things in their bags as they are difficult to access on the coat pegs when all of the children’s coats and bags are on there. This will help them with getting themselves ready and forging their own independence.
We hope you have a lovely week and will take lots of photos on our farm visit to share with you all.
The Reception Team
On Thursday 21st November, Year 3 took a trip to the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham. After the coach dropped us off we went in and visited the first activity of the day, which was our workshop. We learnt about the different layers in the sea and what marine life would be found at each level.
Once the workshop was finished, we headed down to see the penguins, they were super cute! Next we worked our way through the centre to explore the range of sea life. There were so many different creatures to see! We saw starfish in the rockpools, many different fish in the aquariums, jellyfish, sea horses, rays and some terrapins too! We even saw otters and watched them at feeding time.
As we explored, we crawled through tunnels and gazed in amazement at the variety of sea creatures that swam playfully and glided gracefully in their tanks. At midday, we headed up to the lunch area, we were so hungry.
In the afternoon, we used our time to find specific facts and information about some given sea creatures and continued to discover a range of information.
Finally, we made our way to the Ocean Tunnel. It was absolutely incredible! We walked through a glass tunnel, and all around us were massive sharks, graceful rays, beautiful turtles and colourful fish swimming overhead. It felt like we were underwater! Everyone gasped in awe as a big shark sauntered. It was amazing to see such beautiful creatures up close.Â
We’d had a great day, but it was time to go so we made our way back to the coach to journey back to Coundon. What was your favourite part of the day?
This week we will begin introducing the children to the Nativity story in preparation for our visit to Ash End Children’s Farm and for their Nativity performance near the end of term. The children will be introduced to the story and will begin to learn some songs. During our trip to the farm the children will have the opportunity to act out the nativity story with a real life donkey so it is important that they have an understanding of the story. Over the next few weeks the children will be practising our nativity and will all have a part to play in the production. Please do not worry about costumes as we provide all of those. All we ask is that if your child brings home some lines to learn that you practise these with them. We will be performing our Nativity on the 12th December at 2.15 and the 13th of December at 9.15. Please keep an eye on the Friday focus for details about tickets.
Thank you to all those parents who did their child’s reading activities with them last week and signed the diary each night. Remember this just needs to be a little note to let us know that your child has done the activities set and how they got on. Your child’s phonics teacher will read these notes and can answer any questions you may have in this diary. We do not need to know about you reading the library book to your child, this is an extra activity for you to enjoy with your child in your own time. Below are some videos to continue learning to blend.
https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/4cleUOGi/5tG9JYaP
https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/A3e8n53O/Axx7AIWV
https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/Kt5zfEJ6/2XLugvu8
The comparison of quantities is something that children begin to do as babies. The activities this week will focus on developing this innate skill as children are encouraged to look carefully and use the language of comparison to describe sets of objects that they can see. Language is a key focus and adults will model the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to describe how many objects there are in each set. ‘Fewer than’ is used rather than ‘less than’ because the focus is on countable things. Another key focus this week is deepening their understanding of 5 as a quantity by linking the number itself to the 5 fingers on one hand. The children will also begin to explore ways to represent numbers to 5 using both their fingers and the Hungarian number pattern. These key representations will help to underline the ‘fiveness’ of 5 and provide structures that will support later exploration of its composition and its relationships with other numbers.
This Friday some of the children in Key Stage 2 will be setting up a book swap shop on the playground. This shop is open to everyone. No money is needed, just a story book that you have finished with and would like to swap for another one. This is separate to your child’s library book so please do not swap your child’s library book. The children will be opening the book swap shop every Friday after school and will be a lovely way for your child to experience different books without any additional costs to you as parents. If your child does not have a book at home that they can swap then please speak to a member of the team and we will see what we can do about getting your child their first book and then when they are finished with it they can swap it for another one.
We are really looking forward to our upcoming trip to Ash End Children’s farm. We ask that children come to school on the day dressed warmly as they will spend a significant amount of time outside. They do not need to wear their uniform. Please make sure they have a warm waterproof coat, a hat and a pair of gloves all clearly named. Your child should also wear suitable footwear for walking around a farm. They will mostly be on concreted areas so please remember wellington boots can be quite cold so ensure they have warm socks on with them. The children will be asked to bring a packed lunch in a named carrier bag. Please only supply the same amount of food as your child would eat on a normal lunch time as every year we end of having to throw away quite a lot of uneaten food. If you would like your child to have a school packed lunch then please let the office know and this will be provided for them on the day. We will send a letter out nearer the visit to confirm all of these details.
Have a lovely week
The Reception Team
For Children in Need this year, the children enjoyed watching the ‘Coundon’s Got Talent’ talent show. They saw dancers, gymnasts, singers, musicians and comedians. It was a fantastic way to start the day. We then enjoyed some chilled time colouring and a cake sale.
This week was ‘Maths Week England’ so year 3 took part in some fun maths activities to celebrate. Over the day we learnt about Tangrams and used them to create some pictures. We also had a go at making our own designs, this was harder than we thought it would be!Â
We also looked at how much our names were worth on scrabble letters by adding together the total of each letter. We compared our totals to others in the class. Then to challenge ourselves we tried to use the same numbers but multiply or divide them to find the largest and smallest totals we could make.
Finally we had a number hunt, following clues to take us through a series of addition and subtraction questions, which is the skill we have practised in school over the last couple of weeks.
