Hello everyone!
Welcome to the F1 page!
We are excited to have our new starters join us in the Perfect Poppies group - they are settling in very well!
We have been very busy reorganising our Foundation Stage learning environment with the view to providing more engaging, independent learning areas. The children have loved exploring the new areas and have enjoyed having more space to use.
F1 Key Groups and Staff
The Super Stars are taught by Mrs Elms on Mondays, Tuesday and Wednesdays and Mrs Fitzpatrick on Thursdays and Fridays.
The Marvellous Moons are taught by Miss Monger.
The Perfect Poppies are taught by Mrs Jeffrey.
Our Class Artist
This year all the classes in the school are named after different artists. The Foundation children are named after paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and the F1 children are named after the paintings "Starry Night" and "Field with Poppies".
Themes
Our theme for learning during Spring 2 is 'It's a Bugs Life'.
Please check back regularly to see what we have been doing in school
Click to see photos from our Learning Journey
Summer 1 -
Our theme this term is 'It's a Bug's Life'. During the term we will spend time learning all about minibeasts, life cycles and growing. We are awaiting the delivery of our own caterpillars and are very excited to see what will happen, especially after enjoying the story 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. Please check back to see our learning journey in the Summer 1 slideshow.
Week 5 16.5.16
Caterpillar watch: Wow! The caterpillars are not so tiny anymore! They have been busy eating their food and have grown... A LOT! The children have been mesmorised by them this week, particularly as they are beginning to form their cocoons. This week we became story tellers, making changes to 'The Very Lazy Ladybird' story and making our own stories about 'The Very Lazy Snail' and 'The Very Lazy Bee'. The children worked together on these stories and really impressed us with their creative ideas and the amazing language that they used.
Week 4 9.5.16
We have had some very exciting visitors this week... our very own caterpillars; five of them to be exact. The children are very curious about them and are in their element observing them and making comments about their daily changes. This week we have read the story 'The Very Lazy Ladybird', this led to discussion about ways that we can help ourselves and our friends and that it is always important to 'have a go'. We used our bodies to explore the different ways that the animals move. In Maths we have been learning the names and exploring the properties of 2D shapes whilst making pictures with them.
Week 3 2.5.16
We have a focus on shape this half term in F1 - the children have explored lots of shapes and played lots of games using shapes; the shape fishing game was a big favourite. We have been listening carefully to and following instructions this week, with minibeast themed parachute games. The F1 children who will become F2's in September are learning to write their names using different materials and media.
Week 2 25.4.16
Our book this week was the information book, 'I Love Bugs'. We enjoyed learning about different kinds of minibeasts and even made our own information pages using our knowledge of caterpillars and butterflies. We have explored wriggly, green spaghetti worms on the tough spot and made our own bugs using invitation play dough.
Week 1 18.4.16
This week we have been learning about the life cycle of butterfly through our story 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. The children enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrains from the story, through the story we also looked at the days of the week and counting fruit.
Spring 2 -
Our theme this term has been traditional tales. We have spent time learning some of our favourite traditonal tales 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' and 'The Three Little Pigs'. We have created story maps and have used Talk for Writing to help us learn and retell the stories. We have even had a go at becoming story writers and have innovated the stories to make our own traditional tales. Some highlights from this topic have been receiving letters from the troll from 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' and finding out that he didn't want to eat the goats, infact he was just hungry and so we baked him some cookies. We enjoyed using different materials to build houses for the three little pigs and using large bricks to build bridges for the troll.
We have loved exploring our new look outdoor area this term! During our DIY SOS day in February half term the staff, along with some very helpful volunteers, revamped the FSU. Outside we now have themed sheds; the children have spent lots of time exploring the new resources and have particularly enjoyed our 'Get Building' shed; we have built lots of dens and have been 'camping'.
World Book Day
The children has a fantastic day visiting themed Roald Dahl rooms around the school.
Science Week
Continuing the Roald Dahl theme, the children became Willy Wonka chocolate makers and experimented to make their own flavoured chocolate; we explored chocolate using our five senes, melted it, added flavours and finally created our own chocolate coins
Sports Relief
The children took part in a sponsored obstacle course run by Mr Brown.; They very much enjoyed using the equipment in the big hall and we will continue this in our PE sessions after half term.
Easter
The children enjoyed lots of Easter themed activities, including an Easter craft morning and Easter Bonnet Parade.
Please see the photos from our Spring 2 learning journey here.
Spring 1 -
E-Safety Day 9.2.16
On this day the whole school focussed on internet safety. In F1 we investigated a range of pictures showing different events that the children might come across at school. The children talked about what they could see, whether they were happy or sad pictures and problem solved how we could help the sad pictures. The children recognised that they must tell an adult if they have a problem.
Chinese New Year w.b. 8.2.16
We will explore and experience Chinese New Year during the last week of Spring 1. During the week we will watch videos and look at pictures of celebrations of the Chinese New Year. We will read the story of the Chinese New Year and find out the animal of our years of birth. We will experience some Chinese New Year traditions; receiving gold coins in red envelopes and wearing special clothes. We will also taste some Chinese food and listen to special music. The children will also have the chance to talk about their own special times in their lives and compare them to this celebration.
Winter Wonderland
Our first topic of the year is the 'Winter Wonderland' theme which will run for the first five weeks. We are having a big focus on Maths this term in both F1 and F2: we will be learning lots of number songs; ordering numicon; looking for numerals in the environment; counting in lots of different ways; arranging shapes; talking about the properties of shapes and using shapes to make pictures. We will experiment with ice including: ice painting; making ice decorations with natural objects and polar ice themed water play. We will be reading a variety of winter themed books and exploring the weather outdoors. We have already been getting very creative this half term - have a look at some of the pictures in our Spring 1 - Learning Journey photo album.
Step Up to School
Over the past few Monday's Tracey Connor and Mrs Jeffrey have been running our transition group for the new F1 children who will join us in January. It has been lovely getting to meet the new children and their families and we are very much looking forward to them joining us in the new year.
Christmas
30.11.15 - 18.12.15 - Our favourite, glittery, time of year! The first of December delivered our advent calendar; we have been thinking about what number comes next and recognising the numerals and enjoying the chocolate, of course! We have a special Christmas visitor in the Foundation Stage during the run up to Christmas - Eli the Kindness Elf; Eli visits us each day with a new challenge for us to complete and he has even been kind enough to deliver us a couple of presents. We have been busy preparing for our nativity play; learning the songs and actions - you are in for a real treat! We have been learning about why we celebrate Christmas; learning the story of the first Christmas and the birth of Jesus. We have been getting very creative this half term; working as a team to decorate our Foundation Stage Christmas tree and making lots of Christmas themed things! We are having lots of fun and looking forward to the the final week of festivities before the Christmas break.
Celebrations
16.11.15 and 23.11.15 - During our 'Celebrations' theme we looked weddings, christenings and birthdays. The children brought in photographs of themselves as babies and spoke about their special times. In Maths we focussed on recognising our birthday numeral and counting candles in cakes.
Rememberance Day
11.11.15 - Today we have made our own Poppy badges, we have talked about why we wear Poppies and have held a 2 minuted silence in the FSU.
Diwali
9.11.15 - This week the children have had lots of opportunities to have a Diwali experience. We have created rangoli patterns, looked for shapes in pictures, dressed in traditional clothing, made diva's out of salt dough, watched the story of Rama and Sita and had a special visitor, Paddy.
Bonfire Night
2.11.15 - This week we have used collage materials to create our own bonfire pictures. We have enjoyed writing letters to the Teddy Bear Witch and posting them at our post office. We have become scientists, conducting firework experiments - fireworks in a jar and milk fireworks. We have tasted bonfire themed food and learned a new bonfire song.
Autumn
The children have had a lovely time exploring the changes that Autumn brings; we have spent lots of time outside observing our findings and making comments. We have talked about the colours, shapes and sizes of leaves and hunted for acorns and sycamore seeds. We learned the song 'Five Little Leaves', moving like leaves as we sang.
Harvest Assembly
Foundation Stage Harvest Assembly; we are so proud of how well the children retold the story of The Little Red Hen and sang our songs; Dingle, Dangle Scarecrow and The Paintbox Song (cauliflowers fluffy!!)
A special thank you to all that donated to the Foodbank, all donations were gratefully received.
Woodland Animals and Harvest
So far the children have enjoyed the story 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. The children have used story maps and actions to retell the story and the Super Star group have worked together to create their own story 'We're Going on a Penguin Hunt'.
Next week we will continue our work with story maps and will use them to help us retell the story, 'The Little Red Hen'. We have lots of exciting activities planned for the next two weeks, including: baking bread, tasting bread from around the world,role play and writing shopping lists. We will also be preparing for our Harvest Festival Assembly by learning some new songs.
This week the children have continued to practise the story of The Little Red Hen ready for our Harvest Assembly. We have included signs for the different animals in the story as well as the actions that The Little Red Hen did while growing, weeding, cutting and making and baking the bread. We also made some bread of our own; the children had great fun talking about how the dough felt while they were kneading and stretching it with their hands. On Wednesday we looked at a HUGE map of the world. Mrs Elms had placed some different breads on the map so we could look at the country where the bread came from. Then we tasted all the different breads. The children talked about which ones were their favourites and how they tasted. There were lots of crumbs!
Dinosaurs
The children were excited to find a dinosaur egg hidden in the Foundation Stage garden, they worked as a team to collect natural objects to make a nest for the dinosaur egg and waited in anticipation for it to hatch. We also made our own volcano and used it for our volcano eruption experiment; the children made fantastic predictions and were wowed by the results.
Star of the Week
This week's star of the week:
Super Stars Group
Esmai Warriner
Marvellous Moons Group
Elliott Johnson
Important Information
PE day for the Super Stars is Monday and for the Marvellous Moons and Perfect Poppies is Thursday. The F1 children do not need a PE kit as the lesson is all about exploring movement to music and listening carefully to instructions.
Please make sure your child has their book bag in school every day. The Super Stars choose a new library book every Monday, Marvellous Moons choose a library book on Thursday and the Perfect Poppies choose their library books on Wednesday. Please enjoy sharing this book with your child and make comments in the home/school diary.
We send home a "learning at home activity" every week; the aim of these activities is to help improve our children's communication and language skills and so the activities will be largely focussed on talking. This could be a picture to talk about, a story map that is linked to the story we have been learning in school or a fun activity to enjoy at home. We ask that you share the activity with your child and make comments about the things they say in their home/school diary.
We also love to hear about the special things that your child does when they are not at school and ask you to fill in a "WOW" moment slip so that we can share those special moments. Examples are: getting dressed by themselves, doing up fastenings on their clothes, riding their bikes without help. We are sure that there are lots more special things that your child does that we would love to hear about.
Important Dates
Spring 1 dates to follow asap
Websites to Visit
During our Spring term 'Winter Fantasy Land' theme we will be reading lots of storiesm here are stories to listen to and watch online.
Lots of different online games that cover many areas of learning
We will be doing lots of number work during the Spring term - Here there are lots of counting games, many of which are tablet friendly and the children love them too!
The Official 'Letter and Sounds' website. Keep up with what your child is learning in school and support at home with games online. F1 learn Phase 1. F2 learn Phase 2 in Autumn then Phase 3 in Spring and finally Phase 4 in the Summer Term.
Online Literacy and Maths games to play to support learning
A webpage with links to lots of story pages
A great website with lots of fun games to play to support your child's learning of phonics at home. F1 learn Phase 1. F2 learn Phase 2 in Autumn then Phase 3 in Spring and finally Phase 4 in the Summer Term.
Lots of ideas of simple experiments to do at home, mostly with items found in your cupboards. We will be experimenting with ice during the spring term.
Do you have any ideas for this page? Why not let your Teacher know!
Have you seen the Kids' Zone? Play games and visit some cool websites. You can vote for your favourites.
Nursery Rhymes
Enjoy sharing these Nursery Rhymes with your child and have a go at the actions for each song.