Seaside Base Summer Term 2014 Dear Parents, We hope you all had a lovely break. We have had a brilliant start to the term in Seaside Base. The children came back excited and full of energy to learn. We have already been busy writing about our holidays and it sounds like everyone had a busy couple of weeks! I’m hoping the next term brings us some better weather! This half term our topic is ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’. The children have asked lots of questions that they would like to find out about. We will be learning about how plants grow and exploring the different parts of flowers. We will be looking at lots of different fruits and vegetables and thinking about how we can eat healthily. We will also be looking at the ingredients of foods we eat regularly. This topic aims to reinforce the process of growing, cooking and eating our own food. During our daily Literacy lessons we will be reading and writing information texts. The children will look at use of labelling diagrams and how to layout information texts. We will continue to work on learning our letters and sounds each day. The children are now learning alternative spelling patterns to phoneme sounds. Please continue to read regularly with your child and help them learn to read and spell the words they bring home. We are also focussing on improving our handwriting, any opportunity to develop good pencil control would be most helpful such as dot to dots, tracing and colouring as well as writing. In Numeracy we are starting to look at larger numbers being able to recognise the tens and units in each number. The children are getting very good at recalling number doubles and pairs of numbers that total 10. We revisit quick mental skills daily in our mental oral warm up activity. Any time spent with your child doing games that require recalling known number facts in very useful in reinforcing these skills. We have started learning about counting in jumps of 2, 5 and 10. Your child could do this at home with you using 2p, 5p and 10p coins to count up or grouping sets of objects such as buttons into these numbers. Also, we will continue to work on
naming and describing shapes. Spotting 2D shapes whilst you are out is a great way to reinforce the shape work the children will be doing. As the weather improves we will be making more use of the field during morning active-time and weekly games lessons. We now have PE lessons on Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon. The children will be working on their bat and ball skills, as well as starting our Athletics unit which will help to prepare them for Sports day. As it starts to get warmer your child needs to make sure that they have the correct school P.E. kit and sun hats would be appreciated as well. Please help them by ensuring they are named. After half term, we have one of my favourite weeks of the year… arts week! I look forward to finding out about this years theme! We will end the school year with an exciting pirate topic! I can’t wait to see what questions they will ask! Your child is becoming more grown up and independent; they are showing that they are nearly ready for Year 2! To support them in preparing for next year we will be introducing home learning! Their book will have some ideas for activities to do at home to follow up what we’ve been doing in class. Your child will need to choose one task to complete. Remember to look at our class blog on the school website to show the variety of learning taking place in class. I’m pleased to see Reading Eggs is very popular! The children have been working hard learning their tricky words, and it is now more important than ever to make sure you spend 5 to 10 mins every day continuing to help your child to learn these words. The quicker they learn them and apply them in their writing, the more confident they will be with both their reading and spelling. Can I please ask you to check your child’s pockets before school to ensure they are not bringing in little ‘nik-naks’ and toys which can be very distracting! It would also be great to see the children looking as smart as they can as they prepare for year two. Nail varnish should not be worn and hair should always be tied back. Correct shoes, and trainers, are also important. It is great to see how independent everyone has become in the morning! The children all settle down to their morning activity quickly and we have a lovely calm start to our day! Please remember there is always a member of staff available to talk to at the start and end of the day if you need to pass a message or have any queries.
Best wishes Sarah Burge Simone Yates
Doreen Gibson
Becky Millband
Debbie Walton-Smith