Welcome to the Puffins Class!
Staff
Teacher: Georgia Jones
TAs: Carrie Ashworth, Carla Davies and Emma Hobin
Mid Day Leader: Charlene Harding
Newsletter
Hairy, Scary Beast
We have had a fantastic half term engaging in lots of exciting activities related to the topic ‘Hairy, Scary Beasts.’
In Early English we have explored two sensory stories ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and ‘Three Little Pigs’. We especially enjoyed touching ‘thick oozy mud’ and washing the pigs. We have continued developing our mark-making skills through move and marks sessions. Making marks with our fingers, hands, and tools in a variety of wet and dry substances, we particularly enjoyed sand and ice. Our focus has been on circular marks. We have continued to work on our turn-taking and sharing skills during unstructured time and communication games. We have shown great listening and waiting during these sessions.
In Early Maths, we have been developing our number ordering and some children have been practicing counting skills. We have used a play approach to 1:1 correspondence, such as dressing babies and bears. We have also been sorting items into big and small. We have been making repeated patterns. We have continued to engage in sort, build, and manipulate activities.
In food discovery, we enjoyed practicing our pouring skills. We have poured dry items into different containers. We poured juice into different beakers and used key words such as ‘full, pour, half, cup, jug, more.’ We had so much fun using a blender to make various smoothies! The children showed great listening to ‘stop’ and ‘go’ when an adult prompted them to press the blender button.
In Understanding of the World, we have been exploring things in the past. We have had lots of fun exploring being immersed into the ‘dinosaur world’ where we have been exploring dinosaurs in slime, sand, cornflour mud, and cereals. We have been very lucky to have a visit from the chicks! The Puffins showed very gentle touching when stroking the Chicks. For Chinese New Year, we made lanterns and explored Chinese food including noodles, rice, prawn crackers and spices. We explored Valentines Day activities and made cards using stamps. For pancake day we enjoyed flipping pancakes and tasting pancakes.
In Physical Development sessions, we engaged in circuits in the hall, trampolining, soft play, studio, Jacks playground and swimming. We had so much fun outside in the snow! We created a small snowman, looked at our footprints in the snow and made snowballs!
We hope you have a lovely February half-term, and we look forward to seeing everyone next half-term, where our topic will be ‘Food Glorious Food.’
From the Puffins Team.
Signalong
At Kingfisher we use Signalong as a part of a Total Communication Approach, we are constantly using core vocabulary with the children to support their language development and then through each of our topics we introduce new signs and language, which extends their vocabulary further. We also have two “Signs of the Week” which helps maintain and extend key knowledge and skills of everyday vocabulary.
Each half term we will be creating a short video showcasing and demonstrating signs relavent for the current term so that you can learn the signs and further this learning at home.
Click play to watch this half terms Signalong video!
Lunchtime
If your child has a school dinner, the school menus can be accessed by clicking here. For children who bring a packed lunch, please remember to provide healthy and balanced options. We are a Healthy School and will be focusing on healthy eating and how children can make healthy lifestyle choices.
How You Can Help at Home
- Copy what I do – sounds, facial expressions, body language. This will support your child’s communication
- Give your child lots of opportunities to make choices and requests at home. Please contact me via Seesaw if you would like any symbols to support this. Exchanging symbols is a great step forward in communicating your wants and needs. Make sure you always model the language for them
- This term, we are exploring two stories, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ Can you child say or sign what is coming next? Can your child sign the animal or food? Can your child say or sign what the character is walking through?
- You can listen to the story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHvjWUxJ4Ck
- Early Maths, enjoy building and sorting using bricks, water and foam
- Explore and play with different toys (noisy toys, bubbles, light up toys, balloons, and encourage the sign ‘more’ and ‘again’)
- Can you make movement fun? Maybe make an obstacle course inside or outside, crawl under and over!
- Explore different types of food in a fun way! Can your child help to cut food? Can your child mix wet and dry foods? The messier the better!
- Practice cutting skills, can your child cut playdough with a knife or scissors?
- Encourage you child with their self-help skills and hygiene routine. We like to listen to a song in the Puffins.
Practice washing your hands: Sesame Street: Washy Wash Song | How to Wash Your Hands – YouTube
Practice brushing teeth: Brush Your Teeth | Kids Song | Finny The Shark – YouTube
Please access any of the activities suggested here or on the Medium-Term plan. If you need any more support or ideas, please send a message via Seesaw. We love to know about the learning that goes on at home! Let us know how you get on via Seesaw. Enjoy and have fun learning!
Puffins will be swimming on a Thursday afternoon, please can you make sure that your child has got their swimming kit in on that day.
