Welcome to the Kestrels Class!
Staff
Teacher: Christina Marriott
TAs: Gemma McKeegan, Cheryl Round and Alex Lambert
Mid Day Leader: Jordan Maguire
Newsletter
Food Glorious Food
It’s been a short half term, but we’ve still been busy in the Kestrels!
In English, we have been looking at the fictional story ‘What Food Would You Choose?’ where we have identified and named various coloured foods linked to those we see in the story. We chose our favourite foods from the story and made lists using symbols or using our writing skills. We have continued to develop our phonic knowledge using lots of practical activities where we have focussed on identifying letter sounds in words, blending 3 letter sounds to read simple CVC words, and reading and writing high-frequency words.
In Maths, we have been identifying the days of the week (using symbols and words) and putting these to link our story in English. We have explored different 2D shapes, focusing on using simple language to describe key features such as sides, corners, curves, and straight lines. Using different everyday objects, we have compared things of different lengths, focussing on developing our understanding of long and short. We have continued to practise our careful counting skills and introduce counting out loud in 2s.
In Understanding of the World, we have grown our cress seeds, planted them in cotton wool, and looked after them by adding water daily. We have observed how they have grown, looking at key features such as leaves, stems and roots in context. We have also looked at where we get our food–buying from shops and where and how they grow.
In Creative Development, we enjoyed exploring different fruits, taste testing them, and deciding which ones we liked and didn’t like. We then made our fruit skewers, tested our cutting skills, and threaded them on skewers so they were ready to eat for our snack. We have made Mother’s Day Cards and engaged in fun Easter crafts.
We’ve had a few special occasion days over the half term, which we have enjoyed, such as World Book Day, where the children looked great in their dress up outfits. We also had lots of fun raising money for Red Nose Day – making our red noses and creating our red nose pictures. We’ve even visited India during our languages day, where we looked at the different cultures there, experiencing some of the foods they eat and some of the music and dancing they engage in – we had lots of fun!
It’s been another fun-filled half term and we thank all our families for their continued support and look forward to more learning experiences after the Easter holidays!
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
Our theme for this half term is ‘The World in my Town.’ To support your child’s learning at home, here are some ideas linked to what we will be doing in school over the next 6 weeks. We will also be sharing your child’s learning with you through See-Saw regularly.
- We will be looking at the fiction text ‘The Smartest Giant in Town?’ where we will use the text to help support our understanding of simple vocabulary and simple sequencing skills.
You can share the story as book online together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f1QbJm1irY
There is also a lovely song that has been created linked to the story to share together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ4CHVIIv78
- Can you look at different types of clothing like the giant in the story used to help his friends – look at naming them and knowing how we wear them on our bodies.
- Continue to develop your child’s interests in books at home by sharing as many as you can together – get them to turn the pages, follow the words with their fingers and attempt to read some simple words if appropriate. Encourage them to find the title on the front cover, the author’s name and ask simple questions about the text as you read it. Can they name any of the characters or can they point them out when asked? Expand this to non-fiction books so that your child is able to see the difference between a fiction and non-fiction text. If your child is a confident reader, talk together about what they have read so that it is developing their understanding around the text they are reading – ask them questions about the story/ text they are reading.
- You can encourage letter and number formation at home by practising in different media such as shaving foam, flour, sand, sprinkles, cornflour etc. Encourage your child to write their full name (including surname) – this is something your child will be practising every day in school as well as some common high frequency words. For some of the children, writing simple sentences about a picture can be a good way of developing their early understanding of the words they are reading – can they write about what they saw on a walk? What their favourite thing to eat is? What they have enjoyed at school or at home?
- We always talk about what day of the week it is in school – encourage this also at home to help support the children identifying what day it is today, tomorrow and yesterday – what did they do yesterday? What are they going to do today? What will they be doing tomorrow? Talk about things you would do at certain points of the day such as brushing your teeth, eating your breakfast – do we do this at night or in the morning?
- Engage in some simple practical addition with your child using everyday objects – can the find one more/ one less/ take one away? Emphasise simple mathematical vocabulary in context – add, subtract, take away, equals, altogether, how many?
- We will be doing more planting in our Understanding of the World sessions – there is a lovely activity where you can plant a bean in a zip lock bag which you can then watch grow over the coming weeks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNe0WRfIQOk
- Play simple games with your child to develop their understanding around the rules around playing simple games as well as taking turns e.g. connect four, simple dice games.
- We will also be looking at our local area – what buildings do we see? What people do we see – what are their jobs? You can go for a walk near where you like and look at some of the things we see and talk together about these.
- Look at some simple maps together and look at identifying where the water and the land is through their colours.
- We will be looking at the story of creation in our I Wonder sessions – engage in simple play activities involving water, sand with sea creatures and animals. Explore using torches to create shadows on the wall to explore light and dark. Create shadow drawings using favoured toy figures on paper or outside with chalk.
If you have any questions with regards to supporting your child’s learning at home, then please do message via See-Saw.
We look forward to another fun filled half term with lots of learning opportunities to share with you all!
The Kestrels Team
