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 ‘Food Glorious Food.’ To support your child’s learning at home, here are some ideas linked to what we will be doing in school over the next five weeks. We will also regularly share your child’s learning with you through Seesaw.
- We will be looking at the fiction text ‘Which Food Will You Choose?’ where we will use the text to help support our understanding of different types of food and healthy eating as we will use this to support our writing development by writing lists and labels for the food we like to eat.
You can share the story as a book online together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8LvxFNHPbE
Another version highlights the different text in the book and demonstrates following the words as we read if you want to share this with your child:
- Can you look at different books about food – where it comes from, how to eat healthily, and even share a cookbook together when making a recipe at home?
- 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 and 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 can see the difference between a fiction and non-fiction text. If your child is a confident reader, talk together about what they have read to develop their understanding of 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 practice every day in school, along with some common high-frequency words. For some 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 can see outside? e.g. I can see….. what have they done in their day? I have…….. They could even write a list for you for when you go shopping! Can they find some of their favourite foods at home and write what’s on their wrappers?
- We always talk about what day of the week it is in school – encourage this at home to help support the children in 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 specific points of the day, such as brushing your teeth or eating breakfast – do we do this at night or in the morning?
- Can you write a shopping list together and go and get these items from the shop – you could use pictures and write the words for things such as bananas, apples, bread – anything your family needs from the shop.
- Play simple games with your child to develop their understanding of the rules of playing simple games and taking turns, e.g. Connect Four/simple dice games.
- Encourage your child to help make some meals at home so that they develop an understanding of where their food comes from and how it is made – how does it differ from what other people may eat?
- Can you plant cress seeds together in cotton wool and watch it grow over a few weeks? Get your child to take daily pictures to show how it grows and changes.
- Use fruit and vegetables to create prints with paint. Encourage your child to choose their own colours and explore the prints they leave on the paper.
- Make playdough together and practise making their own sculptures and shapes using their hands and different tools and equipment.
- Make a fruit kebab together where your child can practise their cutting skills and cut the fruit up, then add them to a skewer to eat.
If you have any questions regarding supporting your child’s learning at home, please message via Seesaw.
We look forward to another fun filled half term with many learning opportunities to share!
