Both classes have been enjoying lots of activities to do with journeys.  Here are a few pictures of some of the things we have been doing.

This week in Miss Bartlett’s class we will be starting work on maps of our journeys to school. These will not be in any way to scale (!) but we would like to include the childrens’ home addresses and any landmarks that they see on the way. To help support us in this you could talk to your child during the journey about what they can see and help them to learn to remember their address. If you have photos of your house that you don’t mind your child bringing in as a talking point, that would also be great.

Just a quick reminder about what is happening this week and when:

On Tuesday (6th) at 2.45pm the children will be singing some Christmas songs for you in the hall. There will be tea and biscuits for parents so it might be worth arriving a little earlier to give yourself time to get a drink and sit down!

On Thursday (8th) at 2.30pm we are having our maths workshop for parents. It will be in Mrs Pound’s classroom (the classroom directly opposite the Kites’ classes). We hope to see you there.

Our Christingle assembly last week was lovely and the children were very sensible with their candles. We will put some photos on the gallery page for you to look at.

On Friday the Kites stood together for a minute’s silence for Poppy day. We had talked a bit about what the day was for and why people wear poppies and the children had painted their own poppies to hold. Everyone did very well - silence does not come naturally to most 4 and 5 year olds! Here are some photos:

On Wednesday 2nd November we were visited by a fireman who came to talk about being safe with fireworks and also to tell the children a little bit about what firefighters do and the equipment they use. The children made quite a good audience and were fascinated by what they heard and saw.

Following our session to help parents to understand how we teach phonics in Foundation Stage, I have added two advice leaflets to the documents page of the website.  There is also a word document which contains useful websites. The Oxford Owl and the ngfl-cymru website both have areas where the sounds of letters are given to help you with phonics.

On Friday 14th October we had wonderful weather for the Kites’ trip to Bucklebury Farm. We had our snacks on arrival and then the groups split up to try out the many activities on offer: there was an outdoor play area, a zip wire, swings, a huge ‘bouncy thing’, indoor slides, a tractor trailer ride to see the deer and lots of animals to visit and feed. Many thanks to all the parents who came along to help out, we had a lovely day!

Here are some photos of the day:

On Thursday Zoolab came to visit all of the infant classes.  In Kites we heard all about how animals use their senses to live in the dark.  James the presenter, told us all about a journey he had made through caves and showed us  photographs of the animals he encountered.  Then we got to meet some of the animals in real life!  The children were very excited and very brave (some of the adults were more unnerved).  We then had to draw ‘night life man’ with all the features we would use to help us live in the dark:  feelers, hairy bodies, big eyes and long tongues!

See the gallery for photographs of the presentation, and the children meeting the creatures!

The Henley standard photographer visited last week and the Kites classes are both featured in this weeks paper in the ‘First Class’ feature showing all the new reception classes in the area.

We have been doing lots of activities to help us recognise our numbers and count accurately.

We have played lots of games – we like the spiders game the best.

We were all given a number and had to stand in order to show the numbers from one to ten.

Here are some photographs of our mathematical activities.