Dear parents,

We have had a very exciting week learning all about Arctic and Antarctic animals! The children have all been so engaged and interested in the activities, they have loved becoming different Polar animals and so they created masks for their role play, we explored which animals came from the Arctic (North Pole) and the Antarctic (South Pole) and sorted them into groups of those animals which live on land and those which live in the sea, we spoke about what the animals need to survive in the cold, we used an Encyclopedia to research this and the children discovered that lots of the animals have a thick fatty blubber to keep them warm.

We had some very exciting visitors in Kites Garden on Tuesday, a family of penguins! We discovered some footprints from a small door and followed them through Kites garden till we found the penguins, there was an adult and 3 baby penguins in an igloo! We had lots of amazing ideas of why they were here, what did they want, how could we help and where had they come from. The children wrote and told stories about the penguins and other polar animals as well as made fact files about them.

We have been learning about Christingle and learned some songs for our Christingle assembly on Wednesday. We all created our own Christingles and discussed the symbolism of the Christingle (the orange representing the Earth, the 4 sticks with raisins and sweets on represents the 4 seasons and the candle represents Jesus as “the light of the world”.)  The children really enjoyed singing the songs and doing the actions in assembly.

In cooking, we made some Christmas salt dough decorations and in PE we started practising our Christmas singing show.

In Phonics, some groups have started to review their set 1 sounds, now we have covered them all and others are focusing on more special friends /ff/ /ll/ /ck/ and /ss/. Last week, we sent home some RWI sound mats for you to help your child practise their sounds, you can also use it to have a go at writing some CVC words.

Here are some Oral blending game to play at home:

Fred’s Adventures: The Weather

Fred’s Adventures: The Garden

Word Time 1.1 (Fred Talk and Read the word – CVC words)

Word Time 1.1 Spelling CVC words 

In Maths, we have been exploring sharing and grouping, we have been sharing an amount of food between teddy bears at a tea party, focusing on sharing one by one and understanding what to do with the remaining amount.

Next week, following Road Safety Week- we will have a WHOLE week centred round Keeping Safe; at home, online, at school, in our community as well as on the road.

CHALLENGE: If you would like a challenge to do with your child- perhaps you could talk about how to be safe in YOUR house. What hazards can you spot as you walk around? Where should your child go/ not go? Do you have house rules? Screen time rules? Internet rules?

You could:

• Create a poster to share with the class
• Make a warning sign for somewhere in your house (e.g. KEEP OUT) – tell us what and where
• Spot things that are dangerous and tell us about them

Reminders:

We have:

Parent Consultations: 28th November and 30th November

INSET day: 1st December (no children in school)

Christmas Jumper Day: 8th December

Kites Christmas Singing: 14th December at 2:30pm- please keep a look out for letters in bookbags about characters and costumes!

Learning Book: If you still do not have access to Learning Book, please email us or let us know so we can sort it. If you have activated your Learning Book account, then have an explore as you can also upload photos and text of what you have been doing at home with your child, for us to see at school, share with your child and celebrate what they have been doing.

We hope you have a restful weekend and thank you for all the support you give to us and your children,

The Kites Team