Dear Parents,

We have been exploring feelings this week! We have been learning different strategies to help us regulate our emotions, such as the Butterfly Hug,  The Body Scan and Energy Ball.

We have been sorting emotions into positive; negative and mixed emotions groups; drawing where our calm space is at home and at school; creating different facial expressions using natural materials; loose parts and playdough. The children have loved creating puppets out of socks and acting out stories and sharing the buttons between the puppet socks; thank you to anyone who donated any odd socks! Each day, we have had a different focus text which we have read and discussed in the morning and completed related activities throughout the day; some of the stories we have read are The Rainbow Fish, Ravi’s Roar and The Colour Monster.  We have also been painting emotion stones and making our very own happiness stones, where we ”charged’ our memory stones with happy memories!

We have done some writing about how we are feeling, the children have created some lovely work looking at photos of themselves showing different emotions and writing how they felt and why.

In Maths, we have finished our focus of ‘exploding’ number to 10 and practiced some worded problems and writing number sentences, for example Miss Inchley had 5 oranges and Ms Worlock had 3, how many did they have altogether? Some children were then able to show this in a number sentence, 5+3=8.

They have been using their subitising and counting skills to play a board game, they rolled the dice, move that number of spaces and then see whether they land on a blank space or on +4 or -2 and had to move their piece the right amount forwards or backwards.

With Valentines coming up in two weeks and our focus on emotions this week, the children have made lovely (some jammy) heart biscuits to give to a friend in class.

In PE, we have focused on our climbing skills using the bars, benches and ropes, pretending to be different jungle animals and climbing and moving like them.

On the 10th February, it is Chinese New Year, so we are looking at this topic next week. As it is the year of the dragon, we will be creating a giant dragon; testing different Asian cuisines in cooking; making lanterns; discussing the different Chinese New Year animals and what they mean; looking at differences and similarities between cultures.

Challenge: Can you help your child find out what Chinese zodiac sign they are and/or create a picture of a dragon to share during Show and Tell?

Reminders

Daffodils: Along the boarder outside the Kites classroom windows, there are daffodils growing and we ask that you avoid standing on the boarder to wave to your child. Thank you.

Forest Camp: Please make sure your child has enough layers to keep them warm at Forest Camp. If you are not sure what is in your child’s Forest Camp bag, feel free to come into the classroom one day after school to check what they have.

PE: Please ensure your child has a PE kit, this can be black/ navy shorts/ leggings or jogging bottoms and a PE T-shirt or spare Kites t-shirt.

Odd Socks: If you have any old odd socks that you no longer need or use, we would love to have them to help us make puppets!

Junk modelling: We are looking at 3D shapes next week- if you have any recycling that we could use as an example of shapes around us please do bring them in. Also we hope to create a Chinese Dragon for a parade later in the week. If you have any big boxes we could use for this as well as red material, we would be most grateful.

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

The Kites Team