Dear Parents,

We have had a lovely time this week enjoying a range of activities following our Harvest assembly last week. The children have been ‘harvesting’ vegetables from the garden, cleaning them, and playing shops at our Kites Market stall. They have been making craft vegetables to sell at market and handling real money to buy and sell their produce. On Wednesday, the children participated in a tractor run; we had farmers checking off the amount of vegetables the children needed to collect and they took it in turns to ride their ‘Tractor’ (Trike with attached wagon) to collect the vegetables at the end of the playground. They worked well to collaborate in collecting their vegetables and decide which ones were missing. It led to some weighing and measuring in the class as well as some new friendships flowering. Talking of which, Miss Latto bought us a giant sunflower and we have been taking the seeds out of sunflowers using tweezers and making sunflowers pictures using pointillism. From our Harvest discussions, the children have been particularly intrigued about where our food comes from. We have spent time looking at pictures and books, watching videos and discussing how our veg gets to our plate as well as cheese, apples, meat and other produce. Our longest discussion was about cake- the different ingredients and where they all come from!

In Phonics, we have been looking at /e/, /f/, /l/ and /h/. Here is a useful video produced by Miss Worlock to demonstrate how we form these letters in class and the rhymes that we use. On Tuesday when we learnt /f/,  we managed to get the fffrozen ffflowers out of the ice by working with our fffriends and we also looked at work on the fffarm and what is harvested and the machines that are used in harvesting.

Our focus texts have been Farm Poetry (exploring how it paints a picture in our head) and The Squirrels Who Squabbled– learning words like ‘spontaneous’, ‘friendship’, ‘cooperation’, ‘sharing’ and ‘harvest’ with related actions to recall these.

In Maths, we have been exploring our last few teen numbers- please do take the time to help your child log on to Ten Town. There are a range of activities to support them in their maths learning. If they are able to have some screen time, it’s a great resource to keep them focussed, fun for all the family (the songs are particularly catchy!) and revising their numbers to 20.

Next week, we will be continuing along from this topic to explore Autumn- focusing on changes around us and looking at printing skills in art.

Challenges: This weekend our challenge for you is to go for a walk and collect some Autumnal goods. Can you create a picture or mobile using these wonderful objects? Bring it in to show us! Any spare Autumnal items will be welcomed for our focus next week.

Reminders:

Harvest– As part of Harvest, we are thinking about those who are less fortunate and collecting for the Sonning Common food bank. If you have any donations that you can offer, please bring to school before Friday 18th October and put them in the box in reception. All donations are welcome, but at the moment they are particularly short of: tinned vegetables & fruit, desserts, biscuits etc, sauces for pasta/rice, spreads, juices/squash, long life milk, cereal, toiletries, sanitary items and cleaning products. Thank you!

Open Morning for September intake: 24th October @9:30 am Please let anyone know who may be thinking about schools for next year.

17th October & 7th November (morning) – walks around the village. The first walk will (hopefully) be to the Memorial Park (dependent on weather), to observe signs of Autumn and to look at our local environment. If you are available to help with these, please talk to the Kites staff on pick-up or email the office.

OPEN CLASSROOM AFTERNOON – 23^rd October at 3:15pm. Please do come in and have a look around the classroom. This will be a chance to look at the displays of children’s work, try out some of our resources and chat to your child. Please note, this is an informal chance to see classes, if you require a meeting with the teacher please arrange a separate appointment or there will be a chance to discuss progress in the upcoming Parent-Teacher consultations.

24th October– School Disco. £3 including a snack and a drink. This is always a fun event, but can be quite overwhelming for our little ones. If your child dislikes loud noises, crowds or can be quite anxious- please could you chaperone your child to the event or only bring them for a short time. We would like to make the event as positive as possible for all involved.

We hope you have a great weekend and looking forward to seeing you on Monday.

The Kites Team.