Dear Parents,

Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely break.

This week we have been looking at gratitude and reminiscing. We started off by reading ‘Thank you Santa’ about a little girl in Australia who sends a thank you letter to Father Christmas and then, throughout the year, they continue to send letters to each other. It was book that ended up being a focus of conversation about weather and climates in different parts of the world, exploring Arctic and Antarctic animals, letter writing and knitting! We then used bucket time to explore items that reminded us of Christmas and had a chance to reminisce about a specific memory, event or item (from Christmas) that we wanted to share with others.

In Phonics, we have started the term with revising all our sounds and using the time to practise our letter-writing (in the snow, on the playground) and writing thank you letters to Father Christmas and family members. Some children will be moving on to Red books next week, for you to practise reading skills and key words with your child at home. Here is a video to explain how you can support your child with reading the Red Ditty Books. Other children will be working on reading simple sentences and their segmenting, blending and word-writing.

In Maths, we have been exploring PATTERN! The children have been on pattern hunts around the classroom, creating their own patterns using playdough, natural materials, loose parts and multilink. We have focused  on copying, creating and continuing AB and ABC patterns. The children have been using peg boards, bead strings and shapes to create colourful repeating patterns too using the book My Mum and Dad Make Me Laugh by Nick Sharratt. We will continue with pattern next week and link it to shape and number.

We started off our week with a BANG by creating firework pictures with 2025 on them using primary colours. This then led to a focus on primary and secondary colours in art this week; creating our own colour-mixing rainbow. We used these skills to make thank you cards too! Next week we will continue with this skill and linking to our Maths by looking at the Artist, Mondrian.

In Cooking, we focused on the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch 2025 and made bird feeders whilst the rest of the class went to Forest Camp, we will continue this next week so that everyone gets a chance. We are sending home the bird watch sheet so that you can tally the birds you see, but you also have the option (by clicking on the link) to register for the bird watch between 24th and 26th January.

In PE this term our topic is gymnastics, then dance. This week we looked at our jumping skills;  investigating which is the highest jump we can do and which jump helps us to go the furthest. We acted out animals that jump and incorporated that in to our warm up.

Next week, we are looking at ‘Animals from colder climates’ after many children expressed an interest in this area during our book focus time.

Reminders:

Please notify us if you are still struggling to get on to Evidence Me.

Mrs Casserley will be joining us from now until Easter on a Thursday and Friday, whilst Mrs Geleta will be helping with teaching groups in Year 2 and 3. The children are now familiar with Mrs Casserley and enjoy seeing her for PE each week, Fridays we will continue our usual timetable of Phonics and Maths. An updated timetable will be sent home in the children’s bookbags.

Please ensure your child has a PE kit– this should include: Black/ Navy shorts/ leggings or jogging bottoms and a PE T-shirt or spare Kites t-shirt. We are doing Gymnastics this term and the children will need to be in suitable clothing for this. Please let us know if you are struggling to get hold of these items and we will try our best to help in any way.

Forest Camp – With the weather being very cold, our Forest Camp Leader has asked us to remind you, to make sure your child has enough layers in their Forest Camp kit to keep them warm when outside, as we go outside no matter the weather! Please can we also ask that you make sure you are naming hats, gloves and scarfs you send in with your child.

Challenge: Create a piece of artwork exploring colour & colour-mixing using any medium (collage, pastels, pens, crayons)- the more colourful the better!

January 20^th 7:30pm  PTA Annual Meeting- An opportunity to meet the members as well as chat with SLT/ Head teacher.

 A message from PTA Committee,

 “We would like to invite you to attend the Annual General Meeting of the SCPS Parent Teacher Association (PTA) on Monday 20th January 2025 at 7.30pm in the School Hall. 

 All parents are automatically members of the PTA.  The AGM is the opportunity for your Committee to summarise activity over the past year and to outline plans for the future.  We are always looking for support from members for the events we run during the year, but there is no obligation – we would welcome your attendance at the meeting, and your views are important to us, and to the school.

We have asked Mrs Salmons, her leadership team and some of the school governors to join the meeting.

 Given the change of headteacher in September 2024, we all feel it is important that parents have a chance to hear Rachel’s vision for the school, and her ideas for taking it forward into this new era.”

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

Miss Worlock and the Kites team.