Dear Parents,

Happy Friday! I hope you have had a lovely week. In Kites this week the children have been learning about different people who help us! We have been talking about the different jobs their parents do, as well as different jobs people do in school. During the week we drew pictures of a person who helps us and wrote their occupation. We were incredibly excited to see on Friday that our work had been turned into a book! We now have 29 published drawings of people who help us, it was a great read.

In phonics this week, we have been continuing to go over the set 1 sounds. Next week the children will start their learning in new phonics groups. One of the things we have noticed that the children need to focus more on is being able to blend. They are superstars at identifying the different sounds they see, but being able to blend the sounds c-a-t into the word cat is difficult. We will be practicing a lot of blending over the coming weeks, but here is a blog post I have come across which might give you some ideas of how you could practice this with your children at home.

In maths this week we have been exploding numbers! We have been looking at ways we can represent different teen numbers. We have had so much fun creating big explosions. We have had a real focus on writing teen numbers the right way round e.g. 12 not 21. We would love to encourage you to spot the numbers on your way to school seeing if you can find any teen numbers as you go. If you are able to take any photos, we would love to see them for show and tell next week.

Next week the children will see a doctor in school on Monday morning who will weigh and measure them. This is part of the National Child Measurement Programme. If you have any questions about this please feel free to ask.

We have some exciting visits planned next week to meet some people who help us around the village. We are thrilled to be joined by another doctor on Monday afternoon and a vet on Friday! We are so excited to be welcoming some fantastic professionals into our classroom.

Speak Up! 

You may have seen in our recent school news that we have launched a programme called ‘Speak Up’ which is designed to develop the children’s oracy skills as they progress through the school. On Monday the children will meet Drizzle the Dragon, who will be helping us develop our oracy skills. We are very excited to start this programme, and we look forward to seeing how the children progress and develop over the coming weeks.

Trips 

On the 16th of March we will be going to the Earth Trust, and on the 22nd May we will be going to Bucklebury farm. I know this might seem like a long time in the future, but we will be looking for support on these trips closer to the time. If you think you might be interested in helping on one of these trips, please speak to us, or Mrs Honor in the office, so that we are able to get the necessary paperwork in place in order to enable you to support us on these trips.

TOP TIPS *Headlice*

There have recently been some cases of headlice across the school, and we wanted to make sure you were kept informed. Whilst lice are nothing more than a nuisance, it is important that children are checked on a weekly basis so that any head lice can be dealt with quickly before they are allowed to spread. Here is some simple advice you may wish to follow to keep headlice outbreaks to a minimum.
1. Check your child’s hair once a week

2. Use a lice comb with teeth close together to trap the lice. The comb is usually white in colour so the lice can easily be identified.

Monday 19th January – Weighing and Measuring

Thursday 12th February – School Disco

Friday 13th February – End of term

Have a lovely weekend,

The Kites Team