Well, we did it!

Year R have made it to the end of their first half term at school.

What a long half term too!

I’m sure your children have been very tired this week.

At school, they’ve still been trying really hard in their learning.

This week in letters and sounds we have been learning the sounds ‘h’, ‘b’ and ‘f”. We have been very impressed with the progress in letter formation, we can see a real improvement from the first few weeks. We also had some brilliant writing of CVC (3-letter) words too. This is a major leap of progress as it shows the children are applying their sounds and listening carefully to the order of where the sounds come in the beginning, middle and end of the words.

Thank you for practising this at home, it is clearly helping children to feel confident to ‘have a go’ at school. If you find your child says ‘I can’t do it’, please use our mantra of ‘don’t say no, have a go!’.

Please also remember to use your Bug Club subscription online and make the most of this fantastic reading opportunity.

After half term we will be launching our home learning pyramids in our home learning adventure books (shown at welcome meeting). Please keep an eye out for these in your book bags.

Thank you to all the parents who have sent in reply slips for our Staunton trip. Remember the deadline for this is Monday 2^nd November. Thank you to those parents who have offered to help. If you can, please ask in the school office for a St Peter’s DBS check to be carried out. If you’re planning on helping more frequently, this will help as you will be able to take a group for us.

Just a reminder of autumn term dates:

• Tuesday 3rd November 10.20am – Liturgy
• Saturday 7^th November (morning) – Ground Force Day
• Friday 13^th November 9.00am-3.00pm – Trip to Staunton
• Friday 20^th November 9.00am-11.30am – Walk to Waterlooville Library
• Thursday 26^th November 9.00am-11.30am – Seahorse Class trip to Pizza Express.
• Tuesday 1^st December 9.00am-11.30am – Walk to Sacred Heart Church
• Wednesday 9^th December 9.30-10.30am – Year R Nativity

Please let your class teacher know if you are able to volunteer as a parent helper on any of these dates. Thank you in advance!

This week in Seahorse and Starfish classes we have been concentrating on our story telling skills and our numbers. Have your children been telling you all about the Gruffalo and his child? We have loved learning all about the stories and role playing them both indoors and outside.

We have been learning the individual numerals to 8, so please practise these with your child. This could be through recognising them on doors, writing them on birthday cards, or anything fun which will help them remember what the numbers look like.

In phonics we have been looking at the letter sounds ck, e, u and r. It is really helpful for your child when you play games with their flashcards each day as this helps consolidate their knowledge.

Also, we have some good news to announce! Seahorse class won both the attendance award and the KS1 top readers award! This means we had the best attendance across Yr, Y1 and Y2 and also took out the most books from the library. Congratulations!

What a week we have had in Early Years this week!

We have been learning all about the Gruffalo and the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4.

We have also learnt the sounds ‘g’, ‘o’, ‘c’ and ‘k’.

Our role-plays have been transformed into the Gruffalo setting and we have been pretending to host Gruffalo tea parties, whilst retelling language from the Gruffalo story.

We have been to the woods twice this week. On Wednesday afternoon we spent an hour in the pouring rain making the number ‘2’. Today the weather was much better and we found some smashing conkers. We were busy picking different berries and learning about which ones were safe to eat. We have also been rolling logs across the grass and working together.

This weekend you can start using Bug Club online reading books. Your child has been assigned the correct books for their reading ability.

To log in:

1. www.activelearnprimary.co.uk
2. Log in using the information on the log-ins page of your yellow Learning Log book.
3. Click on Bug Club
4. Share a book!

If you find you are having problems logging in, please speak to your class teacher next week.

Have a lovely weekend!

We have been very busy bees down in Seahorse and Starfish Classes this week, with lots of learning and exploring going on!

On Tuesday, a photographer came from The News to take a photo of us as part of the ‘school starters’ edition of the paper and we all enjoyed striking a pose.

We have been up to lots of different bits and bobs such as tummy writing (pictured below), phonics (learning the sounds that go with the letters i, n, m and d) as well as letting our imaginations run wild in the outdoors! We have had lots of discussions about rules this week as we are getting more and more confident as the days go on. 

On Monday at 4pm we will be holding a ‘Welcome Meeting’ as a chance for you to ask any questions and find out more information about the home learning which your child will be having in their diary. We were busy writing invitations to this as part of our literacy and hope that you can attend.

Have a lovely weekend, and see you Monday!

Miss Moncreaff and Mrs Stray