We loved eating our Christmas dinner today with the Year 6 children.

Thank you to all of the helpers who came in to serve our food and help us to use our knives and forks.

Don’t forget, you don’t need to bring book bags on Friday and please come to school dressed in pyjamas or a onesie!

Year R were very excited to walk to the library this morning!

It was a very long walk but we made good time and arrived by 10.00am.

At the library, the lovely Waterlooville librarians read us some stories and taught us about what you can borrow from the library.

We went on a scavenger hunt around the library. We found picture books, information books, DVDs, audio books and board books for babies.

We all borrowed a book from Waterlooville library.

Then we walked all the way back to school, just in time for lunch.

We were very well behaved and sensible along the busy roads.

Have a lovely weekend.

Please remember to return your book to Waterlooville library when you have finished enjoying it.

Perhaps you could borrow another one…

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!

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!

It has been a VERY full week this week!

Teachers and visitors around the school have all commented on how well settled, and confident in their environment, the new Year R children are after only being full-time for one week.

It has been a very busy week.

We discovered a bear print in our outdoor play area. Then we made bear traps and barricades in our play to keep out the teddy bears.

Mrs O’Carolan was especially scared of the bear so we made posters saying ‘Beware of the Bear’ and ‘Keep Out Bears’ to help keep our play area safe.

Yesterday it was teddy bear’s birthday and he was four. We talked about how old we are and showed if we knew some significant numbers like our age, door number, brother/ sister’s age etc.

We loved reading and drawing numbers. We practised showing what the numbers represent with equipment.

Today we had our open morning so we played outside this morning and showed some visitors the lovely things we can do in our play area. We also practised our spreading skills and made toast! (Eating it was our favourite bit.)

This afternoon we went on a bear hunt to the woods. We found the naught teddy bear hiding in a tree. He has promised to leave our play area alone now. We climbed some trees, with the support of Mrs White, and we also found some woodlice.

This week we have learnt the sounds: S, A, T, P, I.

If you would like to practice them at home, make sure you say the pure sound rather than putting an ‘er’ on the end like ‘ser’, ‘per’ ‘ter’. This is a great video, showing pronunciation of sounds:

http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/resources/sound-pronunciation-guide/

Here is a link to some games you could play:

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/BuriedTreasure2.html

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/DragonsDen.html

We hope you have a lovely weekend. See you on Monday!

Mrs Stray and Miss Moncreaff

Starfish and Seahorse Class have had a fantastic first week at school!

We have been very busy learning our new routines and rules, making friends and having lots of fun of course!

Today we had our first PE discovery time. We learnt how to get changed for PE in our classrooms and the children were all very patient and tried really hard to be independent.

We can’t wait to go to the woods on Monday! Please remember to have your waterproof coat with you in school (just in case)

Below are some photos of our first week at school:

Starfish Group A

Starfish Group B

Seahorse Group A

Seahorse Group B