What a fabulous morning we have had celebrating Chinese New Year!

We made Year of the Rat masks, created a group firework splatter, made a concertina fold dragon, learned a Chinese New Year dance & played instruments and learned how to dance like the lions in the parade.  We had SO much fun.

To round off the celebrations, Tiffany’s family kindly gave everybody a fortune cookie to take home with them.  We are excited to crack them open and find out our fortunes!

Happy Chinese Year to you and your families if you are celebrating this weekend.  We hope you have a wonderful time and share lots of pictures and stories with us.

We have had some fantastic submissions from parents about the learning that takes place at home!

We are able to approve any submissions easily now so please keep sending them in!

Any events you attend, routines of the day, counting, building with construction kits, paintings, cooking etc all count!  Try to add in what your child has said and perhaps take a photograph of the amazing things they have been doing.

We look forward to reading more!

Thank you so much for coming to our early years maths workshop.

Here is the presentation so you can refresh or catch up if you missed it (below video and game links).

Links to songs;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDQDyx59QY4&t=13s

Our favourite websites for maths games are;

www.ictgames.com

www.abcya.com

www.topmarks.co.uk

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/Early-Years.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/topics/numeracy

WORKSHOP PRESENTATION- CLICK THE LINK TO DOWNLOAD

EYFS Maths Workshop

Most of our children are now starting to learn how to read the green word cards (as shown in the phonics workshops).

We segment (split the word into sounds) and then blend it back together to read the word e.g. c-a-t, cat.

Our current words we are learning are;

dad, man, mad, sat, mat, sam (lower case for the purpose of segmenting and blending).

You can practice reading and writing these at home to help the words go into the orthographic store in your child’s brain!

Happy reading!

In the book bags you will find a plastic wallet with a bingo game board and 6 words to match.  Please keep this in the book bags daily so we can play in school too!

Ask your child to match the words by saying them out loud and then looking for the same word on the board.  Place it on top and repeat for all 6 words until the board is filled!  Please do not glue them as your child will not be able to play with it again and we cannot then give it to another child to take home with them.

Your child may be on the same word game for a number of weeks or they may advance onto other games- just keep going!

The word games are not in any numerical or hierarchical order as all children need to learn all the words.  One week you might have game number 4 and the next game number 15!  It just helps us keep track of who has had each game so we do not repeat them.

Happy playing! If you have any questions then please ask at the beginning or end of each day.

Many thanks for your support and much appreciated help!

Mrs Toms

This week we are learning all about the story of ‘Supertato’, the amazing potato who works hard to protect everyone from the EVIL PEAS!

Today we made our very own Supertato using some items that would have ended up in landfill or the ocean!  These items included stretchy rubber (makes a great mask!), plastic netting and plastic sheeting.  We used recycled paper to make the white dots for the eyes (thanks to our trusty hole punch!) and assembled it all together with a little help from the adults and their hot glue guns.

We will use the (super) potatoes in our speaking and listening, role play and writing activities!

Here are just a few of our amazing potatoes!

Mrs Toms x

Children in Willow 1 and Willow 2 will be taking part in their first PE lesson on Wednesday 8th January 2020 (and every following Wednesday).

Please send them to school wearing their purple ‘Elm Park’ PE tshirt, black jogging bottoms (plain, no logos) and black trainers/plimsolls (plain, no logos).  They will wear this PE kit all day. The children can wear their purple jumpers and cardigans as usual over the top of their PE shirt.

As usual, no earrings or jewellery is to be worn in school. Hair should be tied back ready for the lesson.

A full list of ‘plain black’ stockists can be found on our website.

Thank you

Reception Team

Hi all

I know some of you are disappointed that we are not holding a nativity show this year but please rest assured that your children will still take part in the Christmas Nativity in Years 1 & 2, giving you two more years of watching your child sing.

We have decided to celebrate some of the other times of the year, including Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Easter.  So, instead of looking like a very cute donkey or angel, your child will look like a very cute chick, lamb or perhaps a bunny rabbit!

Taking part in a concert in the Spring term means that your child will be older and more confident and settled to perhaps speak by themselves or with a friend.  They may be even be ready to take part in a smaller group dance on stage by themselves!  School readiness is very important to us so rushing children to complete everything in the first term (including standing on a scary big stage!) can wait a little longer.

We have decided to mark Christmas with a very special Grandparent’s stay and play session which we hope will be popular and well attended.

As always, photos and videos will be shared to capture the lovely moments.

We do ask that if you have any queries or comments about anything we do, please speak to us directly.  We are always available morning and afternoon or at the end of the telephone or emails.  My email address is ktoms@elmparkschool.co.uk and Mrs Cornhill can be reached at amunro@elmparkschool.co.uk.  Please keep our public Facebook page a place to share and celebrate all the wonderful and fabulous things that happen.

We wish you a very happy Christmas holiday and we can’t wait to see everybody again in the Spring term!

Hi all!

Today we carried out an experiment to see which material would be the best for a hat for Baby Bear to stop his fur getting wet when he comes down from space.  He was wearing a vegetable colander so not a great choice!

The children  stood under an umbrella while Mrs Toms poured water over/into the materials being tested.  If the water dripped through, the material was a terrible material for a hat.  If no water came through then it was a great material for a hat!

Hi all!

Just a quick update with some of our learning that has taken place over the last couple of weeks!

We have been learning all about ‘Whatever Next’- a story about Baby Bear travelling to the moon, meeting an owl and having a picnic! We have written a shopping list for picnic foods, cut and glued pictures of space essentials into backpacks, tested materials to see which one would make a good space helmet for baby bear, recorded speech for an eBook of the story and many more fun activities!

The children have loved pretending to go to space in our spaceship role play!

We are also focusing on each number from 1-5.  We are looking at the shape of the number and how to draw that many items/represent the number through mark making. It is important that children learn to stop at that number to understand the true value of the number.

Next week, we will be learning about the story of ‘Owl Babies’ and finding out about nocturnal animals as we approach the darker and colder months of the year!

Perhaps you could watch some owl videos together or carry out some simple research! The library is a good resource to use to check out some information books together!