Weekly update 5.01.09

Happy New Year!!



Happy New Year to everyone and we hope that you all had a happy, healthy and peaceful break.



Thank you!



First of all we would like to say thank you very much for the lovely gifts we received at Christmas. We appreciate your generosity.



Baby News!



We have some wonderful baby news - Mrs Narraway has had a little girl, Ellen Rose, over the holidays and from the photographs we have seen already, she is a beautiful daughter for her and her husband and a lovely sister. Both mum and baby are doing well and I'm sure they are back in the routine! We wish her and her family all the best and look forward to seeing them very soon.





Reminder.



Monday is an INSET day for the staff and so the children will return on TUESDAY morning at 8.45am.



Tuesday is the 6th of January- the Epiphany. We will be discussing the importance of this day and the visitors who came to see baby Jesus.





http://bibleforchildren.org/languages/english/stories.php

scroll down on this site and click on number 36, The Birth of Jesus. This is a lovely site and worth bookmarking for the future.





Friday is a day we are all looking forward to - the Panto!



As I am sure you can appreciate, getting the whole school onto buses at the same time requires almost military timing, so could we please ask that you ensure your child arrives on time every day, but particularly this Friday. We shall be bringing the children in at 8.40am, but could we ask that the children keep their coats on to make things run a little more smoothly. The children will not need a snack on Friday, as one is provided for them at the Parr Hall. Also, please bear in mind, that as they are out of school, they will not be able to buy toast.

Many thanks for your co-operation with this.

Literacy.



We begin this term with a very enjoyable topic- Traditional Tales.



By the end of the week:-



ALL children MUST be able to identify the main characters and events in a traditional tale

MOST children SHOULD be able to identify the main events in chronological order.


SOME children COULD retell a traditional tale in chronological order using story language.



http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/curriculum/literacy/lit_site/html/fiction/fairytale2/fairytale.htm this has lots of examples of Traditional Tales, with activities to support ideas reading and writing. It does takes a while to download, but the activities and ideas are well worth it.




http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories-red-riding-hood.htm

some great activities to print and make to do with Little Red Riding Hood. If you have the time to navigate through some of the other tales on this site, they are well worth a look. We will be revisiting this site over the course of this topic.


http://www.penguinreaders.com/pyr/resources/index.html

This may seem quite a daunting site when you first look at it. It isn’t a game that your child can play on, more of activities that can be carried out with you. Although it is based on a particular publisher’s books, it can be used with any version. The PDF files (that open in Acrobat Reader) have a brief overview of the story, it origins and some ideas of activities that you can do at home. The chants are a great way of helping children to remember the order of events in the stories, with having to read the whole story. This will be a great hook for them when they come to write their own versions in a couple of weeks time.



http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/curriculum/literacy/lit_site/html/fiction/fairytale2/fairytale.htm

A range of fairy stories to read and enjoy.



Numeracy.

We begin the new term by looking at odd and even numbers.
By the end of the week:-

ALL children MUST be able to begin to recognise odd or even numbers to about 20 as ‘every other number’.

MOST children SHOULD be able to recognise odd and even numbers to at least 30.

SOME children COULD be able to recognise odd and even numbers to at least 100.

http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/Ghostblasterseven/ghosteven.html

http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/halloween/math-games/

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=npmenu

http://www.ictgames.com/dragonmap.html

http://www.counton.org/games/mallardmaths/

Science.



This half term we are investigating the topic of Grouping and Changing Materials.



http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=materials2d

Sorting toys, natural or man-made, labelling materials and changing materials. All feature in this

great Crick site.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/digger/7_9entry/8.shtml

This BBC activity requires children to understand about properties of materials in terms of magnetic attraction for example.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/6_7/grouping_materials.shtml

Pick off the conveyor belt and sort them quickly in this BBC activity.



http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/science/material_matters/index.htm you will need to support your child with the reading of this text, but it is realloy interesting information.





Here I Am



We begin this term, with the theme of Journeys, starting with the journey made by the three wise men.




Recognise -different journeys made as a class.


Reflect - on journeys made with family/or friends.


Respect- appreciate that for themselves and for others, journeys have significance and value.



We hope you have a fantastic first week back!



The Year 2 team xx