This week we shared the story 'Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth' by Oliver Jeffers. 

The children thoroughly enjoyed looking at the illustrations and discussion the book. We talked about where we lived in Norwich and it's relation to the rest of the world. We also discussed space, looking after the planet and being kind. 

We started teaching phonics this week. There will be more information about this in your child's book bags on Monday (Please remember to send book bags in every Monday as that is when we send home anything)

We have learnt the phonemes (sound) s, a, t, i and p this week. We have shared a story about each phoneme, learnt an action and a song. You can listen to the songs here - Jolly Phonics Songs and see the actions here - Jolly Phonics actions. We are also learning the blend the phonemes learnt so far e.g. s-a-t - sat. Ypu will be getting resources to practise with home. Here is a bit more information about blending.

We have also started 'I can Write' which is where the children independently write a sentence. The children think of a sentence they want to write and then they write it. At the moment the children are developing their pre-writing skills where they might just write the graphemes (letter shapes) they know, they might write letter like shapes or they might just squiggle. They will do whatever is developmentally right for them. 

We have also started teaching short maths lessons. This week we learnt about the number 2. We are using number blocks to reinforce this and we have introduced the children to the 2 numicon shape, looked at 2 on a dice and looked for other pairs of objects. We also spoke about 2p as a little introduction to money. We also investigated 1 + 1 = 2 and 2 - 1 = 1. 

We also participated in 'The Day of Calm' this week where the children learnt calming techniques by focusing on breathing, practising some mindfulness and learning some Tai Chi. 

We have also started 'Marvellous Me' in the classes so a child a week gets chosen to be 'marvellous me' for the week. Each child will get a turn over the year. They get to sit on a special seat, they get to wear a medal, all the children in the class say the reason they think the child is marvellous and this gets made into a star word shape which we send home and they are also chose to do 'special jobs' like being at the front of the line.