27.03.23 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone, 

We've come to the end of another busy week! It was lovely to celebrate World Down Syndrome day on Tuesday and the children looked fabulous in their odd socks. We talked about the sunflowers we have been growing, reinforcing to the children that we all grow at our own rate. We would love to see how the sunflowers continue to grow and wonder how big some of them will eventually get.

Now on to our learning for next week, we will be:

• Enjoying our whole school trip to Barleylands on Monday!
• Sharing non-fiction books about other Polar animals.
• Checking to see if we have answered all the questions we had about our project.
• Finishing our Easter cards and listening to the Easter story from the Bible.
• Thinking about numbers in our Mathematics sessions, finding out just how big a million is!
• Solving number problems to help the Easter Bunny find the eggs.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you bright and early on Monday ready for our trip to Barleylands - remember the gates open at 8.30am!

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

20.03.23 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone!

Today we marked Comic Relief's Red Nose Day with a non-uniform day. We are very grateful for the support shown and will publish how much has been raised in next week's newsletter.

The children have also enjoyed visiting the PTA's Mother's Day sale and have also made special cards for Sunday - these should be hidden away in their book bags.

There are still a number of dates coming up before the end of term, so we have listed them here:

Tuesday 21st March - World Down Syndrome Day.

Friday 24th March - Deadline for the Coronation Tea Towel order and Easter Eggs and Easter raffle tickets.

Monday 27th March - Whole school trip to Barleylands.

Friday 31st March - Easter Egg hunt. 

Now on to our learning for the coming week, we will be:

• Sharing the story "Stuck", this is a very silly story about a little boy called Floyd and how his kite got stuck in a tree.
• Wearing odd socks on Tuesday as part of our work around World Down Syndrome day, we will also be looking at our sunflowers and thinking about how they have grown.
• Learning about 3D shapes in our Mathematics sessions.
• Listening to and discussing the story "It Wasn't Me" in our Circle Time session and thinking about how we would behave in that situation.
• Updating the name displays in our classrooms and thinking about how much they have improved. 
• Starting to make Easter cards for our families.

Drop in this week will be on THURSDAY.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

13.03.23 - This coming week in Early Years

 Hello everyone,

The children all rocked their rockstar looks yesterday and we had a fantastic day. We spent time listening to and learning some of the Numberblocks times tables songs. Miss Langley even helped stage our very own Rock Star battles, with the children answering questions from the one times table. 

There are some important messages this week. 

Red Nose Day

We are having a non-uniform day on Friday to raise money for Comic Relief. The children may bring in a red nose to wear if they want, but it is completely up to you. We have not been able to sell the red noses this year as they are not allowed to be sold to children under 7 years old. The children will still be having their PE session, so please can you ensure that what they are wearing will be suitable for PE.

PTA News

There are a number of events coming up as we edge towards the end of this term, so we thought it best to collate them here. (This information is also available in the newsletter which can be found here.).

Friday 17th March - Mother's Day sale

Friday 24th March - Deadline for the Coronation Tea Towel order and Easter Eggs and Easter raffle tickets.

Friday 31st March - Easter Egg hunt. 

Now on to our learning for next week, we will be:

• Sharing the story "The Way Back Home", a fourth story about the Boy.
• Thinking about how this week's book links to the story from last week.
• Learning about 5 more words in our Vocabulary Ninja sessions.
• Using non-fiction books to learn more about penguins.
• Using our new found knowledge to help us write some of our own penguin facts.
• Sharing the book "How Long is a Whale?" and using it to help us compare different sea animals by their length in our Mathematics sessions. We will also compare penguins by their height to find out which penguin is the tallest and which is the shortest.

Drop in this week will be on MONDAY.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

06.03.23 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone, 

We reached Day 100 on Monday, which was very exciting as it meant a double bundle!! We think you will all agree that the children have certainly been busy during those 100 days and learnt so much. It was lovely to share this with you all during our Parent/Teacher meetings this week too and we hope you enjoyed looking through their books.

The children all looked fantastic on Thursday in their various costumes and we had a lovely time sharing stories both in Early Years and then in our coloured Houses during the afternoon.

This coming week is set to be another busy one, with our Times Tables Rock Stars day on Thursday. We are looking forward to seeing all of their rock star outfits and wondering if Miss Langley can top her World Book Day outfit!

(If your child doesn't want to be a rock star, that is fine, they can simply come in non-uniform).

This coming week we will be:

• Sharing and discussing the story "How To Catch A Star". This was Oliver Jeffers' first book and also the first story about the Boy.
• Starting Phase 4 in our Phonics sessions, looking at CCVC words and learning a new Rainbow Word. 
• Continuing the phase "Building 9 & 10" in our Mathematics sessions, counting backwards from 10 and finding different ways to make 10 using our 10 frames.
• Starting to look at non-fiction books to learn about penguins.
• Learning the Numberblocks song all about the one times table on Thursday as part of our Times Table Rocks Star day.
• Painting our own moose, thinking about the way Oliver Jeffers drew them in his book "This Moose Belongs To Me".

Drop in this week will be on TUESDAY.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

27.02.23 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone, 

Many thanks for all of the children's sheets about our new project, we made a great start on it this week and are looking forward to continuing to learn more about the Boy and the Penguin next week. 

Please don't forget that this week we have our Parent/Teacher consultations, so therefore there is no drop in again, these will resume next week.

This coming week we will be:

• Sharing and discussing the story "Up and Down", which is another story about the Boy and the Penguin.
• Discussing what it means to be a good friend in our Circle Time session and linking this to what we know about the Boy and the Penguin.
• Learning the last of our Phase 3 sounds in our Phonics sessions and playing Phoneme Bingo again.
• Looking at globes and maps of the world to find the South Pole and comparing it to Rayleigh, as we ran out of time for this last week.
• Starting the phase "Building 9 & 10" in our Mathematics sessions.
• Learning 5 new Vocabulary Ninja words.

Don't forget Thursday is World Book Day. The information about how we are marking this in school can be found here. We are looking forward to finding out about the children's favourite stories. 

Finally, a message from Mrs Hurley:

This year, at Down Hall Primary School, we have had a big focus on Times Tables through our Times Table Programme as well as Times Table Rock Stars. These have both helped the children to become more fluent in their times tables.

On Thursday 9th March, we would like all staff and pupils to take the opportunity to dress up as rock stars for the day. During this day they will take part in a range of maths activities. Prizes for the best dressed rock star will be handed out. There is no cost for dressing up. More details will follow...

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

20.02.23 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone, 

We hope you have all had a lovely half term break. This week we will starting our new project "Lost and Found" and will be:

• Watching and listening to the story "Lost and Found".
• Learning about the author Oliver Jeffers who wrote and illustrated the story "Lost and Found".
• Sequencing events from the story, using pictures from the film and then creating our own song to tell the story of the Boy and the Penguin.
• Learning the next 4 sounds in our Phonics sessions and recapping the Rainbow Words from Phase 2 and 3.
• Making our own repeating pattern umbrellas like the one belonging to the penguin.
• Creating boats, using the junk modelling materials, to sail in the water tray.

Don't forget the appointments for our Parent/Teacher consultations go live tomorrow. These are taking place on Monday 27th February (Pearl & Quartz), Tuesday 28th February (Pearl only) and Wednesday 1st March (Quartz only). Appointments booked via Scopay, details can be found here. If you have any problems please just ask one of us and we will do our best to help solve it.

See you tomorrow!

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

Wishing you a lovely half term!

Hello everybody, 

Today the children have brought home a letter about our next project "Lost and Found". We really enjoyed finding out the answers to the children's questions about dinosaurs, so it would be lovely to have their ideas once again. If you can't find your child's sheet, they can also be found here. 

We have also made some salt dough fossils this week, again there was a clip to show us what to do, it can be found here. 

We have also enjoyed the coin run today, making really long lines on the playground with all our coins. It was lots of fun!

We hope you all have a lovely half term week, we will see you all on Monday 20th February!

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

06.02.23 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone!

This week we have LOVED seeing the children's matchboxes and seeing how many items they had managed to fit in their boxes. Things did became a little competitive amongst the adults in Early Years with Mrs Holmes managing to fit a staggering 47 objects in her matchbox! If your child would still like to carry out this activity, we would love to see their matchboxes next week.

Also, this week, we have added the Numberblocks 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 to our display in class. We have enjoyed learning about each of these numbers and have talked about how, in each of the episodes we watched, 1 more was added to create the next number. We are planning on creating a dedicated area all about the Numberblocks and have ordered some new resources to support the children's learning.

We also created our own volcano this week, which was exciting, although poor Mrs O'Connor did end up rather covered in vinegar. If you would like to try this at home then the experiment can be found here. 

Now on to our learning for the coming week, we will be:

• Sharing the book "Dinosaur More!". This is a non-fiction version of last week's book "Dinosaur Roar!".
• Learning what non-fiction means and using our book to find out information about the different dinosaurs.
• Labelling the different parts of a dinosaur, using our segmenting skills to help us spell the words.
• Looking at fossils and learning about the job of a Palaeontologist.
• Checking to see if we have answered all of our questions about our Dinosaur project.
• Continuing with our Maths work from last week, working on addition and finding the total using our 10 frames. 
• Enjoying the PTA coin run on Friday. (More information below).

On Friday it is "Wear it like Elmer" day.  The children can wear a coloured item (taking one of Elmer's colours) along with their normal PE kit for a suggested donation of £1. (More information is in the newsletter, which can be found here). They are also asked to bring in some coins to take part in the coin run. Each class will be laying their coins in a long line and the class with the longest line will win a prize! All monies raised will be split between the PTA and raising funds for our elephant.

We hope you have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

30.01.23 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello!

We have enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year this week, learning that the children were either born in the year of the Rooster or the Dog. The children tasted some Chinese food and have also watched Lion and Dragon dancing clips. 

In our Mathematic sessions this week we have been looking at capacity. Miss Cooper managed to fit 12 things into a matchbox and we have challenged the children to see if they can beat this score at home. It would be great to know how you get on and to see the children's boxes. The clip we watched can be found here, if you want to get some ideas! Please don't worry if you don't have a matchbox, any very small box will do.

We will be returning to our project of "Dinosaurs" this coming week, where we will be:

          

• Sharing the story "Dinosaur Roar!", this is another rhyming book so we will be trying to find all of the rhyming words. 
• Writing a caption to go along with one of the pictures from "Dinosaur Roar!", using describing words to match the picture. 
• Moving on to the phase "Growing 6, 7, 8" in our Mathematics sessions, thinking about and comparing the numbers 6-8.
• Learning the first 4 vowel digraphs in our Phonics sessions.
• Watching Numberblocks this week, watching the episodes for the characters 6 to 10.
• Watching an "Andy and his Dinosaur Adventures" episode all about pumice stone and then trying to create our own volcano.

Drop in this week will be on MONDAY.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

23.01.23 - This year in Early Years

Hello everyone!

This week we have finished learning the letters of the alphabet in our Phonics sessions and will be moving on to the consonant digraphs next week. We have sent home 2 sets of sounds this week to reflect this. It would be really helpful if you could play games with these cards, for example creating some of the words listed and asking your child to blend the sounds to read the word or saying a word and asking your child to segment it and word build using the sound cards. These are skills that we work on everyday in our sessions as they are the building blocks to successful Reading and Writing.

This Sunday sees the start of Chinese New Year, so this will be the main focus for our learning, we will be:

• Learning about Chinese New Year. This year it is the year of the Rabbit.
• Sharing the story "The Great Race" to find out all about the Chinese Zodiac and how each year is named after an animal.
• Finding out about how Chinese New Year is celebrated and also watching some Dragon dancing.
• Learning 5 new Vocabulary Ninja words.
• Comparing objects by their mass or capacity in our Mathematics sessions.

This week's drop in will be on TUESDAY.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

16.01.23 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello Everybody!

Thank you so much to all of you who worked with your child to discuss their ideas for our latest project, We have been enjoying reading their different ideas and finding out what they want to know about dinosaurs. It has also been lovely to share pictures and books about dinosaurs from home too - we are always happy to look at anything project related in school.

In the children's homework folders this week there is a letter regarding the height, weight and vision checks. These will take place on Monday 30th January and Tuesday 31st January. There is no need to do anything if you are happy for your child to be checked.

Now onto our learning for the coming week, we will be:

• Sharing the book Bumpus Jumpus Dinosaurumpus! 
• Listening out for and writing a list of all the rhyming words in this week's text.
• Learning 4 new sounds in our Phonics sessions, we will also learn how to play Phoneme Bingo!
• Continuing with our work in the phase "Alive in 5!" in our Mathematics sessions. This week we will be finding different ways to make 5 by grouping.
• Making some 3D boxes to create some dinosaur habitats.

It has been lovely to start the term with some WOWs, please don't forget to ask if you need a new sheet.

Drop ins will start again this week and will be on THURSDAY.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

09.01.23 - This week coming week in Early Years

Happy New Year everybody! It has been lovely to welcome back the children over the last 2 days and catch up with all of their news. 

Thank you to all of the children who returned their ideas for our project this week. Please don't worry if you've not had the chance to do this with your child, we are more than happy for them to come in next week. If you have mislaid your sheet please ask and we can pop another one in your child's bag.

On to our learning for next week, we will be:

• Sharing Harry and the Dinosaurs stories. We will be reading several of these, including "Harry and the Dinosaurs go to School" and "Harry and the Robots".
• Discussing the story "Harry and the Robots" and thinking about the ways we take care of each other.
• Starting Phase 3 in our Phonics sessions. Over the next 2 weeks we will complete the letters of the alphabet. 
• Labelling different parts of one of Harry's robots, using our sounds to help spell the words we need to write.
• Comparing different quantities in our Mathematics sessions, saying which has more and which has fewer. We will also be finding 1 more or 1 less than a given number as our mission for this week. 

Have a great weekend!

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

Happy Christmas Everyone!

Hello everyone, 

We hope you all enjoyed our Nativity performance this morning, we are SO proud of the children and how hard they have worked to put it all together. We have turned their photographs into little decorations for your Christmas trees and hope that you have found these in their brown bags. If you'd like your child's photograph sent to you then please just email us using earlyyears@downhallprimary.com.

We also wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of you for your support this term and for the lovely Christmas cards and gifts we have received. You have been very kind and we are very appreciative.  

After Christmas we will start our new project "Dinosaurs". There is a project letter which will give you a little more information and there is also a sheet for the children to complete, to give us their ideas for this project. These can be found in the children's book bags. We would be very grateful if you would complete this with your child as we use the children's ideas to inform our future planning. The letters have also been added to the Early Years part of the website, under the "Our Projects" tab.

Finally, we would like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a Happy Healthy New Year! We look forward to seeing you all on Thursday 5th January 2023, ready to start our next learning adventures!
With love
The Early Years Team

19.12.22 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone, 

The children have had a very busy and exciting day today, with visits to see Father Christmas and Christmas shopping for our families. We were so lucky that Father Christmas spent the whole day at school and even came to our assembly this morning!

We have spent this week getting everything ready for our Nativity next week. We are sorry that this has meant we haven't had a chance to change any of the children's books, but we will rectify this next week. 

On to our learning for the coming week, we will be:

• Performing our Nativity to the rest of the school on Monday.
• Performing our Nativity to our families on Tuesday.
• Finishing off our Christmas mathematics activities from this week, counting objects and creating repeating patterns.
• Taking our Christmas cards and calendars home to share with our families.

For the performance on Tuesday all gates will be opened at 9.15am. Please make your way round to the front of the school (by the office) where you will be able to enter the hall via the double doors in the car park. The PTA will be offering teas and coffees and there will be a collection for the school charity at the end of the performance. PLEASE NOTE we have already taken photographs of the children in their costumes and you will not be able to take photos or film our Nativity, as already stated in the letter, as this would not comply with our safeguarding procedures.

The Echo should be publishing a photo of our Nativity as part of their supplement on Tuesday 20th.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

With love
Miss Wakefield and Mrs Fincham

12.12.22 - This week in Early Years

Hello everyone!

We have been very busy this week, going into the hall to run through our performance and trying on our costumes. Some of the children will be bringing home their lines for our Nativity, we would be very grateful if you could help them practise their words.

On Monday your child will come home with 2 programmes for our Nativity. These act as your tickets so please bring them on the day. The performance will take place in the hall, you will be asked to enter this via the side doors which can be accessed from the school car park in Brooklyn Drive. The performance should last around 20-30 minutes. The PTA will be offering teas and coffees and there will also be a collection at the end of the performance for this year's chosen charity.

Christmas Jumper Day

The children looked fantabulous today in their Christmas Jumpers today and we have raised money that will continue to sponsor Thoko and  her local community in Malawi. We thought you might like to hear what Thoko wrote in her most recent letter to us. She writes:

Dear Down Hall

I am learning in Standard 4. I go to school everyday. I always work hard in classes and my end of term results are always good. When I finish school I want to be a nurse. Very soon we will start harvesting crops. Greetings to you!

Thoko

A local representative who oversees Action Aid's money also adds:

Dear Supporter

One of the problems in Primary Schools is the shortage of desks. As a way of addressing the issue, we bought desks and shared them with two Primary Schools in the Kalowe Zone. This initiative has helped increase the number of children who have access to sit at a desk. Thank you for your support which has really promoted education in the area.

It's amazing to think that from such a small act on our behalf, we can make such a big difference for the young people who live such a long way away but share our right to an education. Thank you all so much!

Today we also had a visit from Mrs Morgan, who brought along some of her instruments to play. She showed us how she plays the cornet, trombone and tenor horn and then she played a tune using a hose pipe and a funnel! We sang some Christmas songs together, playing different percussion instruments and had lots of fun!

Events

We have put up a poster with important dates on our noticeboard (next to the Early Years gate) along with publishing them here.

• Wednesday 14th December - Christmas Dinner at school (this needed to be pre-booked and the deadline for this has now passed)
• Friday 16th December - PTA Christmas Bazaar
• Tuesday 20th December - Our Nativity

On to our learning for next week, we will be:

• Watching the Key Stage 1 children perform their Christmas production on Monday.
• Finishing our Christmas cards and calendars ready to take them home to our families.
• Playing the different games on Phonics Play.
• Enjoying our Christmas Dinner on Wednesday.
• Creating our own Fairy Light patterns and completing some Christmas counting activities in our Mathematics sessions.
• Enjoying the PTA's Christmas Bazaar and Santa's Grotto on Friday.

The last drop in for this year will be on WEDNESDAY.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

05.12.22 - This coming week in Early Years

This week has been just a little bit exciting! Our Christmas tree has returned from the Christmas Tree festival and we discovered today that it came 5th. We are sure that you would agree that the children's owls are stunning!

We have also been working hard learning the songs for our Nativity and hopefully today you all received a letter explaining the arrangements for our performance! Tickets will be issued in the form of a programme and these will come home on Monday 12th December.

The children have picked their parts and we have had a walk through of what each part does today. The costumes are all sorted and from next week some of the children will be bringing home some words to learn and we would be very grateful if you could support them with this.

Upcoming Events

We have put up a poster with important dates on our noticeboard (next to the Early Years gate) along with publishing them here.

• Friday 9th December - Christmas Jumper Day
• Wednesday 14th December - Christmas Dinner at school (this needed to be pre-booked and the deadline for this is TODAY 02/12)
• Friday 16th December - PTA Christmas Bazaar
• Tuesday 20th December - Our Nativity

Christmas Jumper Day - Friday 9th December

On this day, the children can wear their fabulous festive jumpers and make a £1 donation which goes to our continued sponsorship of Thoko.  The charity Action Aid use this money to ensure that Thoko and the other children in her community enjoy their right to an education, just like all of us at Down Hall!  

SO, to clarify, on Friday the children need to wear their normal PE kit i.e. their jogging bottoms but with their Christmas jumper (instead of their PE sweatshirt).

On to our learning for next week, we will be:

• Practising our Nativity, singing the songs and learning our words.
• Starting to make our own Christmas cards and calendars for our families.
• Updating our name displays in the classrooms in our Start-Bee sessions.
• Working on our blending and segmenting of 3 phoneme words. 
• Learning more about 2D shapes in our Mathematics sessions and using them to create some Christmas pictures.
• Voting to pick this year's school charity and then finding out from our school councillors which one has been chosen.
• Wearing our Christmas jumpers for Christmas Jumper day on Friday and talking about Thoko. 

There is no drop in this week, there will be one the following week.

Wishing you a lovely weekend!

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

28.11.22 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone!

Today during our "How Many Days" song we realised that the children have been in school for 50 days! It has been a very busy 50 days and we are very proud of all of the children in Pearl and Quartz and how much they have learnt in this short amount of time.

Upcoming Events

As we approach a busy time of year there is an increasing number of events coming up. We thought it might be helpful if we added them to the blog each week. Further information is always in the newsletter.

• Tuesday 29th November - Flu Immunisations
• Thursday 1st December - Photograph orders (via school) MUST be in today by 9am.
• Friday 2nd December - Movie Night for EYFS and KS1
• Friday 9th December - Christmas Jumper Day
• Friday 16th December - PTA Christmas Bazaar
• Tuesday 20th December - Our Nativity

 On to our learning for next week, we will be:

• Using our sounds to segment to spell some 2 and 3 phoneme words.
• Finding 1 more and 1 less than a number in our Mathematics sessions.
• Remembering our learning from last week and using the shapes and fill tool when drawing on our interactive board.
• Talking about the start of Advent and our Advent calendar.
• Talking about different Christmas customs from around the world with our interactive Advent calendar.
• Decorating our classroom and putting up our Christmas tree in our Home Corner.
• Learning some of the songs for our Nativity.

Drop in this week will be on THURSDAY.

We are so proud of the children who come into school now by themselves - well done! For those that are still a little unsure, please continue to encourage your child by leaving them before reaching the Early Years gate. We appreciate that some mornings you may have messages for us and sometimes the children ask you to bring them but it would be wonderful if they could try.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

21.11.22 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone!

Today we have had a lovely day raising money for Children in Need. It has been a busy, fun packed day. We will have a total for the amount raised next week.

The children have brought home their last sets of sounds for Phase 2. We have now learnt all of the sounds for this phase and will now spend some time consolidating before moving on. Many thanks to all of you for supporting your child with their Phonics at home as we have seen the impact!

Upcoming Events

As we approach a busy time of year there is an increasing number of events coming up. We thought it might be helpful if we added them to the blog each week. Further information is always in the newsletter.

• Friday 25th November - Non-uniform day for the PTA, suggested donation of £1 OR some chocolate to go towards the tombola at the Christmas Bazaar.
• Tuesday 29th November - Flu Immunisations
• Friday 2nd December - Movie Night for EYFS and KS1
• Friday 9th December - Christmas Jumper Day*

*The PTA will be holding a Christmas Jumper Sale on 25th November if you need a new festive jumper!

On to our learning for next week, we will be:

• Reading the story "Each Peach Pear Plum" and trying to identify all the different nursery rhyme and story book characters.
• Identifying the rhyming words in our story and making a list of rhyming words.
• Starting our new phase in Mathematics, "Light and Dark", finding different ways to make 4 and 5 using our 10 frames and counters,
• Trying to learn the rhyme in the book, working on our memory skills!
• Learning how to use our lightboxes to help us write our names during our Start-Bee sessions.
• Working on our scissor skills by cutting out the different characters and then creating our own version of the final picture in the story.

This week's drop in will be on MONDAY.

In addition to the Maths homework we would be really grateful if you could help your child practise doing up their coat. With the change in weather this week we have lost minutes of our playtime as it is taking a long time, even with 3 adults, to do the children's coats. 

Thank you for your support, we hope you have a lovely weekend. 

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

14.11.22 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello! 

It was so lovely to see so many of you at our Drop In last night. We hope you enjoyed looking at your child's Learning Journey and listening to our Phonic Songs. We have started to update the Phonics section of the website, the new letter formation rhymes are now there. The songs that the children have been learning can be found by clicking here. 

We were very proud of all of the children today when we all sat for the 2 minute silence as part of our work about Remembrance.

Here is some additional information about events happening next week:

School Photographs - Thursday 17th November

Individual and sibling photographs will be taken. You do not need to ask for the sibling photos to be taken, this will be done automatically.

Children In Need - Friday 18th November

This year to celebrate Children in Need, we will be having a pyjama day at school on Friday 18th November. Children can wear their favourite PJs to school, however please remember that all children still need to wear sensible outdoor shoes so that they will be safe going outside, and to also bring a coat. There will be a bucket for donations at the gates during the morning drop off and the suggested donation is £1.

Now on to our learning for next week, we will be:

• Reading different versions of the story "Little Red Riding Hood" and talking about the different characters.
• Discussing whether Red Riding Hood did the right thing during our Circle Time.
• Learning the last of our Phase 2 sounds in our Phonics sessions.
• Working with 2D shapes in our Mathematics sessions and going on a shape hunt around our class.
• Using our sounds to write a shopping list for Red Riding Hood.
• Carefully weaving paper strips, remembering the pattern of over, under, over, under, to create a basket effect.
• Testing our houses from last week by seeing if the Big Bad Wolf can blow them down. (We ran out of time this week to do this).

Drop in this week will be on TUESDAY.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley

07.11.22 - This coming week in Early Years

Hello everyone, 

We have enjoyed playing in the rain this week, spending time jumping in the puddles and watching the water drip from the canopy. We have also been trialling a new Phonics scheme, you may have heard your child singing some of our new songs - we will be updating the Phonics section of our class page to reflect these changes as soon as possible.

Just a few things to mention before we talk about the learning for this coming week. 

Poppies

Next week, the children will have the opportunity to purchase poppies within class. As well as the poppies, there are some other Royal British Legion merchandise (such as key rings, wrist bands and slap bands) which can be purchased. The suggested donation for these items are 50p for a poppy and £1 for other items. If you wish your child to get any of these, then please send them in with their money any day next week.

Book Fair

Our Book Fair takes place next week, it will be open Tuesday - Friday after school in the hall. We are only able to take cash at this fair.

Now on to our learning for this coming week, we will be:

• Reading different versions of this week's story, "The Three Little Pigs".
• Building houses using different construction materials and then testing them against a big bad wolf!
• Starting our Vocabulary Ninja sessions.
• Making our own Poppies for Remembrance.
• Watching the CBeebies film "Poppies" on Remembrance Day and observing the silence at 11am.

This week we will resume our drop in sessions after school. The drop in this week will be on THURSDAY.

Now that we have returned from half term and to encourage the children's independence, it would be great if you could try and let your child walk to our Early Years gate by themselves in the morning. There is an adult on each entrance to the school who can take any messages and we are always available for a chat at home time, or you can email us using earlyyears@downhallprimary.com.

Have a lovely weekend, 

Miss Wakefield, Mrs O'Connor and Miss Langley