Hello Everyone!

We enjoyed a lovely science lesson on Monday, where we went outside to learn about the  seasons. We spotted plenty of clues, which told us that Spring is on the way. In the garden we found buds on trees, daffodils growing, snowdrops, and the sound of someone mowing grass.

During our English lessons this week, we began to sequence the events in the story of ‘Stanley’s stick’. We practiced reading sections of the story with expression in our voices, and performed each section to the class.

In maths this week, year 2 have been learning about equal and unequal groups. This will help us to move on to learning about multiplication next week. 
Year 1 have been learning about place value up to 50. They have been doing plenty of practical work where they have made 2 digit numbers with different apparatus.


Homework:

Year 2 children: You will now have your spellings that you are learning each week, on a bookmark that you can keep. Please practice these spellings at home each week if you can. We are really pleased with the progress that you are making. 

Year 1 and 2 children: Keep practicing your spellings on your spelling shed app.

Please bring your library books back before Thursday, so that you take take a different library book home.

Thank you for bringing your reading book back every day. So many of you enjoy your reading both at home and at school. Well done!

Welcome to Spring Term 2

It was great to welcome the children back after our half term break, we hope everybody had a wonderful week.

We've had a lovely week here at Pre-School and our focussed book this week was "Dear Zoo" by Rod Campbell - A child writes to the zoo for a pet. The zoo send a series of unsuitable pets, revealed behind flaps in the form of crates and packing cases. These animals are all sent back for different reasons, except the last one, which is perfect!

We had a discussion about our favourite animals and where they live and what they might eat also what animals/pets we have at home and their names, the children were very keen to tell us all about the pets they own.

In our role play area we had our own Zoo, we had some animal masks for the children to use, we had some very interesting sounding animals including a quite noisy lion!!

We have made our own zoo from the Duplo and added lots of different animals. We talked about different sizes of these animals and how much space they will need to roam around.

We are also very lucky to have some more new play equipment for our outside area which was very kindly put together over the half term ready for us to use when we returned and I know the children have had super fun exploring this, although we could do with some dry, sunny weather to be able to really enjoy it properly.

We also started a new activity called "Dough Disco" which the children really enjoyed.
Dough disco involves moulding play dough in time to music and performing different actions such as rolling it into a ball, flattening it, putting each individual finger into the dough, rolling it into a sausage and squeezing it. Dough disco helps to strengthen children's fine motor muscles to enable them to develop their pencil grip which in turn will help to develop their writing skills.

Next week our focussed book will be "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?" by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle - This book follows the story sequence of Brown Bear and the things that he and the other animals see. Brown Bear sees a Red Bird, who sees a Yellow Duck, who sees a Blue Horse, and on and on until it's the children who look back and see all the animals (and even their teacher).


We hope you enjoyed a little bit of the sunshine we had on Saturday and managed to dodge the rain on Sunday,

We look forward to seeing you all next week.

Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Mrs Rowe and Miss Carr.

It was great to welcome the children back after half term, we hope everybody had a wonderful week.

Let's have a look at some of the things we have been learning this week...

In Maths we started our learning about length, height and time which we will continue with next week. We started off with developing our understanding of length and introduced vocabulary such as ‘long’ and ‘longest’ and ‘short’ and ‘shortest’ that we can use to describe objects. We used playdough to understand that some materials can be changed by stretching them to make them longer. We ensured that we lined the ends up so that we could see the difference in length and then used some of the vocabulary to describe them accurately. The next day, we read Jim and the Beanstalk by Raymond Briggs. Our aim was to be able to use more specific vocabulary to describe an object as ‘longer than’ or ‘shorter than’ something else. We made indirect comparisons using non-standard objects (cubes) to measure items. Everybody cut some string to make worms of different lengths and used cubes to measure and compare their length.

Our Art focus for this half term is photography. We started off by discussing what photography is, the equipment that can be used and how it has changed over time. We researched four photographers: Karl Blossfeldt, Edward Weston, Adrian Langdon and Cathy Rhodes. We identified what sort of things they each liked to photograph and made comparisons. 

Class 1 Team

It’s been an incredibly busy half term. Thank you for supporting the children throughout. An additional thank you to those who were able to attend our class assembly on Monday. It was a lovely way for the children to share a summary of their learning with you.

In addition to our assembly, this week our year 6 children visited Looe Secondary school for a computing session where they learnt more about coding. It was a great transition experience for them and something we hope to do more of in the near future.

We ended the half term with a D.T construction project where the children teamed up with other members of the class and designed and built a building to a specific brief. They researched ideas and then used their recent art learning to draw a realistic plan of their building which they constructed using card. They learnt various fixing methods including how to use flaps, flanges, braces, and slots.  

On Tuesday this week, it was Safer Internet Day. The children learnt about making a difference online with year 5 children creating a poster to remind others of how to be kind and stay safe on the internet.

We hope you have a lovely half term.

Class 4 team

Happy Half Term!

We have had a great Spring term 1 in Class 1 together. We just wanted to say a big thank you for all of your support whether it be reading with your child at home, attending 'Family Friday' or the class assembly, we how know valuable this is, so thank you. 

This week we had a focus around Chinese New Year in some of our learning activities. In art, we made our own paper lanterns and Chinese dragons. Some of the children also used tissue paper to create their own lantern and some made a dragon head collage where they had to cut and stick different shapes. 

In Maths we were continuing our learning about 6, 7 and 8. We started the week off by finding and making pairs and developing our understanding of odd and even. We then progressed to finding and making doubles to 8. 

During our outdoor learning session we were spotting signs of winter/spring and anything that we thought was different/ interesting. We worked in pairs to use the iPad to take photos of things we had spotted, we then took a selfie so we knew who had taken which photos!  

Have a great half term and we look forward to seeing you all on Monday 19th February.

Class 1 Team

Hello Everyone!

This week began with our outdoor learning day on Monday.
The children had a great time building dens for their animals, making maps, measuring distances between features in the forest school area and  using compasses. We even managed to fit in a campfire with toasted marshmallows. 

During one of our maths lessons this week, we went on a shape hunt, which was organised by class 4. We followed a set of clues about shapes, which helped us to solve a puzzle. Thank you class 4 for all your hard work with this. We really enjoyed it.

In English this week, we have been reading instructions about den making. We have found features of instructions, and will use this knowledge, to write instructions next week.

We look forward to seeing you next Thursday afternoon, for our class assembly, where we can show you what we have been learning this term.

Have a lovely weekend!

From the class 2 team

Hello everyone!
What an incredible day we had on Thursday for our Wild Tribe outdoor survival day. Some of our favourite learning activities were first aid, shelter building, knot securing, whittling and fire making.

This week, the children also particularly enjoyed their RE lesson, which was on Seesaw, where they learnt more about Hinduism and mandirs.

We also took our geography learning onto Seesaw this week. We improved our understanding of human and physical features. We reminded ourselves of the terminology and looked at various examples which might cause us difficulty when classifying.  Later in the lesson, we located various examples in the UK and North and South America. In addition, we took a closer look at the countries Wales and Brazil which we will be comparing in more depth this coming week.

In our PE learning, we had a mini tournament during our table tennis lesson where we played competitive games against other members of the class. In our Pro20 session, we learnt how to find space and protect the ball.

During our English lessons this week, the children have been learning to plan and develop their initial ideas. They’ve learnt about the active and passive voice along with developing their understanding of sentence structure including relative clauses.  

In our science learning this week, the children carried out the investigation which they planned last week. They were surprised by their results. Some children extended their learning by thinking what else they could investigate with similar resources. We hope to carry out a selection of these investigations this coming week.

Points to remember:
- PE on Monday (1pm-2pm)

-Class 4 assembly Monday 2.30pm

-Year 6 trip to Looe Secondary School Tuesday

- INSET day Friday 

Hello everyone 
We just wanted to start off by saying how proud we are of every child in Class 1 for their hard work this half term and the effort they have been putting into their learning. We loved sharing our class assembly with the rest of the school and our parents/ carers. 

This week in Maths our theme was ‘Growing 6, 7 and 8’. We were finding and representing 6, 7 and 8, finding one more/less than 6, 7 and 8 and looking at the numbers we could see within them. 

In English our learning has been about the story 'Aliens Love Underpants'. The children particularly enjoyed this story and found it very funny! We've enjoyed sequencing the story and telling the story in our own words. We had lots of fun using our imaginations when designing and drawing our own aliens and writing a description of our alien.

In music we listened to ‘Conga’ by Miami Sound Machine and identified the instruments we could hear. We also discussed the genre of music and made comparisons to songs we have listened to previously. We then got the instruments out and had fun playing them to see the different things we could do with them. Everybody took it in turns to play a rhythm on their instrument and the rest of us had to copy it on our own instrument. 

We had a bit of a shock when we came in from playtime to find a mess on our carpet! There was a letter and when we opened it, it was from the aliens who told us they had been flying over Earth and had dropped lots of objects from their spaceship. They told us they wanted us to give them back the magnetic objects and left us some magnets. We used the magnets to test the objects to see which were magnetic and which were not magnetic. We then sorted them into two different hoops and discussed what materials they were made out of. After we had fun exploring with lots of different types of magnets.

Our PE lesson on Thursday was filled with excitement as we got the large climbing equipment out in the hall! The children all demonstrated consideration for themselves and others in order to keep everyone safe. They used their gross motor skills to navigate the equipment showing good co ordination and control. 

Please note there will be no Family Friday next week as it is INSET Day. School finishes on Thursday 8th February and we look forward to welcoming you back on Monday 19th February after the half term break. 

The Class 1 Team 

One of our highlights this week has been the visit from The Ocean Conservation Trust. They put on an amazing workshop teaching us all about the science of climate change which followed on brilliantly from our recent climate change topic. We learnt about climate heroes including seagrass and how we too can be climate heroes ourselves. Our favourite parts of the workshop included learning about combustion, investigating pH levels, the affect of pH on calcium carbonate and exploring Plymouth Sound via VR headsets.

This week has also been our maths enrichment week. We have had great fun with various maths challenges including discussing different methods to solve 'The Deca Tree' problem. We combined art with maths and learnt about circle vocabulary with Kandinsky's, 'Concentric Circles'. We even created a shape hunt for the rest of the school!

During our English lessons this week, the children have been learning about descriptive devices and using these in their own writing to describe the Amazon Rainforest.

During our science lesson this week, the children planned an investigation which we will carryout this coming week.

In our music lesson, we continued our learning with Mrs Butlin.

During our art lesson, we continued to learn about drawing in one point perspective. The children made great editions to their sketch books.

During PE this week, we enjoyed being competitive in both our football and table tennis sessions.

Points to remember:
- PE on Monday and Friday

- Our outdoor learning day is on Thursday 1^st February.

Hello everyone!

This week was Maths Enrichment week throughout the school. We took part in a range of activities including a whole school piece of artwork based on Kandinsky's concentric circles. We explored a range of texts, including 'One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab' and 'The Greedy Triangle'. We also had a number based PE lesson, where we made number cards, human number lines, and jumped along our own number lines.

On Monday, we have our outdoor learning day. Children will need to come to school in waterproof clothes and footwear that is suitable to wear outside for most of the day. If the children would like to, please can they also bring a cuddly toy with them, that they don’t mind potentially getting muddy. If it’s a woodland animal, then this would be perfect, but all animals will be welcomed! We are looking forward to a day of map making, den building and stories, as well as a few surprises. 

Have a lovely weekend!

From the class 2 team 

This week saw Class 3 focus on maths.  We investigated a tricky maths problem all abut how many legs a groups a of aliens have.  Sum of started with a 'blunt force' approach of trial and error to find the answer.  eventually we realised that the problem actually involved multiples of 3 & 7 and once we had listed all the multiples, we soon spotted a pattern and found an answer.

Class 4 created a Treasure Hunt of Maths shapes around the school and we also helped create a school display of Kadinsky style circle in the school colours.

Maths Enrichment Week
For many adults, if they think of what they disliked most at school, maths is often at the top of the list. Maths lessons may have even led to a lifelong fear of getting the wrong answer, or not getting it fast enough. One of the biggest barriers to a child developing in maths is for them to hear adults say that they were not good at maths at school, or they are not a ‘maths person’. There is a widespread belief in society that maths is hard, uninteresting, and accessible only to ‘clever’ people.  Often males and even particular racial groups are seen to be naturally better at maths. Scientific research has shown, however, the incredible potential of the brain to grow and adapt.

We feel passionately about showing how exciting maths is, and want to dispel the myth of the maths brain. In our school we teach that everyone can learn maths, with variation in strategies and equipment used being accepted and encouraged, such as drawing, or using objects. Linked with our Bridge values, we teach that maths is a very creative subject and model/encourage curiosity. Mistakes are all part of the learning process. We add ‘yet’ to sentences when a child says that they can’t do something and teach that the feeling of something being hard is when changes are happening in our brains. This week we have been celebrating maths in an enrichment week of creative thinking linked to maths across the curriculum. This has included investigation work, maths art, stories with maths themes, a maths treasure hunt and an exploration of the beauty and power of maths all around us in our assemblies. We look forward to telling you all about our special week in our class assemblies.

Climate Change Roadshow
On Friday we were visited by the National Marine Aquarium Ocean Conservation Trust. Class 4 explored climate change through Virtual Reality headsets and exciting science investigations! The trust also led a very thought provoking assembly.

KS2 Cross Country Stars
Congratulations to Harrison, Elsa, George and Joseph, who attended a cross country event at Looe Community Academy secondary school. They all came in the top 8!

Bush Skills Outdoor Learning Days
Class 2 Monday 29th January; Class 3 Tuesday 30th January; Class 4 Thursday 1st February. Please make sure that your child has layers of warm clothing, including a waterproof coat, gloves and hat for these sessions.

We hope that you have a lovely weekend,
Abigail Oliver (Head of School)

We have had a great week in Class 1, especially with it being Maths Enrichment week too! 

Let's tell you just some of what we've been up to! 

As we have already mentioned, it was Maths Enrichment week where we took part in and completed lots of different activities including a whole school piece of artwork based on Kandinsky's concentric circles. We explored a range of texts, including 'One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab' and 'The Greedy Triangle'. We used playdough and straws to create animals with different amounts of legs and then wrote a number sentence to represent them. We also made a triangle out of four smaller triangles and learnt about how many sides different shapes have. We would also like to thank Class 4 for putting on a brilliant shape themed treasure hunt, we had a great time working with the children in Class 4 and solving the clues together.

We also continued our White Rose maths learning where we were focusing on mass and capacity. We used balance scales to compare mass and find a balance. First of all we held two items and then made a prediction about which item we thought would be the heaviest. We then checked using the balance scales. We started to develop our understanding of comparative terms such as heavy, heavier than, heaviest, light, lighter than and lightest. Towards the end of the week we moved on to learning about capacity. We used rice, sand and water to explore the capacity of different containers. We then made direct comparisons by pouring from one container to another.

This week we have been learning all about the planets in our solar system. We learnt all their names and learnt about some of their properties including, which planet is the largest and smallest and which are the hottest and coldest. We then learnt the order of the planets, starting with which one is the closest to the sun and going all the way to the planet furthest from the sun. We each had our own planet and had to work together to stand in the correct order. We then practised our cutting skills when cutting out all the planets and sticking them in the correct order. 

In Art we had fun with shaving foam and food colouring! We used a pipette to drop food colouring onto some shaving foam before mixing it with a skewer. We then laid our piece of card on top and then scraped off the excess foam to create some beautiful patterns. We hope to turn them in to planets! We also experimented with food colouring and oil. We used a pipette to drop the food colouring/ oil mix into some water and then laid our card on top. When we picked the card up we had some interesting patterns. We look forward to seeing our artwork once they are completely dry. 

Next week there will be no Family Friday as we hope to see you for our Class assembly.

The Class 1 Team

Reminders
*Class 1 assembly - Friday 2nd February at 2:30pm. 
*Please ensure reading books and reading records come to school on Mondays so we can change books.

SION

We took advantage of the frost this week and used it to practice our spellings.  We got physical and stamped out our spellings on the grass.  Our ideas we'll explore as the weather allows will be water writing and stick spelling.

Hello everyone!

This week, we delved deeper into this half term’s big question, ‘The amazing Americas: how does the UK compare?’ The children researched geographical information about North and South America so they can compare these to the UK at a later date. They also revisited the meaning of key geographical language including continent, country, county, state, region, city, town, village, hamlet.

During our English lessons this week, the children got creative and planned and wrote their own stories based on a selection of pictures from our new class read, The Explorer’. This was a great opportunity for them to continue to build writing stamina and to see what they had retained from our last narrative unit of work. This week, we also had a grammar focus on word classes.

In maths this week, yellow group learnt how to use a written method to divide whilst purple/red group continued to learn about ratio. Green group learnt to multiply using a formal written method.

During our science lesson this week, the children continued to explore scientific electrical symbols. They made circuits from symbol diagrams and then drew their own diagrams (using the scientific symbols) from circuits they had made themselves.

In PSHE this week, the children started to learn about jobs. They discussed the importance of various jobs in society and tried to determine the various salaries. We discussed what might impact salary and also looked at job satisfaction.

In our music lesson, we continued our learning with Mrs Butlin.

During our art lesson, we learnt about one-point perspective. The children were impressed with how they could make their own drawings look 3d. I was impressed with their efforts. 

In our French lesson, we started to learn about French speaking countries around the world.

During PE, on Monday the children enjoyed their session with Pro20. On Friday, some children left us to take part in their cross-country race. An amazing well done. What a great effort especially in the cold weather. The children that remained at school, continued their table tennis focus. They continued to develop their serve and their understanding of the rules of table tennis.

Points to remember:
- PE on Monday and Friday

- Our outdoor learning day is on Thursday 1^st February.

- Please note the change in residential dates due to the new INSET day on Friday May 24^th

Hello everyone!

 I’m so proud of the children’s effort and enthusiasm in their English lessons this week. They have written some lovey stories, and I have really enjoyed reading their creative and original ideas.

In maths this week, Year 2 have finished their topic of 2D and 3D shape. They have been sorting shapes according to their properties. 
Year 1 have been finding near doubles by adding or subtracting 1.

During our science lesson this week, we have been testing materials to find out how flexible they are. 

We had a thought provoking RE lesson this week, when we explored the topic of forgiveness. The children were given scenarios, where they had to decide if they would or would not forgive someone. We had some interesting discussions around why we would/would not forgive someone.

Next week:
PE on Monday and Wednesday

Our outdoor learning day will be on Monday 29th January.

Have a lovely weekend!

From the class 2 team

. 

We've had another fun week here at Pre-School

We have been enjoying the dry, although very cold weather outside and exploring our new play equipment which has been super fun and popular with all of our friends.

Our book this weeks was Mr Gumpy's Motor Car - Mr Gumpy has decided to go for a ride in his motor car. It's a nice day and the sun is shining, so off he goes. But he only gets as far as the lane before the children, the rabbit, the cat, the dog, the pig, the sheep, the chickens, the calf and the goat ask if they can come along too.

We have had lots of discussions about where we have been or could go in our cars, also looking at different cars and how many people they can carry. 

We have talked about where different transport travels, the children shared if they have ever travelled in a bus, boat, train or aeroplane!
We have also been listening to clues to see if we could identify different types of transport - the children were all amazing at this and using their super listening skills got them all correct.

We have also being playing I Spy in the car park as we can see lots of vehicles' come and go from our windows, plus we have also spotted a couple of aeroplanes and a helicopter in the sky above.

For Show and Share this week we would love to see any photos of your child when they may have enjoyed a trip in any form of transport – bus, car, boat, train or plane!
It’s always lovely for the children to share their own experiences with us at Pre-School. 

Please either send in a photo with your child or email them to us at preschool@pelyntprimary.co.uk and we will be happy to print them for you.

We hope you have a super weekend, and look forward to seeing you all next week.

Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Mrs Rowe and Miss Carr.