Happy New Year !

Happy New Year to everyone and we hope you had a lovely, peaceful Christmas break!


Before we begin, 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.


Well, I'm sure that you are ready and raring to go back to work, so let's see what we shall be doing this week...


INSET DAY


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


Tuesday is the 6th January, so we will be looking at the Epiphany story with the children and asking them to act out the events. Maybe they could find out the answer to this question for their return...


What were the names of the three wise men?


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 Year 1 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.

Book Amnesty

If you remember, before the holidays, we mentioned about the number of reading books in the library appeared to be somewhat depleted? Well, starting from this week, we would be grateful if any library books which may be lurking under beds, in cupboards, in the bottom of bookbags or elsewhere, be returned to school. It may be an idea also to check at your childcare providers, to see if our industrious little ones have left any there - you will be surprised!

Literacy

This term, we begin with looking at Stories from other cultures. This is lovely topic to start the term and one which I am sure the children will enjoy. We will be investigating stories which has predictable patterns in language - a really good one for the panto season!

Why not choose some familiar stories with your child for their bedtime story and encourage them to join in:

Gingerbread man - "Run, run as fast as you can...You can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

Little Red Riding Hood - "Grandma, what big eyes you have!" "All the better to see you with my dear!"

Then try adding some of your own sentences to extend the story. Let us know some of the ones you have made up and maybe we can add them to our own class stories!

We will be encouraging the children to be detectives when they are reading and 'grabbing' any good words or phrases to use in their own writing of stories. Why not invest in a notebook and when reading with your child, write down any interesting words or phrases that you come across. Then, over the weekend, why not try making your own versions of stories up, using this bank of phrases?

The children will also be developing their drawing skills, by drawing scenes from each of the stories and scanning them into the computer. Then, using a program called Photostory, will be writing sentences to go with each of them to produce their DVD version of the story! For those of you who fancy giving this a go at home (and it is very easy!) then it is a free program, which can be downloaded from:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/drilldown/stories/2/6/1/ good old cbeebies! The children still love visiting this site and it still had some of the best versions of the stories that I have come across on the web.

http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories-short.htm there are some lovely stories on this site, complete with activities to accompany them. Click on the top menu bar to navigate to longer stories.

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/packages/us/yreaders/aesop/index.html a lovely site which takes you on a guided tour of Aesop's Fables.

Numeracy

We will be starting the week with a review of place value and partitioning. We will also be reviewing the numeracy assessments which the children did just before Christmas, in order to clarify any misunderstanding that occurred.

One way you could help at home, is with missing number activities. Many of the children found it challenging when we turned around some of the number sentences:

2 + 3 = ? was easy to calculate, but they found it hard to grasp 5 = 3 + ?

Try doing this type of activity at home with number cards are symbol cards and see how many correct number sentences your child can make.

This type of question comes up every year on every assessment all the way up to year 6, so if they are able to grasp the concept now , it will become easier when they use bigger numbers.

http://www.wmnet.org.uk/wmnet/custom/files_uploaded/uploaded_resources/853/Postsortingv3.swf click on the tens and units postbox to post the letters. Be careful, as you cannot post all the letters!

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=Toolkit%20index2a this will open up lots of things that we use in class, but for this week, you will need to click on the place value calculator. Although it says it is aimed at Key Stage 2, many of the children will be able to use the knowledge they have to calculate the answers.

http://www.wmnet.org.uk/wmnet/custom/files_uploaded/uploaded_resources/853/PlaceValueChartv4.swf having used this before the holidays, we know how much the children enjoyed it!

Science

This half term, we will be investigating materials, their uses and properties. The children will also be expected to explain why certain materials are used for specific purposes: Why can't we use wool for an umbrella? Why shouldn't we use glass for a fork or knife?

The sillier the better, as a visual image will help the children remember!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/5_6/sorting_using_mate.shtml a favourite website, but why not try doing this yourself with materials from around the house?

http://www.glassforever.co.uk/ find out how glass is made

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=materials2d a great sorting activity for explaning how materials are grouped

http://www.kented.org.uk/ngfl/games/scope.html you will keep playing with this one! Click on the numbers on the left hand side to get and image. Then, click on the magnify button to see what the image looks like up to 200x bigger!

http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=materials drag and drop the materials names to the correct places

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.

The children will:

Recognise journeys that involve other people
Reflect on a variety of Journeys and the people involved
Respect and appreciate the people who share their journeys

Well, we are well are truly back to work now! Here's to a great 2009!

Year 1 team xx