Advent

In Mckee class we have been learning about Advent and why it is an important time for Christians.

We started with learning about the Advent wreath. We now know that the four red candles symbolise Peace, Hope, Love and Joy, that the white candle stands for the birth of Jesus and that the green wreath is a symbol of eternal life and God's never ending love and mercy.

We also looked at how we prepare for Christmas, during the Advent season, and came up with all sorts of ideas from visiting Father Christmas at Van Hages, to writing our Christmas list or hoovering the house to baking special biscuits, or even making cards or watching Polar Express and The Grinch!

What do you do to prepare for Christmas? We would really love to know - please let us know by commenting below.

Anti Bullying week

A week ago, house captains as part of antibullying week organised and led an assembly.

The audience found it very comical but the message got through. If bullying happened in the future hopefully the children would know what to do in the situation.

In our assembly we included a drama that showed what bullying is, a puppet show to keep the younger children interested, a song about a boy affected by bullying and also a quiz to test the children’s knowledge about bullying and show how much they had been listening.

By: Cameron, Stanley, Samuel S, Josie and Francesca

Booktime

Last week the children in Mckee and Carle were given their Booktime bags.

Booktime is the national free books programme for reception-aged children, providing a free book pack for every child aged 4-5 years to share and enjoy with their family and friends. Booktime aims to promote the pleasure of books by encouraging families to have fun reading together. It also provides online resources.

In Mckee class, before giving the packs out, we opened one of the bags and read the books together. The class loved both books and enjoyed the fact that they could read Face Painting by themselves.

We read Why elephant has a trunk and talked about fables and what they are. This book proved a huge hit with the class many having seen Tinga tales on CBeebies.

Face painting activities

The next day, almost every child said they had shared the books at home that night and had enjoyed talking about them with their families.

In the classroom, we have made use of the printable activities and have enjoyed following up the books. The face painting survey and the tortoise and monkey colouring sheets being the favourite activities.

Scooter safety

Today we had a visitor in assembly. She came to tell us how to be safe on our scooters and how to avoid accidents

We now know:

• we should take time to learn how to stop on our scooters
• to wear reflective clothing and to go slowly
• we should look out for the lights on cars to see if they are reversing, turning or stopping
• to be aware of other people
• to find out how to use our brakes
• to make sure our scooter is in good condition
• we must take responsibility for ourselves when scootering

We were also reminded that we must not ride our scooters in the school playground because it is too crowded and not safe for us, or others, to do so.

Cinema night

On Friday evening the PSA screened Cars 2 in the school hall.

Nearly 70 children came with cushions and settled down to watch.

In the interval there was time for a drink and a biscuit.

Fred said "the best bit was at the beginning when Finn McMissile blew up the ship".

Jake liked the bit when "the big truck tipped over and was shooting the cars".

Lucy liked the bit "when they went splashing in the water".

Tom thought  Cars 2 was better than the last film we showed and he had fun.

Abigail said " it was really good fun to watch and having two biscuits was a bonus!"

It sounds like everyone enjoyed themselves. 

McKee class assembly

This morning McKee class invited their families to share their assembly and join us back in the classroom afterwards. 

McKee explained the six areas of learning, in the foundation stage, and showed some of the things they do on a daily basis such as singing, phonics, being creative, numbers, experimenting and of course they also mentioned they enjoy helping write this blog.

The class have written a little bit about their day and what they enjoyed. This is what they said:

G, G, R, O, E, M, Z, A, N - We liked singing a lot.

J, A ,D, O, E- We enjoyed holding our mask up best.

M - I liked holding my model up.

H, E, D - Holding up our pictures was best.

R - Sitting on the bench and watching myself!

L - Saying my words was fun.

A - I loved doing the phonics.

After this, they said, they enjoyed sharing the outside area and the book corner with their grown ups, making a Rapunzel bookmark, making a clock, colouring the pictures, playing with the Lego  with Mummy and Daddy and reading stories.

Several of the parents commented that they had enjoyed seeing what the school day was like for their child and how it was lovely to see the children showing how independent they can be (and yes they do usually wash up their own paint pots and brushes!).

Thank you for sharing the morning with us and we hope you enjoyed it and had fun, as well as learning a lot.

Overseas friends

We were told today that our blog is being viewed by some friends in a school across the water. Hello!

Please do comment and tell us what you have enjoyed on our blog.

If you write something and email it to Mrs Vaughan we can post it here for all to read.