Welcome to the start of a brand new year - our spring term and the first month of 2024. The children have come back to school excited to learn and ready for a challenge! They have seemed so mature this week - it just shows how far they have come since they started school back in September. This week we have spoken in detail about the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus - the Epiphany - and we have spoken about the gifts they brought for Him. We then visited Church yesterday for our first Mass of the year where Father Frank talked about the Epiphany too. We have now packed away our crib ready for next Christmas.
Our Learning this week
Our theme this week has been birds.
Phonics - now that we know all of our Phase 1 sounds we have started our daily reading groups with the children depending on their phonetic ability. The children have adapted to this change so well and we have seen some great work this week. These groups will continue for the rest of the year - each term the children will be reassessed and they may move groups.
Maths - we have been learning how to make 3 and 4.
UTW - we learnt about British birds.
EAD - the children have been busy with Mrs Debowska painting owls.
Communication and Language - we have been learning the days of the week in sign language.
RE - we have spoken about the Epiphany this week. We discussed how the three kings will have cared for their camels on such a long journey.
E-Safety - in Reception we learn how to stay safe online through the Digiduck stories. This week we learnt that we need to make sure that we always ask our grown ups for help if we are online and we come across a tricky situation. Digiduck was sent a funny photo of his friend and he wasn’t sure whether to send it to his other friends.
Our theme next week is Penguins.
Award winners
Our award winners this week are:
Golden - Kacey-Lynne
Writing - Kian
Maths - Mia
Congratulations!
Catholic Life of our school..
The following resources are a great way of keeping you all informed of our current liturgy themes and of the weekly Gospel scripture, with some activities that the children can complete at home. We hope you find these resources useful and that they help you to support prayer and worship in your own homes.
https://www.paperturn-view.com/uk/wednesday-word/faithfulness?pid=MTA101634&v=74.6
http://www.tentenresources.co.uk/prayers-for-home/parent-newsletter/
At Our Lady's we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters.
Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.
This month’s online safety guides give helpful advice about…
Top Tips for Managing Screen Time - This guide provides some practical tips for helping to reduce your family’s screen time and promote healthier use of their devices.
What Children & Young People Need to Know about Free Speech vs Hate Speech - This free information guide has tips to help combat hate speech online, while still respecting people’s right to free speech.
We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.
Staffing Update
I just wanted to give you an update on the staff we currently have working in Reception. There is of course myself and Mrs Debowska in the class every day. We also have Miss Lane who volunteers in our class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon. Just before Christmas, Miss Sanderson also started working in our class each morning and this will continue for the forseeable future.
Have a lovely weekend,
Miss Heim-Sarac
