This Term
Spring 2 - Nature around us
Following on from our learning about 'animals around the world' in Spring 1, we will be focusing a little closer to home this term, by learning about 'nature around us'.
The purpose of this unit is for children to explore the physical geography of our school and of the Meadows. They will begin to understand the need to care for our environment and the living things within it. They will explore habitats in our forest school, school grounds, and our local community and begin to understand why animals live in them. Throughout the year they will make observations on seasons, beginning to understand our changing world.
Our big questions for this topic, that will lead our learning are:
- Can you explain how the seasons change?
- What makes the Forest School a good habitat for lots of animals?
- Why do some animals hibernate?
- Where might a hedgehog live in winter?
As part of our learning this half term, we will be exploring the nature we can see adound our school grounds and local area. We are also very excited that we will be visiting Sherwood Forest on Tuesday 1st April. We will be travelling by coach to the forest to support our learning about nature around us, and the wildlife that lives in our local area. Please ensure that you have payed for this trip using the My Child at School App. If you are having any difficulties with the app, please let the office staff know, and they can support you.
As always, we will engage with quality texts and visual material to support our learning around our topic. Here are the stories we will be focusing on this half term.
Story Snuggle Time:
Developing a love of reading at an early age will support your child's listening and attention skills, vocabulary development and understanding of the world around them. Your child will be bringing home a book from our 'library' for you to share together at home. This could include talking about what you can see in the pictures, other books that have similar characters, or what you and your child liked or didn't like about the story. We also hold Stay and Read every Friday from 8:45-9am, please join us for this, if you are able, to share in stories with your child.
Drawing Club:
Drawing Club is a special club that promotes confidence in mark making, imagination and writing skills. We use our focus books (as shown above on the page) to teach elements of writing.
The structure drawing club follows is:
Moment 1: Vocabulary Development
Moment 2: Listening to the story
Moment 3: Modelled drawing
Moment 4: Drawing Club. This aspect may be linked to the main character in the book, the setting or adventure time.
If you would like some more information about drawing club, or would like to see your child's work, just ask a member of staff.
PE:
PE will happen every Thursday. Please come to school wearing your sports leggings or trousers - there is no need for the children to get changed at school. We kindly ask you to support your child with taking off and putting on their socks and shoes. The more they practise this at home, the more independent they will become in PE lessons.
Forest School:
Forest School happens every Monday. We attend Forest School with Mrs Walker, who has worked at Victoria Primary School for a long time! She is excited to help the children explore our wonderful forest school space, to further develop their outdoor learning skills. Our children learn the importance of looking after our environment, alongside lots of knowledge about the world around them. A reminder to send in a pair of wellies to be kept at school.
Phonics and Reading:
We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds scheme at Victoria Primary School. All children will bring a reading book home with them. This will begin as a wordless book, which is used to encourage language development first, and then move onto books with simple words and phrases in for the children to decode on their own. Please speak to staff if you have any questions or would like any support with phonics.