Driffield Church Of England Voluntary Controlled Infant School

This week may have only been four days, but we have certainly packed lots in!

We have continued with our theme of 'In the Garden,' by reading the story of The Enormous Turnip. The children loved the repetitive nature of the story and they enjoyed predicting which character would come next to help pull up the turnip. The children have been working together to name as many vegetables as they can. Next time you are in the supermarket or the greengrocers, point out and name some of the vegetables for sale. We talked about the different parts of the vegetable and how sometimes we eat the leaves and sometimes we eat the root. 

In phonics we have continued to practising reading some longer words with adjacent consonants in them. Some of the words the children have been reading and spelling include: stamp, crisp, squelch, string, scrub and scrunch. The children have been practising reading sentences containing some of these words and they have also been introduced to the new tricky words: were, here, little & says. We have also been practising writing sentences independently in our sentence book. Although the children are growing in confidence, many of them are still reluctant to have a go on their own and any practise at home would help to build confidence and independence in your child. Sentence ideas for this week are:

1. I went for a march in the dark.
2. I went to the shop to get a tin of sweetcorn.

When writing longer, two syllable words, such as sweetcorn, chunk them up into two parts sweet & corn.

In maths this week we have been learning all about subtraction. The children have been taking away a given number of objects and saying how many remain. This is something you could practise practically at home. If playing with toy cars, count how many you have and then say '5 drove away - how many are left?' Can the children practically take away 5 to find the answer. When eating a snack, such as grapes or blueberries, count how many you have and then say, 'if I eat 6 of your grapes, how many will you have left?' Can they take away 6 and calculate how many are left? 

In our RE lessons, we have continued to learn all about Buddhism. This week the children have listened to and discussed the Buddhist story, 'Buddha and the Beggar.' They have also learnt all about meditation and how the Buddha taught meditation as a way to free your mind of negative thoughts and calm your mind. The children have practised 'Belly Breathing' in the classroom. Ask your child to show you how it's done and have some 'time out' together with some deep breathing. 

Next week we will continue to look at things we find in 'The Garden,' with a particular focus on the life cycle of a butterfly. 

Today was a lovely sunny day and hardly anyone had a sun hat with them, please make sure your child brings their sun hat to school every day, even if it is cloudy in the morning, the sun can be out by lunchtime. 

Have a lovely, relaxing weekend and we will see you back at school on Monday.

Kind regards

Mrs Dean & Miss Wain.