As part of this theme we have made wanted posters for the big bad wolf, searched for numbers that he huffed and puffed and hid at The Spinney and investigated how to make a pig fly (I bet you didn’t know that pigs could fly!!!).

Next term the children will be thinking about all things ‘Spring’ in our theme called Baby Animals – this will be made really ‘egg’-citing with the arrival of an ‘egg’-stra special surprise delivery that will hatch out during the first week in May!

Many thanks to all of our families for the great work they are doing at home with jolly sounds books and reading as well as enjoying story sacks and writing in take home Ted’s diary. An extra special thanks to Donna Smith and Matthew Goring for looking after Dottie the chicken on her extended holiday since we lost poor Lottie the chicken. And another huge thanks to Mrs Cole and Mrs Jones for coming in to share some special individual reading time with the class every week. You are all twinkling stars!

We began this term with a fantastic trip to the theatre to see Aladdin which became the stimulus for lots of learning through the topic ‘fairytales’. The children enjoyed making fairytale ‘shape’ palaces, dressing up for a fairytale ball, painting magic frogs, buying things from the fairytale frock shop and even making a ‘photostory’ movie of the story The Princess and the Pea.

To finish the term we have been exploring the world of penguins on our imaginary journey to the South Pole, just like in the story Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. We made a story board, wrote sentences, used drama to think about how the characters in the story felt, designed, made and tested boats and investigated ice balloon ‘ice burgs’. After the half term break we will focus on non fiction book making by researching and finding out penguin facts, locating where on the world map they come from. Please feel free to research penguins at home for fun for your child to share and add to our book in class!

I would like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Jones and Mrs Cole for their fantastic reading services. The children really look forward to you coming in and sharing a story and helping them to change their book for home reading. Keep up the hard work with home reading – just a few minutes of quality reading time together each night makes ALL the difference and sets your child off on an exciting reading journey that will last a life time. We have now introduced all of the letters of the alphabet plus ‘oa’, ‘ow’, ‘ff’, ‘ll’, ‘ck’, ‘ss’, ‘ee’… and the children are building words together using these sounds (ie: j-a-ck or p-i-g or qu-ee-n or c-r-ow-n…). We look forward to learning more phonemes and blending them to read as the year goes on.

Thank you for your continued support and if you have any queries, questions or anything at all please don’t hesitate to come along to chat to either me or Mrs Pyne – we’re here to help!

We have been spending the last few days of term celebrating Christmas, busy making calendars and cards as we count down on our advent calendar. We have thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas party and had a lovely visit from Father Christmas!

The FOBs have very generously donated some of their hard earned funds to our Early Years department and we are looking forward to a delivery of some new ‘small world play’ toys and a tool based workshop play zone to use in the new year.

I would like to say a massive thank you to Mrs Jones for volunteering to read and share stories with all of the children in our class on Friday mornings. As reading plays such a huge part of the learning at our school we have also been lucky enough to order some fantastic new ‘story sacks’ for even more fun reading times in Cubs Class – watch this space for a story and role play workshop in the spring.

Mrs Pyne and I would like to wish you all a really magical and restful Christmas break and look forward to seeing you all in the new year.

We are now enjoying a topic on Autumn and we will be crunching leaves, making prickly hedgehogs at the play dough table and making a tree den for our toy squirrels, badgers and foxes—   telling the story “After The Storm” by Nick Butterworth as we go!

We will continue to really focus on learning new letter sounds and shapes (phonemes and graphemes) and begin to blend them to read.  Thank you to all of the children and parents of cubs class who are busy sharing stories at home and practising letter sounds in Jolly Sounds Books— it makes all the difference in the children’s early reading experiences as they begin their lifelong reading journey!  Watch out after half term for a new “tricky word jungle pocket” which will come home with ideas for fun games to help your child practice “tricky words” introduced at school.  If you would like more ideas and fun resources for helping with practising letter sounds and shapes don’t hesitate to come to talk to me or why not visit www.sparklebox.co.uk which has lots of    printable things to play and do.

A very big thanks to Mrs Jones (Amber’s mummy) and Dr Cole (Lotte’s daddy) who have really helped to enrich the children’s reading experiences by coming into school to read and share      stories.

I hope you all have a lovely rest over the half term holiday.  Mrs Pyne and I look forward to seeing the children bright eyed and bushy tailed when we return to school on Monday November 1st!

Now as our plants are thriving and we are seeing our first cucumber and red strawberries with much excitement, we have taken our lead from the spring rain and decided to learn about the Christian bible story of Noah’s Ark for our next topic. All of the children have helped to tell the story through songs, print making and our ark role play area and we are all now experts in counting in 2’s just as the animals went onto the ark two by two by two.

As spring rain turns into summer sun the children will be joining with Leopards Class (KS1) to learn about the earth long long ago, making maps and exploding volcanoes, making music and thinking about the environment in a week long mini topic on dinosaurs!!!! What an exciting finale to another fantastic year in Cubs class at the Bythams school!

Now that the sun is trying to shine we have been able to get out into the early years garden to play and explore and the chickens finally have someone to play with!!! After the Easter break we will be outside a lot more planting seeds and looking at the flowers blooming as well as venturing over to the allotment as part of our up coming topic on ‘changes at spring time’.

For the last few days of this term, however, we are really enjoying looking after and observing our 5 new chicks which have hatched and are growing rapidly! As well as thinking about the Christian festival of Easter. We have been problem solving with play dough eggs and egg boxes in Problem Solving, Reasoning and Number, making egg music shakers to explore sound in Creative Development, writing chick information books in Communication, Language and Literacy and much, much more! – we will all be ready for a nice Spring break!

On behalf of the Foundation Stage and Key Stage One Team may I say a huge thanks to all of you for your continued support with everything you do for the children but in particular, the reading and homework you have fun doing together at home. Don’t’ hesitate to come in to chat to any of the team about anything at any time – we are here to help! Have a lovely break. We look forward to seeing you all ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed on Tuesday 20th April.

I would like to extend a huge thank you to all those who support the children, including Mrs Golby, Mrs Foster, Miss Wilson and Miss Smith who all gave up their time to help out and in particular the FOBS (Friends of Bytham School) lead by the amazing Mrs Pyne.  They tirelessly raise money for extra lovely things for the children.  If you would like to be part of the team, I am sure they would be VERY happy to welcome new members, the work they do really does make all the difference to the children and helps keep our whole school community strong!  Thank you, you make such a difference.

I would like to wish all of the children and their families a MERRY CHRISTMAS and  HAPPY NEW YEAR.  We look forward to a new term and lots of new things to learn on the topic of “Fairytales” when we return in January.