Wishing you a Happy New Year and a BIG welcome to Term 3!

We are delighted with the children’s continuing progress within the prime and specific areas of learning. Knowing how physical development impacts on all areas of our children’s learning we continue to provide challenges for both gross and fine motor control.

Within literacy we continue to learn set 1 sounds, blend and use this growing phonic knowledge to help read and write simple regular words. Fred will also start to introduce us to the RWI Set 2 sounds and we will begin to build a bank of some naughty ‘red’ (sight) words too. If you could provide lots of fine motor control activities at home (playdough, lego, jobs where we have to use fingers ie peeling an orange) to support the children’s muscle development this will really aid our growing ability to write. Listening to stories and comprehension, as always, features highly on our agenda. Estimating, ordinal numbers and simple addition will form part of our maths focus. Taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch at the end of January will introduce us to various ways of recording data such as tally charts and graphs. 2d and 3d shapes will help us to build models and create patterns.

The children have chosen ‘Superheroes’ as a vehicle for our learning this term and starting in week 2, we shall examine how WE can make our bodies and brains supersonic. Participation in three Rutland Council Bikeability Balance Cycle training sessions are just one of the ways we will be testing our body strength and resilience (our learning behaviour focus for this term). We shall also be discussing the fuel we need to help our bodies and consider what would Superman have for breakfast to give him all that energy? We will also be talking about keeping safe when Tish Barnwell, local Road Safety Officer comes in to have a chat. The children will be designing their own Superhero and constructing a Superhero Base. We will also hopefully have a visit from some real Superheroes! I am sure our imaginations will run riot as we try to differentiate between fact and fiction!

Access to outdoor learning is always a priority therefore children need warm coats, hats, gloves and wellies please. No scarves thank you.