All Saints’ School Gresford

We have been looking at how Chinese people celebrate Chinese New Year. This year it is the Year of the Dragon. We have done lots of activities linked to this celebration such as listen to story of the Chinese Zodiac, make a zodiac wreath, learn a Chinese New Year song, make Chinese dragons, perform a Dragon Dance, make lucky red envelopes, make New Year cards, practise Chinese letter and number writing. We have also learnt a little bit about China and tasted Chinese food. On Friday 27th January, to end our week of celebrations children are welcome to come to school  to school dressed in Chinese costume, as a dragon or wearing something red (the colour of the Chinese flag).

This is a story ‘All About Christmas’. Teddy is asleep under a Christmas tree. He wakes up to find himself surrounded by presents—he has never seen Christmas before! The Christmas Fairy comes down from the top of the tree to explain what Christmas is all about ………..

(Photographs to follow)

Arrangements for Christmas in Early Years 

Dear Parents/Carers

It is that time of year again and preparations are already under way for the different Christmas activities in school. We are now using our PE slots for Christmas Concert practise and therefore no PE kits are required until after the Christmas holidays.  Here is a list of important dates for you to put in your diaries:

Dress rehearsal for Christmas Production

Tuesday 6th December 9.30 am

Afternoon Nursery children to attend the morning session at 8.50 am and to be collected at 10.30 am please. They may return at 12.35 pm for their afternoon session as normal. All children to come to school dressed in their costumes. Reception children to bring school uniform in a bag to change into afterwards.

Early Years Christmas Production

Wednesday 7^th Dec and Thursday 8^th Dec at 9.30

am.

Arrangements as for dress rehearsal and remember you are invited to one of the productions of ‘All About Christmas’. We will take individual photographs of each child in their costume prior to the performance. A DVD of the production will be sold by the HSA at a later date.  Morning Nursery parents may either take their children home at the end of the performances or return for them at 11.30 am as normal. Afternoon children may return at 12.35 pm for their afternoon session.

Christmas Dinner Day

Thursday 1st December There will be no afternoon Nursery session on this day. All Nursery children to attend the morning session at 8:50 till 11:30.  Places for Playgroup Plus will need to be pre-booked if needed.

Infant Party Day

Wednesday 14^th December

There will be no morning session for Nursery children on this day. All Nursery children to attend at 1pm in party clothes. Reception children to come to school as normal dressed in party clothes. Please remember that children will go out to play on the playground as normal so we recommend appropriate footwear and coats.

Visit from Father Christmas and photographs

Nursery children will be able to meet Father Christmas on Tuesday 13^th December and have their

photograph taken with him.  He will visit in the morning and afternoon for both Nursery sessions. Reception children will able to meet Father Christmas on Wednesday 14^th December and have

their photographs taken with him in the morning.

Christmas cards

If your child is bringing in cards to share with friends please ensure both Christian name, surname and class are on the envelope to avoid any confusion and stress to staff!!!!

School Website

Please visit the school website on www.allsaintsgresford.co.uk to view latest information, letters and photographs.

Happy Christmas, when it comes!

Early Years Staff

During the week commencing 31st October 2011 we will be celebrating the Indian celebration of Diwali and learning about this different culture. We will be making our own Diva lamps using clay, making Rangoli patterns and traditional Indian Barfi sweets. We will also be listening to some traditional Indian music. On Thursday 3rd November, children are invited to come to school dressed in traditional Indian costume or in clothes that are the colours of the Indian flag (orange, green and white).

We would like to introduce you to our ‘Maths Sack’. This is a resource designed to enable you to help your child at home with some of the maths concepts that they are learning in school. All the activities recommended are designed to be fun and practical.

Each sack comes with an activity card, resources for each activity on the card, a comments book, and in some instances, a maths story. Please check the ‘Maths Sack’ before you return it to school to ensure that all the contents are there. If any contents are missing or become ‘tired’ looking, please inform a member of the Early Years staff as soon as possible so that they can be replaced. 

The ‘Maths Sack’ will be sent home with each child in the class in turn. It will be sent home twice a week on a Monday and a Thursday. Please try to make sure that it is returned on the correct day as another child will be waiting to take it home!

We hope that you find this a useful resource. Please remember that it is designed to be an enjoyable and fun experience for you and your child, not an extra pressure! We would also welcome any feedback in the ‘Comments Book’ in each ‘Maths Sack’.

The first Maths Sack to be sent home has a money theme as we have been looking at this concept in school recently. We are initially sending it home with Reception children.

On Wednesday 4th May 2011, all Early Years children took part in a planting workshop. After listening to the story ‘Jasper’s Beanstalk’, each child planted a sunflower seed, onion set and petunia. Children also helped to plant sunflower seeds, bizzy lizzy’s and strawberry plants in our outdoor area. They all had great fun and the children took their plants home to be cared for!

Our Topic this term is ‘Dinosaurs‘ and it is already proving to be very popular (and very noisy due to all the ‘raahhing’ dinosaurs)! All the children seem very interested in learning about the different types of dinosaurs and their characteristics. The boys in particular seem to huddle together with their noses in dinosaur information books and dinosaur models in front of them, trying to identify which dinosaurs they are.

Our role-play area is ‘Dinosaur Land’ where children can pretend to be paelentologists and pretend to look for fossils with magnifying glasses, a camera, brushes to dust of the earth and rock, and also ‘dinosaur bones’. They can also role-play with small toy dinosaurs and puppets, or just sit and look through dinosaur information books and photographs. It is a very popular choice during free play. A big thank you to Mrs Davies who has knitted some lovely dinosaurs for the children to play with in this area!

In Maths we have been playing a ‘Dotty Dinosaur’ game where children have to match shapes on their dinosaur board. Reception have been learning about estimating and using toy dinosaurs to do this. They have also been using dinosaurs to do simple addition sums. All children have been reading and ordering numbers by cutting out numbered plates of a stegosaurus and sticking them along its back in the correct order. Nursery children have practicing their number recognition and counting by matching the correct number of  dinosaur bones to a number. We have also been learning some new dinosaur number songs.

In Language we have been using information books to learn new facts about the different dinosaurs. The children have then painted dinosaurs and either written or recalled facts about the dinosaur they have painted. They are also going to be using their imaginations by making up their own dinosaur based on themselves!

In Knowledge and Understanding of the World we have been using information books to learn about when dinosaurs lived, aswell as looking at the different dinosaurs and their characteristics. The children have then sorted the different dinosaurs according to these characteristics, such as, those that can fly, those that have horns, those that eat meat/plants. Since starting this Topic, many children have expressed a keen interest in pterodactyls in particular and said that they would like to make a model of one. So Mrs Williams is busy looking for a simple pterodactyl model plan!!

Dinosaurs are cropping up throughout the curriculum. In Welsh, we are using dinosaur masks to use simple phrases such as “Bore da Mr. T-Rex, sut wyt ti?”.

Children have been playing a dinosaur sorting game on the interactive whiteboard where they have to choose whether to feed dinosaurs plants or meat. We have also watched some clips of the BBC programme ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ on the interactive whiteboard.

The list is endless and the children keep coming up with some lovely ideas of what we could do next!!!

In PSE this term the Topic is ‘bullying’. In Early Years we read simple friendship stories aswell as talk to the children about what makes a good friend and things we can do to be kind. We also talk about the importance of letting everyone take part and join in with our games etc. We do this through Circle Time, playing parachute games and also by making a ‘friendship web’.

This week in Early Years we will be learning all about Chinese New Year and how it is celebrated. The children will take part in a variety of activities across the week such as making a Chinese Zodiac wreath, making a Chinese fan, painting a Chinese flag, learning about China and its culture, tasting some Chinese food, making a Chinese dragon and performing a dragon dance, writing numbers in Chinese and making rabbit models and paintings. On Friday 4th February all children are invited to come to school dressed in traditional Chinese costume, wearing the colours of the Chinese flag (red and yellow) or dressed as a rabbit as 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit.

“Kung Hei Fat Choi”

In RE this term the children will also be making their own ‘Nativity’. Please could all children bring a shoebox to school by Friday 12th November to use for this activity. Many thanks.

In RE we will be learning about other cultures and beliefs. On Friday 5th November we will be looking at the Indian celebration of Diwali. All children are invited to come to school dressed in a traditional Indian costume or in clothes that are the colour of the Indian flag (white, orange, green). During that day, children will be able to take part in many activities linked to this celebration. Thank you.