Friday 19th November

What a great way to end another week! Children in Need Day has been a success and we’ve had some wonderful costumes around the school from princesses and superheroes to sports stars! The children have thoroughly enjoyed and we thank you for your kind donations to an amazing cause. We’ll count up donations and let you know the total raised next week.

There have been lots of other highlights this week! Nursery have been giving Crufts a run for their money with their incredible dog show and the children loved bringing in their own fluffy companion. They made a Dalmatian dog to take home, drew a portrait of their dog, completed an obstacle course, had a yummy dog bone biscuit and everyone won a certificate. One of the best bits was when all the dogs hid in the classroom when the children were having a snack. Dragons arrived in Reception this week! The children enjoyed listening to the story of Herb the Vegetarian Dragon and thinking of words to describe the two dragons, Herb and Meathook. They have been really creative and made some fantastic shape dragons. Miss Tyrrell’s class also loved listening to their new story about Herb the dragon and enjoyed giving reasons for the big decision. Should Herb join Meathooks gang and eat Knights and Princesses or not? They also demonstrated excellent listening skills when following instructions on how to draw Herb the dragon. The children were also very excited to decorate their Diva lamps. Mrs Horseman and Mrs Tucker’s class have thoroughly enjoyed their first week learning about the Great Fire of London. Children enjoyed generating their own questions about the Great Fire of London and have started making awesome Tudor houses. Another highlight has been problem solving with money. Great work! Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class have enjoyed discussing the qualities that make them such good friends to each other and making friendship cards promoting the message ‘Be Kind.’ Another big hit has been completing their Diva pots and cracking Children in Need codes and word problems.

Dates for the Diary

Friday November 12th

Teachers have enjoyed catching up with parents this week and discussing the wellbeing and progress of the awesome children of Waunarlwydd. Remember, we are working together and if you have any concerns let us know. If you didn’t make an appointment with your child’s teacher and wish to do so, contact the school and we will arrange a suitable time.

Extra-curricular clubs

Clubs will be returning after school next week. You should have received a form by text. Please complete if you would like your child to attend the club for their year group. Reception children will be able to attend their club after Christmas.

Year 1 and 2 – Creative Kids (Tuesdays)

Year 3 – Sport and multi-skills (Thursdays)

Year 4 – Sport and multi-skills (Tuesdays)

Year 5 and 6 – Drama (Tuesdays), Tech or coding (Tuesdays), Craft (Wednesdays)

Highlights of the week

We celebrated Remembrance Day on Thursday with lots of activities throughout the school to remind children of the reasons behind this special day. We were very proud as the children gathered on the yard for a moment’s silence and listened to ‘The Last Post’ in such a respectful and thoughtful manner!

The Nursery have had a great week creating firework patterns with natural objects for welly Wednesday and drawing fireworks with chalk and on the I pads. To finish off the mini topic the children loved spinning and jumping like fireworks in their gym lesson.

The highlight for Reception has to be their amazing trip to Singleton Park – they didn’t let the weather spoil the day and had so much fun exploring the bug hotel, looking for Autumn changes and climbing and balancing on the wooden play area.

Mrs Horsman and Mrs Tucker’s class have enjoyed learning all about Diwali this week, making Diva lamps, creating rangoli patterns in outdoor learning and retelling the story of Rama and Sita. Another highlight was exploring different light sources and making shadows.  Diwali was a big hit in Miss Tyrrell’s class as well with clay diva pots and the retelling of Rama and Sita using stick puppets. The children also loved using their creative skills to make poppies out of clixi and multilink and had lots of fun exploring shadows by using torches and toy figures. Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class have loved learning about and drawing nocturnal animals and developing their addition skills using bigger numbers while their digital highlight has been sending emails.

Year 3 have been finding out information about what pirates ate and drank as well as tasting a pirate drink with sugar, lemon and ginger. Another big hit has been learning about the gruesome illnesses that pirates often suffered from! Year 4 have enjoyed learning about what facilities a village needs and creating their own maps and keys. Another high point has been learning about the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod and creating their own giants. In number children have challenged themselves by learning different ways to multiply, while they have also been learning about Cop26 and our own carbon Footprints.

Dates for the Diary

Friday November 19th – CHILDREN IN NEED (We look forward to seeing the children wearing spots, fancy dress or non-school uniform) There will be collection buckets at the start and end of the day if you’d like to make a donation.

Tuesday 23rd November –  We will be taking part in ‘The Queen’s Green Canopy’. The Queen’s Green Canopy (QGC) is a unique tree planting initiative created to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022 which invites people from across the United Kingdom to “Plant a Tree for the Jubilee”.

Wednesday November 24th – Nasal flu vaccinations (Consent forms must be returned)

As the weeks pass by and December draws nearer, we would like to assure you that, although we are unable to hold a concert due to restrictions, we have lots planned to ensure that Christmas is a special time for the wonderful children of Waunarlwydd School!

As always thanks for your ongoing support and, if you have any queries or concerns, don’t hesitate in getting in touch with us!

Have  a great weekend!

Mr Jamie Evans (Deputy Headteacher)

Friday November 5th

Another packed week at Waunarlwydd! Nursery have had loads of fun hammering pumpkins, writing their name in glitter and doing leaf rubbings. Their favourite activity though, was making a sparkler that they could eat. Reception have been having fun exploring Autumn, looking through all their Autumn bags and sorting the treasures that they’ve found, making wonderful Autumn patterns. ‘The Little Acorn’ story was another highlight and the children loved creating beautiful pictures showing the life cycle of an oak tree. A highlight for Miss Tyrrell’s class has been using wow words when writing their Harvest thank you prayers. They have also thoroughly enjoyed exploring sources of light and  learning the story of Guy Fawkes before writing bonfire safety rules. Mrs Horseman and Mrs Tucker’s class have enjoyed learning about Bonfire night and Diwali. The children have loved talking and writing all about bonfire night safety, creating their own firework shop in their role play area and making firework rockets using 2D shapes. Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class have also been learning about Diwali, writing a recount of the story of Rama and Sita and making amazing clay diva pots. Their writing and performance of Bonfire onomatopoeia poems is another highlight, while learning how to send emails safely was another big hit.

All things to do with fireworks have been the highlight in Year 3 this week with some incredible firework dancing, awesome acrostic poetry and very creative scratch art among the hits of the week. Top of the tree for Year 4 this week has been creating their own giants, closely followed by designing their own version of Waunarlwydd and what they think makes a perfect village. It’s been all about leadership in year 5 and 6 this week. The children have enjoyed being challenged in different ways and learning about leaders within different communities. They thoroughly enjoyed their rock climbing experience at dynamic rock – the thrills, the team support and the challenge of trying to get to the top. Another high point was the egg drop involving working together to protect an egg. Great work everyone!

Diolch

A huge thanks for your Christmas shoe box donations. They have now been collected and will be sent off this week. Another massive thanks on behalf of ‘Matthew’s House’ who have sent us a video message of thanks after being blown away by our kind Harvest donation! Diolch pawb!

Reminders

Teacher/parent phone calls – Hopefully you have all now completed the online form texted earlier in the week. Teachers are looking forward to catching up with parents to discuss wellbeing and progress!

Flu vaccine – Please can you send in consent forms if you haven’t done so already.

INSET DAYS – Monday 6th December and Friday 17th December (Children’s last day of term Thursday 16th December) Tuesday 4th January (Children return to school on Wednesday 5th January)

As always thanks for your ongoing support and, if you have any queries or concerns, don’t hesitate in getting in touch with us!

 Have a fun and safe Fireworks Night and a great weekend!

Mr Jamie Evans (Deputy Headteacher)

1 November 2021 Letter Parents Carers v1.0

Friday 22nd October

We’ve reached the end of our first half term of the year and, while it hasn’t been without it’s challenges, we have worked together as a whole school community to make it a success. We’ve ended with another week full of highlights. The Nursery have had great fun playing in their new cafe and castle role play areas. On Welly Wednesday they thoroughly enjoyed looking for different colours and patterns to change the colour of their chameleon. The highlight of C week though, was having crumpets for snack. It’s been another busy week in Reception continuing our ‘Cinderella’ mini topic. Children have enjoyed making their own music compositions to go with the story and have also loved measuring and comparing foot sizes and decorating footprints. The class read ‘Dillad Tedi Twt’ and have been awesome at learning Welsh vocabulary for clothes and weather. Miss Tyrrell’s class have been estimating and measuring their beanstalks using blocks and creating thoughtful pictures of people, butterflies and spiders by using their autumn treasures. They loved listening and responding to music to recreate autumn days during their gym session but the biggest hit was their wonderful trip to Singleton Park. Mrs Horseman and Mrs Tucker’s class have all enjoyed learning about Harvest this week; they have written some lovely Harvest prayers, thinking about everything they are thankful for and sang Harvest songs. They have also been talking about Black History month, how we are all different and thinking about ‘what makes me special’. The highlight though was definitely the trip to Singleton Park!

Year 2 have enjoyed challenging themselves in maths, tackling analogue and digital time. Please keep practising at home over half term! Children have made a timeline looking at homes through the ages and have really enjoyed using the small world wooden equipment to recreate London in 1666 and act out the fire of London. It’s been a busy week in Year 3! Children have used their imaginations to create pirate jewellery on the make it table, used magnets and maths for a fishing investigation and put their digital skills to the test when creating an online database of famous pirates using J2e! Year 4 have been around the school measuring temperatures of different places and looking at negative numbers in numeracy. Some were as high as 40c, while outside were as low as 10c. The class have enjoyed comparing Waunarlwydd in the past to how it now looks and spotting the similarities and differences. They have also finished their wonderful stories on the Rhymney giant. Great work!

Harvest

Diary dates

Friday 15th October

SHWMAE PAWB! It’s been a great way to end the week with today’s Shwmae day. The school has been full of Welsh colours, Welsh music and loads of fun linked to the wonderful country that we live in.

There have been loads of other highlights during another busy week! The Nursery had a great adventure on Welly Wednesday, going on a bear hunt. They splashed in the water, squelched in the mud, climbed over tree stumps and even went through a snowstorm. The bear now lives in the classroom! They were also very excited to decorate their own biscuits and take them home. This week, Reception have been learning through the story of Cinderella. They have loved making glass slippers by matching the correct number of gems to the slipper, decorating pumpkins, slippers and dresses and thinking about what may have happened to the stepsisters at the end of the story. They ended the week with a fantastic show of Welsh colours for Shwmae day and created ‘Croeso’ posters for their classroom door.

Parent Consultations and Christmas concert

Congratulations

Friday October 8th

Another busy week has come to an end in Waunarlwydd Primary School as the weeks seem to fly by. The Nursery have had great fun in their two new role play areas, a baby clinic and birthday party home corner. They also enjoyed throwing and catching balloons in their gym lesson and making birthday cakes with playdough. Carrying on with their topic of Jack and the Beanstalk, the Reception children have had fun creating some beautiful drawings to retell the story. They have also been exploring length, ordering beanstalks from shortest to tallest as well as trying to make the tallest beanstalk they could! Sounds this week were ‘m i d and n’ and the children have loved playing games on Fast Phonics. Miss Tyrrell’s class loved building a beanstalk using number bonds to 10 and measuring beanstalks using blocks. They showed how their vocabulary is developing by using incredible wow words to describe the giant and Jack, while they continue to enjoy looking after the beans that they planted and watching them grow shoots.

Mrs Horseman and Mrs Tucker’s class have been adding and subtracting using beans and measuring the giants’ footprints using cubes. They have enjoyed writing wonderful character descriptions of Jack and thinking about what they would like to have at the top of their own beanstalk. The children’s own beanstalks grow taller each day! It’s been a fun filled week in year 2 with a highlight being the walk around Waunarlwydd looking at different materials, how houses are made now and what types of houses there are. Children have loved learning about what happened in the fire of London in 1666 and loved recreating how the people tried to put out the fire by passing buckets of water along a line. The pirate theme has continued to be a huge success in Year 3 with the children learning all about sailing knots (which has helped with shoe laces). The children thoroughly enjoyed using their digital skills and awesome vocabulary to make pirate word photos, while their i-movies talking about famous pirates highlighted their wonderful oracy skills.

With Shwmae Day coming up next week, Year 4 have really enjoyed learning and writing about the things that make Wales famous. Their improvement in the use of number lines to find differences was also a highlight and, of course, there’s been more to learn about the legends of Wales. It’s been a very creative week in Year 5 and 6! Listening to Tudor music and creating a Tudor dance were huge favourites, and learning more about Henry VIII through studying a famous painting was also a big success. Children enjoyed learning and demonstrating their skills using the grid method to multiply, with great progress all round, while their netball lessons have also been a big hit.

Shwmae Day – Friday October 15th

SHOE BOX APPEAL

INSET DAYS

Monday December 6th 2021

Friday December 17th 2021  (Last day of term for children will be Thursday 16th December)

Tuesday January 4th 2022 (Children return after Christmas on Wednesday January 5th)

Friday October 1st

We haven’t let the rain get in the way and it’s been another super week full of highlights! The Nursery enjoyed lots of activities for their first Sound of the Week. The favourites were making pretend apple pies with porridge oats, building dens for the animals and painting apples. Some children even tasted avocado for the first time. It’s been a busy week in Reception with loads of  Jack and the Beanstalk fun. Children have really enjoyed counting out beans, building beanstalks using blocks, retelling the story using props and using their imagination to move in different ways to classical music linked to the story. They have also started using Fast Phonics to learn their letter sounds. All of the children have come home with their own Reading Eggs login details so that they can play the games at home.

Jack and the beanstalk has also been a huge hit in Mrs Horseman and Mrs Tucker’s class. The children have counted beans up to 20, put the beanstalks in order from shortest to tallest and even planted their own beans. They have also completed a role on the wall, writing different words to describe the giant and Jack.

Year 2 have thoroughly enjoyed writing character and setting descriptions this week using some wonderful vocabulary. A pleasure to read! Children have also enjoyed working hard on their place value skills and the dinosaur challenges have proven to be a big hit.

There has been a mystery in Year 3 this week. The children arrived on Monday to find a black spot on the door. A chalk outline, (fake) blood and clues completed the mystery which the children had to solve to uncover the perpetrator. They discovered it was the barbarous Blackbeard and then sought to use their knowledge of him to make a menacing looking portrait. There’s been some awesome maths in year 4 this week with the children learning how to add large numbers in columns. The focus on Welsh legends is continuing to be a big hit, with some beautiful  painting, using water colours, and wonderful writing of a narrative poem.

INSET DAYS

As always thanks for your ongoing support and, if you have any queries or concerns, don’t hesitate in getting in touch with us!

Have a great weekend!

Friday 24th September

It’s been another week full of learning and laughter at Waunarlwydd Primary School! So many highlights to choose from! The Nursery children have had an exciting week with a little visitor coming to the classroom every night. Every morning they’ve come in to class wondering what ‘Cheeky Monkey’ has been up to. He’s painted a circle, practiced writing numbers, built a tower with blocks and today he even left them a little treat. This week Reception have loved learning more about the 3 Little Pigs. They have learnt to tell the stories using special actions, made shape pigs, decorated the pigs houses and practiced writing numbers 1, 2 and 3.

Miss Tyrrell’s class loved their walk around Waunarlwydd, looking at different types of houses and finding the odd and even numbers. They enjoyed sorting materials into groups of plastic, glass, wood and metal and talking about their properties, while making a class bar chart of house types was also a big hit. The Waunarlwydd walk has also been a high point for children in Mrs. Horseman and Mrs. Tucker’s class, while they have also thoroughly enjoyed continuing their 3 little pigs topic and finding which materials are waterproof for a roof.  Year 2 decided in their EPIC planning that they would like to learn about dinosaurs as part of their topic ‘Long, Long Ago.’ Children enjoyed reading lots of dinosaur stories and finding some fantastic wow words to describe their dinosaurs. Another highlight has been looking at coins, making amounts and having lots of fun making tens and units out of natural materials in forest school!

The world of pirates has continued to be a big hit in year 3 with some awesome Blackbeard sketch portraits. Creating famous pirate fact files also stood out for the the children. Mr Jenkins’ class have been getting creative with their writing this week and have thoroughly enjoyed writing powerful sentences linked to their focus on the myths and legends of Wales! Awesome work! Working with the Ospreys has been a massive highlight for Year 5 and 6 this week. The children loved developing their rugby skills and also finding out about the careers of 2 Ospreys players in a Q and A session with some really thoughtful questioning. Children have also enjoyed using their reporting skills to write a newspaper report about the Battle of Bosworth.

We will be celebrating Harvest in a few weeks and we will let you know next week how you can donate to Matthew’s House in Swansea.

As we continue to manage the COVID-19 situation locally and follow guidelines put in place for Swansea schools, let’s keep working together as a whole school community! As always, if you have any queries or concerns, don’t hesitate in getting in touch with us!

Have a great weekend!

Friday September 17th

It’s been another eventful week back in school as we all settle into the new year! There have been loads of highlights! It’s been great to see and hear the children having fun and learning both in and outdoors. The Nursery really enjoyed going into the woods for Welly Wednesday for the very first time. They loved playing with the balls, hoops and musical instruments. This week the Reception children have painted wonderful self portraits creating a gallery of faces! They had fun in their first gym session completing an obstacle course and we have been practicing counting up to 20 and backwards from 10 to blast off! Year 1’s topic this week has been the 3 little pigs and the highlights have been retelling the story as a class, sequencing the story and constructing houses out of Lego in groups. They have also started to find out about different materials.  It’s been another lovely week in Year 2. A highlight has been using the chrome books and ipads to log on to hwb and make a mix of pictures and writing about themselves. In Maths they have enjoyed working on their understanding of tens and units and even hundreds, tens and units.

Year 4 have really enjoyed learning about the story of Gelert and a big hit was their super art pictures of the Welsh giant Ritta. Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed their pirate immersion day including a message in a bottle with pirate challenges including a treasure hunt. Other highlights were Pirate yoga in the hall and learning pirate language in preparation for International Talk like a Pirate Day – this Sunday 19th September!! Year 5 and 6 have loved being crime scene investigators this week, while having the opportunity to be nasty in a maths game also rated highly. The children are excited about working with the Ospreys and have already found out lots of facts about them.

This week has seen the top gate reopened and a return to normal school times (8.50 to 15.20). Just a reminder that children in years 3 to 6 will now leave the top gate unsupervised at 15.20. Unless you are happy for them to walk home, please remind children that if no-one is there to collect them they should return to school.

Unfortunately, as you will have read in the letter from the Director of Education this week and due to the high number of cases locally, schools in Swansea have been put on high alert with regards to COVID transmission and we have been asked to take steps, such as social distancing and mask wearing, to help prevent the continuing spread of the virus in the wider community. We appreciate your support on this matter.

Let’s keep working together as a whole school community! As always, if you have any queries or concerns, don’t hesitate in getting in touch with us!

Have a great weekend!