Friday September 15th
A great week at Waunarlwydd School full of highlights! All the Nursery staff are delighted at how well the children have settled into morning Nursery. They have been having great fun exploring the classroom, both inside and out in the lovely weather (until the rain came). As always, the bikes have been a great hit and the children are doing really well using our balance bikes. They have been down to the woods to have a little explore, which everyone enjoyed, and painted self-portraits for our class display. It has been lovely to welcome 7 new children to the class this term who have settled in brilliantly. This week Reception have enjoyed getting to know their new routines and classroom. We have spoken about our right to come to school, learn, be safe and to relax and play and developed a class charter for us all to follow. We have started our ‘Over the Rainbow’ topic through the story ‘The Colour Monster’ and linking colours to emotions, talking about what makes us feel happy and sad.
Year 1 have loved using dinosaur figures to count reliably and sort using different criteria. They have also completed some discovery challenges all by themselves, which included continuing a dinosaur pattern and labelling a dinosaur. They are now experts at colour mixing and have painted some superb pictures to show off their skills. Thank you for all the lovely dinosaur books you have allowed us to borrow. Year 2 are loving their dinosaur topic, using adjectives to write character descriptions. They had fun making up their own raps in Music and counting in the outdoors on their muddy Thursday walk. Year 3 have started their new topic ‘Long, long, ago’ and the children have shared their EPIC ideas for their first mini topic on dinosaurs. They have really enjoyed developing their creative skills with modelling and drawing as well as working hard on reading and writing numbers independently this week.
In Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class a big hit has been their guided reading sessions in the morning, where they have been telling stories using story dice, completing reading eggs on the chrome books and using skimming and scanning skills when looking in our Where’s Wally books. They’ve loved it! Miss Shaw’s class loved writing and recording their own declaration of war, learning about what it was like to be evacuated and writing a letter as though they were an evacuee. They really enjoyed their discovery work to build on independent skills before presenting in a two page spread. Year 5 this week have enjoyed learning place value in maths, writing letters in literacy, learning about light sources and measuring shadows in science. Carrying out independent discovery tasks, learning about evacuation was also a big hit! Year 6 have been loving their swimming lessons. Lots of children are developing confidence and getting out of their comfort zones. Shelter building in the woodland was a highlight – they used their knowledge of knots to help them. Even learning about negative numbers has been mentioned as a big hit!
It was great to see parents attending our coffee morning with Fran (CAMHS in-reach support worker). We hope those in attendance found the informal nature of benefit! We intend to hold similar coffee mornings each half term.
Reminder – Consent forms for nasal flu vaccine need to be returned by Thursday 28th September. Please remember they need to be returned even with a ‘No’ response. Diolch!
Online Safety – Advice for Parents
Dates for the Diary
(**Events involving specific classes will be sent out separately**)
Monday 16th October – Thursday 26th October – Teacher/Parent meetings
Friday 10th November – Remembrance Day in school
WB 13th November – Anti Bullying Week
Friday 17th November – Children in Need
Thursday 7th December – Christmas Fair
Friday 8th December – Christmas Jumper Day
Tuesday 12th December – Nursery and Reception Concert (morning), Year 1, 2 and 3 concert (afternoon)
Wednesday 13th December – Year 4, 5, 6 Concert (afternoon), Year 1, 2, 3 Concert (evening)
Thursday 14th December – Year 4, 5, 6 Concert (evening)
Friday December 22nd – INSET DAY
As always, if you have any queries or concerns, don’t hesitate in making contact!
Have a great weekend!
Mr Jamie Evans
Headteacher
