Our topic for this half term is This week we visited America to find out about Thanksgiving. The class listened to a story about the Pilgrims who set sail from England to find a new place to live. They found out about the Native Indians who kindly taught them how to build new homes and hunt for food. At the end of a hard year, the Pilgrims and Indians held a Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate and give thanks. Each child made a Thanksgiving story bracelet using coloured pasta ‘beads’ to help them remember the different parts of the story. See if they can use their bracelet at home to help re-tell the story to you. The class talked to their friends about what they were thankful for in their own lives. They each wrote a label and drew a picture on a pumpkin template. We made paper plate turkeys and counted out the correct number of feathers to represent each letter in our names. We are trying really hard at school to form letters in our names using cursive handwriting. Each day in phonics we learn to form a new letter the right way and can see an increasing number of children transfer this skill into their everyday writing. It is wonderful to see that children are practising their writing at home and bringing it into school to show us. We would like to say a big thank you to Mrs Clarke who came into school this week to talk to the class about how her family celebrate Thanksgiving. She very kindly bought in some turkey and pumpkin pie for the children to share. These are traditional foods that her family will be eating for their special Thanksgiving dinner at home. This week in Maths, we spoke about money and different currencies. We set up an American Shop in our classroom to help us in our role play. Children practised counting out American Dollar Bills to pay for the items in their shopping basket e.g. a box of pop tarts which cost $10. Remember to make sure your child can count out 10 objects reliably at home. Some children learned how to find the total cost of two items in the shop e.g. 5 dollars add 3 dollars equals 8 dollars. We used our fingers to help us. Perhaps you could set up a small shop together at home and price some items from 1p to 10p. Encourage your child to choose one or two items to buy and count out the correct number of pennies to pay for each item. To find out the total cost of two items you could combine the two groups of pennies to find out how much they will cost altogether. We would love to hear how you child gets on with this skill at home so remember to write it on a ‘learning at home’ label. Our topic for this half term is ‘Around the World’. WB 21/11/16 We will begin our rehearsals for the Christmas Nativity next week. We will send a Nativity costume letter home on Friday. Please see letter for more details. Performance times are as follows: Monday 12th December 2016- Afternoon dress rehearsal for children at school Tuesday 13th December 2016- Morning performance 9.30am Wednesday 14th December 2016- Afternoon performance 2.30pm At the end of last week, children brought home a sound or word envelope. Please practise these together at home as often as you can. New sounds/envelopes will be added each week. I hope your child enjoyed their first woodland visit this week. We will continue to visit the woods on a Friday morning. Next week we will be learning about ‘The Christmas Story’ in preparation for the Nativity and Christingle Service at church.