Can you believe that we are already at the end of our first half-term? The time has flown by and we are all ready for a well deserved rest! The children have worked very hard over the last few weeks and the grown-ups are all extremely proud of their efforts and achievements. 

This week has been even busier than most, as we have had a few extra things going on in addition to all our usual learning. As well as continuing to work on writing dazzling descriptions in Literacy, we have practised both addition and subtraction in Maths, and have continued our work on the continents and oceans (Y1), and the UK's countries, capital cities and seas (Y2) in Geography.

So what were the exciting extras? Over the last couple of weeks we have been working hard to prepare for our section of the virtual harvest festival assembly (which will be uploaded onto the website soon). In Elm, we learned the story of 'The Little Red Hen' off by heart, using a story map and actions to help us, and earlier this week Mr Tull popped in to film us performing it (all in a socially distanced way, of course). We were all really excited to a) have a new face in the classroom and b) show off our magnificent storytelling skills, and we hope that all of our grown-ups at home will enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed learning it!

The second thing that happened was that we learned about the truly inspirational Mary Seacole (not, as she has been called this week, Mary Seagull, Mary Sea Cow and even Mary Sequin) as part of our work on Black History Month. We found out that despite being a super, capable nurse, when Mary offered to look after the British Army during the Crimean War she was turned down because of the colour of her skin. We were all shocked and saddened by this, and as one of the children said, "It wasn't fair that Mary was treated like that because of the colour of her skin. It doesn't matter what colour your skin is, we should all be treated the same." The grown-ups couldn't have said it any better! We found out how Mary overcame this awful racial prejudice and wrote about why we thought Mary was special. Why not ask your children about Mary, and find out about the amazing things she did in the face of terrible adversity.

Please have a look at the half-term homework below, and see how you can challenge yourself while you are away from school. We hope you have a lovely holiday, and will see you all again when we come back to school in November!

Half-Term Homework Challenges

Over half-term we would like you to find out about your parents', grandparents' or family members from different generations' favourite toys growing up.

You could ask:

What was your favourite toy?

Why did you like it so much?

What was it made from?

Where did you get it from?

How did you play with it?

You can record this any way you like. You could make a poster, a leaflet or a list.

Please remember to keep reading over half-term.

Keep practising your addition and subtraction skills using the games below:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/addition/robot-addition

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/helicopter-rescue