Grayling have had a lovely final week in Foundation playing with their friends and reminising about all the fantastic learning we have done this year.... they have all come so far!

We finished off the week with a nice cold ice lolly on the field with the other Foundation classes. 

Myself, Mrs Jackson and Miss Wilkins want to say a huge thank you for your support throughout the year and for all the lovely kind messages and gifts we recieved today (please could someone write this in the whatsapp group) 

We hope you all have a great summer holidays and I am sure we will see the children around school in September! 

Best Wishes! x

This week Grayling have loved listening to the funny rhyming story of Oi Frog! We have then listened out for more rhyming words in other stories and in matching games. Next week we look forward to writing our own rhymes! 

This week we have also been super sensible talking about the NSPCC PANTS learning. Here is the song that we love to listen to... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SzbMEVYiyg 

What a fantastic way to end our week! Grayling Foundation had a brilliant time at the THS Whizz Bang workshop! They walked sensibly to get there and looked so grown up sat on the big stools with their safety goggles on in the science lab! We had great fun making rockets, slime and watching chemical reactions. Thank you for having us THS and thank you to all the parent helpers. 

This week our butterflies have hatched out of their chrysalis! We didn't think it would be fair to keep them in the net all weekend so set them free in our garden! It was so lovely to see them fly off as we said goodbye. 

We also had a special treat and went to celebration assembly where our whole class won a golden butterfly award for being so resilient with all our learning. Great job Grayling!

This week in PE we continued to explore making different shapes with our bodies. This time we had to hold our shape for the count of 5 whilst on our balancing activity! Our next challenge was to find a way to balance a beanbag on our bodies as we travelled. All of Grayling tried their best and thought of unique ways to do this! 

In Art, we have been looking at 2 artists... Darrell Wakelam and Vincent Van Gogh. We have been drawing and creating sunflowers just like Van Gogh, looking carefully at the colours and shapes. Next week will be use the junk modelling skills of Darrell to create junk model sunflowers! Thanks for bringing in all the cardboard tubes ready for this :) 

We are also excited that our caterpillars are now in their Chrysalis'! 

This week we have had some new creatures arrive.... our very own caterpillars! We are going to carefully watch them grow, transfer their chrysalis to a net and patiently wait for them to turn into butterflies! They have already been getting bigger and bigger! 

In PE we had great fun creating shapes with our bodies and using the apparatus to balance!

In Maths we have been sorting dominoes into doubles and not doubles. We know a double means you have the same number! 

We have had a brilliant healthy week! It's been jam -packed with visitors, activities and to top it off, a BMX show presented by a 3 times Guinness World record holder! 

We hope your children have come home talking excitedly about all the activities they've taken part in this week but if not, take time to look at the photos with them.  We loved starting each day with Wake and Shake on the playground. We've been able to show off our best dance moves! We have had the pleasure of meeting a Community Police Office, a local children's nurse, fire fighters, SCARF and Harold the giraffe in the Life Ed tent and so much more. We've also made a healthy snack and made fresh bread rolls inspired by our Literacy work on The Little Red Hen. 

Healthy Week is a great opportunity for us to talk to the children about how to keep our bodies and minds healthy and safe.  We've been able to give them some wonderful experiences this week, some which we hope will live in their memories for a long time.

This week Grayling have represented teen numbers using resouces like numicon, cubes, arrow cards and part part whole diagrams. Well done on being such clever mathematicians! 

We have continued to learn about how seeds grow and have listened to many lovely stories and songs. Here is one to enjoy at home... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd2O4utPw6c 

Reminder: first week back is Healthy Week and children need to wear PE kit every day!

Have a lovely half term break everyone! x

Thank you for joining us for Sports Day yesterday! We all tried our best, cheered our friends on and had great fun in the sun!

In Maths this week we have been learning about teen numbers and understanding that the 1 represents 10. Have a try at this game (select numbers up to 19)... 

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/place-value-basketball 

Grayling have settled back into school really well these past 3 days and have loved telling us all about their Easter holiday adventures! 

In school we have began learning about counting on in maths and have started to read our new literacy text The Tiny Seed. Our garden is also becoming full of tomato, carrot and courgette seedlings as well as newly planted pumpkin seeds! 

Here is a fun song about The Tiny Seed story… 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZExJaHWNjY 

Reminder- Farm trip is next Friday 2nd May. Thank you to all the parents who are coming to help! We cannot wait!

Grayling had a great time today finding Jenie's eggs for her and getting their Easter treat for filling up our classroom reward jar :) Well done Grayling! 

In bookbags you will find a tricky word pirate game and a reminder of all our tricky words on the back. 

Have a lovely half term in the sunshine! 

Yesterday the children performed their dance and drumming to the rest of their strand and we were so proud of them! They all kept to the beat and tried their best! The children sat beautifully to watch the older children, including some siblings and loved the variety of arts. They are excited to follow in their footsteps in the years to come!

In Literacy we have been reading The Night Pirates and the children have loved hiding pirates and coins around our classroom, role playing pirates outside and writing a ‘How to be a Pirate’ guide. Here is a fun pirate dance to try at home…  Just Dance Kids 2014 A Pirate You Shall Be 

In Maths we have been measuring lengths, weight and exploring capacity. Have fun with this pan balance scale game… https://springroll-tc.pbskids.org/happy-camel/c01ef930ff95427b3d797687fc8ffb7e611ef75c/release/index.html 

Please can I remind you all to bring back library books. If you have misplaced one, please feel free to replace it with another appropriate story book. 

Have a lovely weekend!

We had a fantastic day on Thursday celebrating World Book Day. The children loved parading their costumes and words for the other children in Foundation. We hope lots of families had fun participating in the sponsored read. Don’t forget to check bookbags for the World Book Day Tokens. Thank you for your continued support with the events we hold at Damers. 

In Maths we have been learning about AB and ABC patterns. Children have been using lots of different resources to create patterns. I wonder if you could create some at home? Feel free to send them into the foundation email - we’d love to see them! 

You could use large and small objects, teddy bears and books or even pans and plates! 

Heres a video all about patterns… 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bp2t8d/numberblocks-series-3-pattern-palace

Don’t forget about our Stay and…. Session next Wednesday afternoon, we look forward to seeing you. 

Have a lovely weekend! 

What a busy and long week it has been! As usual the children have been amazing and done us proud! 

The photos are a snapshot of valentines, number pairs to make 8 in maths, warm stick homes for animals outside, creative construction in busy bees and us all having a lay down in calm time today! 

In bookbags you will find a library book to enjoy over the holidays, a tricky word sheet and a slip of paper stapled inside the reading diaries to tell you which phonemes to revise based on this week's phonics assessments. 

Have a well earned rest everyone! 

Number Day! What super costumes and numbers we have seen today! The children took part in a number parade with the rest of Foundation and loved to see everyones amazing numbers! We also made some number hats showing many different number representations including some of our recent addition learning! Thank you for all the generous donations towards the NSPCC Charity. 

In Literacy we have begun our book called Super Milly and the Super School Day! We have talked about our own superpowers and how these can be things like super brave, super kind and super helpful!

In Literacy we have reenacted the party scene from the The Magic Paintbrush book. The children had so much fun! They danced, ate moon shaped cookies, played some drums and danced some more! They are very knowledgeable about China and the story behind Luna New Year.

This week in Phonics we have reached the end of our phoneme journey. All children have been taught the Reception phonemes and graphemes. Your child’s Letters and Sounds booklet is now complete! Please use the booklets to consolidate their learning at home. 

During our daily Phonics lesson we will now focus on filling gaps, reading longer words and strategies to support this alongside developing fluency and prosody. 

Phonics home learning er, air

Reminders 

Parents evening - Wednesday 5th February and Thursday 6th February. Please book through School Cloud. 

NSPCC Number Day - Friday 7th February 2025

Over the past 2 weeks we have begun handwriting lessons. The children have been so grown up and sat at the tables, trying their best to form their letters correctly! 

They have also been amazing with their segmenting to spell and remembering our new digraphs for their Magic Paintbrush story writing. The children have loved using their imaginations to create their very own magic story all about themselves! 

In phonics we have been learning ur, ow, oi and ear as well as tricky words my, by and all. Please look in book bags for tricky word sheets, continue with the phoneme books and enjoy reading the library books plus listening to your child read their phonic reader book to you! 

Phonics home learning ear, ow, ok, ur

In Literacy we have continued our learning  literacy text ‘The Magic Paintbrush’ by creating our very own super playdough monsters and labeling their features. We had big spikes, sharp teeth, long tails, multiple legs and eyes! Some were fearsome and some gentle creations but all unique. 

In our Phonics we have continued. 

Phonics home learning oo, oo, ar, or

In Maths we have been learning about ordinal numbers by lining up and racing! We have talked about coming first, last, before and after as well as how to always congratulate the winners and keep on trying!

We hope you all had a lovely Christmas break and wish you all a Happy New Year! The children have settled back into our class routines really well and eager to learn! This week we have begun our new literacy text ‘The Magic Paintbrush’ and discovered our own magic paintbrush in the classroom! We have been busy painting our own pictures and learning about the country China. 

In Maths we have been using our knowledge of 10 to count forwards and backwards. The children have used some great vocabulary such as more, less, inbetween, before, after, bigger and smaller. We finished the week creating number towers in teams and finding missing numbers! 

In Phonics we have begun learning new digraphs and a trigraph (3 letters making 1 sound!) Phoneme books are dotted so please keep using them at home. Here is the video to enjoy… Phonics Home learning, oa, igh, ai and ee 

Merry Christmas Grayling Foundation!

I can’t quite believe we’ve been in school for a whole term already! We’ve already achieved so much with our phonics, reading and writing, number work, two trips, a Christmas performance, a snow day, making new friends and so much more. 

We were so proud of the children's Christmas performance of We're Going on a Star Hunt last week and thank you all for coming and watching, it means a lot to the children. It's a real benchmark for them on their journey through school and often a favourite memory for years. You will be emailed a link to a recorded performance soon so keep your eyes peeled for that. 

We thank you all for your support over the last term and look forward to welcoming you back in the New Year on Tuesday 7th January 2025. Enjoy your Christmases together, have fun, eat plenty and make memories. 

Wow! What a super busy and festive week we have had! I think you will agree that the children did an amazing job singing and storytelling for the Christmas play. Thank you all so much for helping with their costumes and for coming to watch. 

Here are some photos from last Friday’s Secret Shop. The PTA made the community hall look so magical and the children loved going Christmas shopping! 

This week in phonics we have been learning digraphs sh,th,ng and nk. You will also find a tricky word sheet in book bags for go,no,to, into. Here is the video to enjoy at home… 

Phonics Home learning th, ng, nk, sh

In maths we have been learning about the number 10. The children were so excited to reach this number! Here is a fun number pairs to 10 game to play at home… 

Save The Whale: Learn bonds of 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 or 5 

Now December is here, Christmas is creeping into the classrooms. The tree is up and the home corner is all twinkly!

This week we’ve been excited to have a visit from the postmaster from The Buttermarket Post Office. The children loved buying their own stamps to stick on their envelopes and receiving their receipts! 

We are busy making and writing Christmas cards in class. If you’re doing any at home this is a great opportunity for your child to practise writing their name with a real purpose to it. 

We will be going to the post box on Monday 16th and will need plenty of adults to walk with us. If you can spare a bit of time that afternoon please let us know at the gate. We really appreciate your support.

We have began learning new digraphs again so please look out for blue dots in the phoneme book. Some of the pages are unfortunately in the wrong order. This week we learnt zz, qu and ch. Please leave the sh, th, ng, nk for next week :) 

Home learning phonics z, qu, ch

Here are some photos of the children learning all about the number 8. We have explored number pairs, counting animals legs, the meaning of the word 'oct' and much more! 

Grayling have been amazing at starting to learn the songs for our Christmas play. In bookbags you will find the lyrics to 'Away in a Manger' for you to sing along at home. 

Please continue to revise all taught phonemes using your child's Letters & Sounds book. 

Reminders 

Please return envelopes with 85p to send their Christmas cards to a loved one by Monday 2nd December.

Please bring costumes into school in a named bag by Monday 9th December. If you have any problems or need help with costumes please let us know as soon as possible. 

This week in phonics we have been practising some of the phonemes we have previously taught so that they really stick in our brains! The phonemes were d,u,b & f. Please keep looking through the phoneme books. A tricky word revision sheet has also been put in book bags. 

The children loved experiencing the snow on Thursday. We managed to safely have a play in our garden, crunching through the snow and feeling it melt in our hands. 

We have began to talk about Christmas time and we are learning the story ready for our Christmas Play. The children are remembering lots already and using their amazing story telling voices and actions. Please check bookbags for costume letters :) 

Please also remember to sign up to the Christmas Secret Shop. If you do not want your child to take part or need support to fund your gift then please email me on the Foundation email. 

Have a lovely weekend everyone :) 

The children had a wonderful time today parading their bikes/scooters to the rest of the school for the Bling your Bike event. It was a very festive morning. 

At Damers we want to encourage as many children to cycle and scooter to school as possible. Cycling to school is healthy, good for the environment and cheaper than car travel. It means there will be fewer cars at the school gates and above all, it’s great fun! Thank you to everyone for your participation in this. 

Towards the end of last half term we introduced ‘Tricky Words’ in our Little Wandle (Phonics) Sessions. Tricky words are words that can not be decoded easily. We use many of these tricky words often and they are used early on in decodable books, so its important for children to be able to read them fluently. We teach tricky words by identifying the ‘tricky part’ and the sounds it makes, then sound out and blending the word as normal. Please practise these with your child at home. Each week on a Friday your child will come home with a sheet of the tricky words taught that week - PLEASE CHECK BOOK BAGS! 

This week in Phonics we have learnt the new phonemes v,w,x and y. There will be no new phonemes or digraphs taught next week as we will be consolidating a few that we are finding tricky in class therefore there will be no pages to complete in their Letters and Sounds book. Please support your child by looking back through their book. 

Thank you for continuing to support your child at home with their phonics learning - Here is this week’s video - have fun. 

Phonics home learning v, w, x, y

Remember Stay and Phonics is next Wednesday 20th November at 2.40pm. We can’t wait to show you lots of phonics activities :)

This week we have been looking at the book ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak. 

To immerse the children into this story on Monday the children found some evidence that some kind of creature had been in our classroom! He left a sack with lots of items that begin with s. I wonder if the children can remember any? We will continue to build on this story over the coming weeks! 

Wednesday was a fantastic day at Thorncombe Woods! The children became nature detectives looking for a range of autumn and winter treasures. The sun was shining through the trees as the children enjoyed exploring in the forest. We would like to thank all the parent and carer volunteers for supporting us on this trip. 

In Maths we have been looking at the number 5. We have looked at various ways we can represent the number 5 and what number pairs make 5. The children remembered tally marks, 5 frames, 10 frames, Numicon, the use of pictures and our fingers plus the part-part whole model. We have been challenging children to find number pairs to make the number 5 this week.  (Number pairs are two number you can add together to make another number e.g 3 and 2 make 5, 5 and 0 make 5) 

This week in Phonics we have learnt the new digraphs ss, ff, ll and the phoneme j . (Digraph - two letters that make one sound) 

Thank you for continuing to support your child at home with their phonics learning - Here is this week’s video - have fun. 

Home Learning Phonics ss,ff,ll, J

Thorncombe Woods Trip Info: 

Wednesday 6th November - Please arrive at school for normal time. 

Children will need to come to school on the day of the trip wearing their normal school uniform t-shirt and jumper but with ‘forest friendly’ bottoms such as jeans or jogging bottoms. 

They will also need to 

• bring wellies in a bag but wear normal shoes to school 

•  bring a little backpack which they can carry their water bottle and school provided snack in. 

Parent helpers...

We thank you in advance for your support and time to help with this trip. 

Please make your way to the school office for 9.00am where you will be asked to complete a contact form. Please let us know if you are planning to meet us at the cafe in Thorncombe woods. Each helper will have a small group of children to support during the trip. We will stay together as one large group throughout our trip as we look for signs of autumn, collect natural objects and have fun exploring the forest. Don't forget your wellies, healthy snack and water bottle! 

We will arrive back at school by 12pm.

Foundation have loved starting Dough Gym, helping to make their finger muscles stronger in preparation for writing. Thank you so much for coming to our ‘Stay and…’ session today! There is a fine motor skills leaflet in book bags to give you ideas of activities to continue at home. 

This week in phonics we learnt phonemes f and l. Here is the link to the video… Phonics home learning h, f, l, b 

We hope you all have a fantastic half term break and we will see you back in school on Monday 4th November. 

Remember… Woods trip is Wednesday 6th November :) 

This week we have begun to talk about and observe the signs of Autumn. We have found beautiful coloured leaves, shiny conkers and acorns. I wonder what you can find whilst out and about?!

Here is this week's phonics video covering the new phonemes taught this week. ‘Ck’ is our first digraph… 2 letters making 1 sound! Have fun watching and don't forget to join in!

Phonics Home Learning CK, U, E, R 

This week in Maths we have been learning all about the number three. We have explored the number pairs 2 and 1, 3 and 0. We have also listened to traditional stories that have 3 main characters. Why not read a story at home such as The Three Little Pigs! 

Grayling Foundation have loved our Rhyme this week of one, two buckle my shoe. Here's a link to sing along... 

One, Two, Buckle my Shoe 

Grayling have been amazing at wearing a brave smile as they come into school and settling in so quickly with our routines. They have enjoyed 'rhyme time', number songs and stories on the carpet as well as exploring activites inside and in our outdoor area. In week 2, we explored the ks2 garden and visited the school chickens :)