Lego Discover – Session 2 ‘Let’s Deliver’

This week the children had to consider ‘How does a package get to our front door?’ We built on the language from last week and talked about our house being the destination. We thought about all the possible forms of transportation that a package would travel on to get from its starting point to there. Ideas included a lorry, a plane, a train, and a post van.

We then gave the children their own ‘Engineering Notebook’ in which they drew and labelled their favourite form of transportation. Children will be able to take these books home at the end of the Lego Discover programme to share their designs with you.

The children were then challenged to make any wheeled vehicle. They used their imagination and creativity to produce amazing new vehicles.

At the end of the session, they had the opportunity to talk about their models and share their ideas with everyone.

Recommended Reads

These are the books your friends would like to recommend this week. We hope you enjoy them.

‘The Gruffalo’ and ‘The Gruffalo’s child’ by Julia Donaldson

recommended by Holly

I love these books. Gruffalo is my favourite character. I love it when the mouse says, “My favourite food is Gruffalo crumble!”

‘Brown bear, Brown bear, What do you see?’ by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle

recommended by Alayna

I know the words to this book off by heart! I know all the colours of the animals. I like to read this book to my mummy.

‘Zog’ by Julia Donaldson

recommended by Harlie

My favourite book is Zog. I like it because he gets a gold star. I like that the princess wants to be a doctor.

Torquay Library

As part of our curriculum, we strive to give children opportunities to be immersed in a love of reading. This half term we will give every child in Foundation the opportunity to visit Torquay Library. We will take small groups of children on the school minibus for a short visit during school hours. This will also link closely to our current learning experience ‘When I Grow Up’ as we will be talking about the role of a Librarian.

Yesterday we took another group of children to the visit the library. They really enjoyed the minibus journey to our destination. At the library they spent time looking at a whole range of books. They enjoyed selecting some books to borrow for the week so that they can share them with their classmates back at school.

Police visitors

This week, we welcomed some police officers into school. They told us about different jobs within the police force such as dog handler, crash investigators, underwater divers, and working in the police helicopter. They also help people who have been a victim of crime. They talked about the links between our school values and their work. They especially use teamwork as they work together to solve problems. They are also creative and have think of clever ways to help people as every incident and every person they help is different. They also talked about how we are ‘unique’ and how they can use fingerprints and DNA from hair, skin, and saliva, to help them to solve a crime. We were able to try on some of their uniform – their vests and helmets are very heavy! We also got the opportunity to sit inside a police car, and they even turned their blue flashing lights and loud siren on (apologies to our neighbours!) The police officers let us know how we can help them by being a good citizen, for example, staying with our grown-ups, not talking to strangers, wearing a seatbelt when we are in a car, and to be nice to other people and use kind words. Thank you to the community police team for coming in and sharing your experiences with us. You have certainly inspired lots of the children to be police officers in the future!

Maths

We have been exploring number bonds to 8 this week, with the help of Sid the Spider, who has 8 legs but has the remarkable ability to place his legs on either side of his body, so sometimes he has 4 legs on one side and 4 on the other, but then he is also capable of having 6 legs on one side and just 2 on the other, or even 3 legs on one side and 5 on the other. We also discovered that ‘oct’ means 8, and we talked about an octagon shape (we see these on stop signs), an octopus and even the Octonauts! We introduced ‘counting on’ along a number track, so if we knew that he had 5 on one side we just had to count on 3 more spaces to get to 8.

Woodland Camp

We continued our exploration of hand tools this week, by introducing the children to hammers and nails. The children all worked responsibly and safely. We hear from some parents that this has started a keen interest at home to help with DIY around the house!

Messages

• Thank you to those parents who shared their work experiences and careers with their children. We really appreciate you taking the time to do this and to share it with us. We will be using these over the next few weeks. If you have not done this yet, the information is below…

PARENT HOME LEARNING!

It would be lovely if you could share your own career experiences with the children. If anyone would like to create a one page A4 profile about their job or a job they have done in the past, we would love to share these with all the children and possibly create a folder to put on our book shelf. You could include a photo and detail your job and the role you have. Your favourite part of the job, any special equipment you use, if you wear a uniform and any training you had. If you can link your job to our school values, that would be wonderful. This is of course optional, but it would be very special for the children. You could send in a paper copy or submit an electronic version via e-mail (foundation@preston.torbay.sch.uk or Seesaw. Thank you for your support.

 

• Please remember that you can also view this newsletter on the school website where you can see any photographs that we include.
• If you have any messages regarding medical appointments for your child, please e-mail or call the school office admin@preston.torbay.sch.uk Please avoid visiting the school office.
• Please ensure your child has their book bag and water bottle in school every day.

Home Learning

• Check your book bag or Seesaw for this week’s RWI activity.
• Enjoy listening to the story on Seesaw, ‘Hom’ read by Mrs Clague. This book was selected by one of our children when they visited Torquay Library this week.  
• Use Ten Town to practice numbers 1-8.

Adults

Watch the Lego Discover information video on Seesaw. Please then press the add response button to let us know you have viewed the presentation. We will then be able to send home a free ‘Six brick’ activity box for you to use at home with your child.

From Mrs Bastin, Mrs Clague and the Foundation Stage Team