Here we are in week 2 and the term has started so positively. Moving into a new classroom, with a new teacher and a new routine can be daunting. Thankfully, these wonderfully resilient and motivated children have made the transition into Bulmerland exceptionally well and we’re off to a most effective start. We had the Road Safety team visit us on Tuesday, reinforcing the necessity to take great care when out and about and how to safely cross the road. Everyone will be able to recite “stop, look, listen, think” and I hope this becomes something we all remember to do as we approach every road. Please talk to your child about what they’ve learned about being a safe pedestrian, safe places to cross a road, and the importance of walking, looking  listening and thinking until reaching the other side.

We now know that the character in our focussed book this term is The Iron Man. We’ve met Hogarth, the young boy who finds him and we’re now thinking about what the villagers need to do to solve the problems this metal giant is causing. In our writing we’re thinking about effective vocabulary, making good word choices to describe the settings in the story. Ask your children about synonyms and adjectives and I’m sure you’ll be impressed.

Hundreds, tens and ones continue to be our maths focus and ordering numbers. If you can continue to practise reciting times tables, developing a quick recall of number facts will help your children enormously.

Don’t be surprised if children start looking at the nutrition labels carried on food packaging. This week we have talked about what the green, yellow and red boxes tell us and we need to aim to avoid too many red box foods, so your Asda shop might take a little longer this weekend as children check the nutritional value of different foods, so maybe plan in a little extra time for shopping!

We love The Stone Age. We now know that there are three distinct time periods within the stone age and this week we have looked at what life was like during the early prehistoric times. Children will be able to tell you that the palaeolithic and Mesolithic people made very simple shelters using sticks and animal skins, that they ate plants and berries and animals that they caught and their simple tools were made from stones. As their skills developed, they started to make simple boats and better shelters for their family groups.

We know that stone age people left us several cave paintings in different places around the world, We have spent some time looking at pictures of these cave paintings and discussing what we can see and what they help us to understand about the lives of prehistoric people and the animals they would see at that time. Stone age people had very limited resources, not the wide choice of materials we enjoy today. In art, we have sketched different animals that we might see around our countryside today but we have used charcoal instead of pencils. Ask your children about how charcoal is made. I’m bracing myself for next week as we attempt to make our own paint from spices. Yes, it’s the dreaded “ P ” word. Oh, what joy.

I hope you enjoy looking at our work. Mrs B x