Summer 2
Woodlands Virtual School Tour
Opal Class Update
Home Learning Link - Leaves
Summer 1
Summer 1 – More ideas for how to keep calm and carry on at home
We know that it feels as though this period of time will never end. Here are a few more ideas and suggestions for different things that might help keep parents and children entertained and smiling.
- The cbeebies website has a lovely list of activities and ideas to do – most of which are indoors which will be great if it continues to rain! I particularly love the idea of creating your own tv show or theatre production and making music in the kitchen – please send us photos if you take any!
The children in Opal class have had great fun using the educational games in some areas of the website before and know their way around the site – helping them play and learn with some independence, while you know they are interacting with safe, age-appropriate content.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/things-to-do-indoors-with-your-children
- Have a look at websites like phonics play https://new.phonicsplay.co.uk/
They have lots of great activities to support children with phonics recognition and learning their sounds, blending together CVC words, all the way up to reading much more complex words. Best of all, they have made access to the website and all the content free for the duration of the corona virus lockdown.
While recommending these internet and app based activities it must be said that we all know that it is even more important than ever to be aware of internet safety now we are all at home and every single one of us is using the internet even more!
Please check out the RHS safety page that Emma has recently updated here:
And our original page with lots of information and resources to look at – both for parents and children https://www.richmondhill.luton.sch.uk/e-safety/
Never underestimate the power and impact of the simple tasks that you do with your children anyway. You are and have always been, teaching them and reinforcing skills all day every day.
- Read a story together – ask questions as you read and encourage children to read some of the words themselves.
- Count the shopping as you put it away after a trip to the shop or an online delivery.
- Explore heavy and light with the groceries they can find in the cupboards. Which feels heavier? Which will weigh more if we use the scales? Which one has a bigger number written on it? What does the g mean?
- Explore capacity as you run the bath or do the washing up (disclaimer … enthusiasm may lead to puddles on the floor!).
- Go for a walk and read the numbers on the doors of each house, look for rainbows.
- If you haven’t already – make your own amazing rainbows together!
Keep in touch, keep safe, keep smiling 😊
Spring 2
What can you do while we are all at home continued..
Now that the weather is not so nice, here are some things to get up to while inside.
- Make salt dough / playdough together ( the recipe is in your home-learning pack in the folder). Use it to make models or simply to play and explore. Following the recipe, measuring ingredients and doing the mixing are all valuable skills for your children and then playing with it is a fantastic fine motor skill activity to build strength and dexterity.
- Play twister or simon says. These types of silly game support listening skills, decoding skills as we follow directions, positional language acquisition and are great for gross motor skills.
- Play boardgames, cardgames or dominoes. This can be as simple or as complex as you like but there are valuable skills in turn-taking, instruction decoding and processing information. Jigsaws are also fantastic as they support problem-solving skills, fine motor-skills, perseverance and resilience as well as team work if you do them together.
- Cook together. Opal class love cooking at school and are very good at chopping, stirring, mixing, kneading and following instructions. Reading recipes and measuring ingredients is fantastic maths skills, and kneading or shaping dough or biscuits is great for dexterity.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/feature/how-get-kids-cooking has some fantastic recipes. - Bonus – they also have a recipe for how to make your own bubble mixture. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-make-bubble-mixture
- Do what works for your child and your family 😊 These are all only suggestions. Take Care of each-other.
What can you do while we are all at home
While we are all at home and unable to come to school as normal, we know it is going to be challenging to keep children busy, entertained, active and learning. We want to give you as many ideas and as much support as we can so do keep coming back to check on what we have on this page and on our school home learning page
https://www.richmondhill.luton.sch.uk/home-learning/
While the sun is shining it makes sense to think about things that we can do outside:
- Use a paintbrush and water to paint outside on patios, walls, blackboards, fences – this is great for pictures, for practising writing our names and for practising letter formations and spelling simple words. The best bit? It dries in the sun and leaves no mess to clean up!
- Play football or other ball games to work on gross motor skills and teamwork skills.
- Play I-spy or other describing games – it sounds simple but it supports skills with phonics and identifying initial sounds (something beginning with….) or supports communication and expression skills (something straight and flat…)
- Build a Den or a fort – set up somewhere to have a picnic or to read a story together in the garden.
- Have a teddy bear picnic or just a picnic lunch – can the children set up the rug and find all of the things you need? Can they count out the right number of plates and cups and cutlery for your family?
- Follow the fantastic ideas from the woodland trust for activities to do in the garden https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2020/03/kids-nature-activities-self-isolation/
- Play together, stay safe and stay smiling!
Please find below our curriculum map for this term.
Spring 1
Carnival!
We were lucky enough to have a visit from the Carnival Arts Centre and look at the fantastic costumes we got to dress up in!! Look at our smiling faces!
Wow!
We started our topic off my visiting different classrooms and experiencing lots of different influences on black culture! We had lots of fun and discovered we are very loud drummers!!
Please find below our curriculum map for this term.
Autumn 2
Jigsaws
We have been working on our maths skills and our dexterity and fine motor skills by exploring jigsaw puzzles. This has also been fantastic for our problem solving and resilience.
Hedgehogs
As part of our winter wildlife topic, we have learned all about hedgehogs. Creating fact files with Hannah and really using our muscles and fingers to knead and shape dough into delicious hedgehog bread rolls (Disclaimer: No Hoglets were harmed in the making of our bread)
Christmas!
Thank you to our parents for their support with all our trips so far this year. For our festive trip, we went to Luton town centre to meet Santa and his elves! While we were there we also went to Poundland to buy secret Santa presents for our friends before we went to McDonald's for our lunch. Look at our happy smiling faces!
Magic!
Halloween and the Wizard of Oz story gave us the perfect opportunity to transform into witches and wizards and make a magical potion! We kept our hats and wands so that we could cast spells over all of the teachers at school!
Please find below our curriculum map for this term.
Autumn 1
WOW - We are Fit as a Fiddle!
We started our topic with an afternoon of fun activities to see how fit we were. We did some zumba, practised our boxing and penalty shooting and tested out how accurate we were throwing bean bags at a target. We are going to try them all out again in a few weeks and see if we have got even fitter!
Cookery - Fajita Picnic
We made vegetable fajitas in our cookery this week and it was so warm and sunny we thought we would sit outside and have a picnic so we could try what we had made. YUMMY!
Paddington Bear!
We have started to think about our english book of Paddington Bear and we were thinking about what we know and can see about Paddington - Have a read and a look at all of our fantastic ideas.
Welcome to Opal Class and Year six!
Our class is made up of ten fantastic children and five lovely grown-ups (Claire our teacher, Tina our TA3 and Leanne, Kimberley and Lynn). We have five boys and five girls in our class and we all have big smiles and lots of ideas! We are looking forward to a great year together.
This half term our topic is “Fit as a Fiddle” and it gives us the opportunity to learn about all the different ways we can look after our bodies and stay healthy – which is so important now we are getting bigger and are almost ready to leave Richmond Hill!
In English, we are going to focus on the book Paddington, thinking about what it must be like to be a bear in a strange country – what would we pack? How would we feel? How do you make the world’s best marmalade sandwich?
Please come back soon to see all the things we get up to all year long!
