Maths Roundup

Next week (Mon 11^th  - Fri 15^th Nov), sees the return of Maths Week England! As such, children will be taking part in lots of fun maths puzzles and games in lessons, as well as finding out about maths in real life careers during a Newsday Tuesday special.

To celebrate, we also have some school-wide events taking place:

• Thursday 14^th November - Family Games Night: Maths Escape Room Edition! 

There'll be lots of online and paper-based maths escape rooms to try as families. All are welcome. For every escape room completed, you will gain an entry to a prize draw! As usual, this half term's KIRFs and resources will be available to take away too.

• Crazy KIRFs photo competition!

Open to all ages. Take a photo of your child learning their KIRFs in an unusual way or place and submit them to Mrs Swabey by Fri 15^th Nov. There are some fabulous prizes to be won! Please print and hand in to your child's teacher or email them to lswabey@brunelprimary.co.uk

Please find this half term's KIRFs attached to this blog post.

Maths Roundup

Next week (Mon 11^th  - Fri 15^th Nov), sees the return of Maths Week England! As such, children will be taking part in lots of fun maths puzzles and games in lessons, as well as finding out about maths in real life careers during a Newsday Tuesday special.

To celebrate, we also have some school-wide events taking place:

• Thursday 14^th November - Family Games Night: Maths Escape Room Edition! 

There'll be lots of online and paper-based maths escape rooms to try as families. All are welcome. For every escape room completed, you will gain an entry to a prize draw! As usual, this half term's KIRFs and resources will be available to take away too.

• Crazy KIRFs photo competition!

Open to all ages. Take a photo of your child learning their KIRFs in an unusual way or place and submit them to Mrs Swabey by Fri 15^th Nov. There are some fabulous prizes to be won! Please print and hand in to your child's teacher or email them to lswabey@brunelprimary.co.uk

Please find this half term's KIRFs attached to this blog post.

Maths Roundup

Next week (Mon 11^th  - Fri 15^th Nov), sees the return of Maths Week England! As such, children will be taking part in lots of fun maths puzzles and games in lessons, as well as finding out about maths in real life careers during a Newsday Tuesday special.

To celebrate, we also have some school-wide events taking place:

• Thursday 14^th November - Family Games Night: Maths Escape Room Edition! 

There'll be lots of online and paper-based maths escape rooms to try as families. All are welcome. For every escape room completed, you will gain an entry to a prize draw! As usual, this half term's KIRFs and resources will be available to take away too.

• Crazy KIRFs photo competition!

Open to all ages. Take a photo of your child learning their KIRFs in an unusual way or place and submit them to Mrs Swabey by Fri 15^th Nov. There are some fabulous prizes to be won! Please print and hand in to your child's teacher or email them to lswabey@brunelprimary.co.uk

Please find this half term's KIRFs attached to this blog post.

Maths Roundup

Next week (Mon 11^th  - Fri 15^th Nov), sees the return of Maths Week England! As such, children will be taking part in lots of fun maths puzzles and games in lessons, as well as finding out about maths in real life careers during a Newsday Tuesday special.

To celebrate, we also have some school-wide events taking place:

• Thursday 14^th November - Family Games Night: Maths Escape Room Edition! 

There'll be lots of online and paper-based maths escape rooms to try as families. All are welcome. For every escape room completed, you will gain an entry to a prize draw! As usual, this half term's KIRFs and resources will be available to take away too.

• Crazy KIRFs photo competition!

Open to all ages. Take a photo of your child learning their KIRFs in an unusual way or place and submit them to Mrs Swabey by Fri 15^th Nov. There are some fabulous prizes to be won! Please print and hand in to your child's teacher or email them to lswabey@brunelprimary.co.uk

Please find this half term's KIRFs attached to this blog post.

Hello Everyone!

We a really lovely week we have to end this first half term!

Maths Update
In maths this week, our Reception children have been continuing to focus on the numbers 1, 2, and 3. The children have been listening to stories and exploring the concepts of 1 more and 1 less, using the stories as a tool for number work. Meanwhile, our Year 1 and 2 children have been continuing to develop their understanding of addition and subtraction, using and recognising what the different symbols mean. 

English Learning
In English, we have completed our unit of work based on recount writing.  The children used their filmed interviews with Rachel the nurse to recount their questions and the answers Rachel gave.  This took a lot of effort and everyone was determined to get all of their information onto the page.  we found out so much about Rachel and her job.

Music time
This week we had our weekly session with Mrs Butlin, but with a twist.  The children enjoyed singing the songs and rhymes with everyone giving there all.  Then we were lucky enough to all get a go at playing the flute.  Mrs Butlin is a beautiful player and the children love listening to her.  We got the chance to try and make some sounds using just the mouth piece and then put the flutes together so we could feel what it is like to hold the instruments.  It was not as easy as we all thought but we definitely have some potential flute players in Canute. 

We hope you all enjoy a well deserved break over the half term holidays and we look forward to seeing you all on Monday 4th November.

Mrs Andrew, Mrs Fernie, Mrs Hicks, Miss Talbot

Welcome back Foundation and Year 1!

Welcome back! We have had a lovely start to this half term in Foundation / Year 1.

We have started our new big question for this half term which is ‘What can I play with today?’ and it is a history question, focusing on toys from the past and present. We have started a discussion about how we think toys have changed and we will think more about this in the following weeks.

We had a really fun day on Tuesday all about Bonfire Night! We made sparklers out of tissue paper and sticks, used playdough to make bonfires and sparklers, used chalk to draw fireworks as well as talking about what happens on Bonfire Night. Foundation even made a bonfire in their outdoor learning! They loved talking about the how they made the fire and how they worked together.

In Maths, Year 1 are continuing their work writing number sentences. They have been working super hard and have been using numicon to help them find the numbers. We have been choosing a number, and then finding how many number sentences we can make with that number.

The children have come back settled really well and I look forward to all the fun events happening this half term!

Thank you.

Foundation / Year 1 Team

I hope you all had a wonderful half term.

It has been lovely to be back in school today with the children finishing their Victorian Workhouse descriptions.

Please see some of their fantastic pieces of writing. I am sure you will see how much effort has gone into them.

In geography, we have been learning about volcanoes and their impact on people and the environment.

We have designed and made paper mache models of volcanoes during our Design Technology lessons, paying careful attention to the way that they are formed.

Finally, we conducted a scientific experiment to make our volcanoes 'erupt'. 

I'm sure you can tell by the photos that we have made a lot of effort to ensure that our volcanoes looked magnificent and that we had lots of fun in the process. 

Storytellers have been learning about Diwali, also known as the festival of lights, and many rituals and traditions during the event include light. Diya lamps are lit around the doorways and windows of people's homes. This symbolises the triumph of light over dark and welcomes Lord Rama home from the story of Rama and Sita. The children listen to a story about family traditions celebrating Diwali. They enjoyed creating their Diya lamps and decorating our entrance with Rangoli, a popular Diwali tradition –beautiful patterns made using colourful powders and flowers. People draw Rangoli on the floor by the entrance of their homes to welcome the gods and bring good luck!  

This week, we continue our season's theme by investigating Halloween. This festival signifies the move from autumn to winter and is always a great favourite for young children.

We have enjoyed reading a classic this week, “Room on a Broom” by Julia Donaldson. The story of a witch, a group of animals who help her, good manners, friendship and cooperation was fun to read aloud because of its rhythm and rhyme and opportunities for the children to join in.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the potion Station today. They measured out bicarbonate and various coloured vinegars along with a variety of Halloween-inspired pasta shapes and then watched the results. They were totally immersed in the process, which created some wonderful learning opportunities as we talked about the reactions that happened and the words we could use to describe them.

The children carried on this passion for potions within their role-play area, currently themed as ‘Meg and Mogs’ house. There have been many magic spells and rhymes as the children explored roles together. Having a selection of pumpkins around the room has offered an abundance of learning opportunities, from size ordering and counting to mark-making in various exciting ways.

 We are excited to see what next terms learning adventures bring …

We started off October continuing to look for signs of Autumn, collecting leaves from the wider school environment and then matching them to a Leaf Identification sheet. Using some of the leaves we collected, we made Autumn crowns and wore them when singing our favourite seasonal song ‘Autumn leaves are falling down.’

We rolled conkers and pine cones in trays to create paint effects on paper leaves. 

For World Mental Health Awareness Day we enjoyed a ‘Colour Monster’ themed tuff tray and spoke about colours and feelings. With the colour theme of the day being Yellow, we attempted to find yellow items across nursery, working together to fill a tuff tray. We read ‘Sometimes I Feel Sunny’ which explores the emotions that naturally occur in every young child's life.

We enjoyed a visit from the Fire Brigade and enthusiastically looked around the fire engine, which was the perfect fit for our children’s interest fire station area.

For Harvest Festival we learnt about food and where it comes from whilst playing the role of customers and shop keeper in our farm shop. We also made bread rolls and demonstrated great turn taking adding ingredients and mixing, as well as handling tools and using rolling pins.

We kicked off some early Diwali celebrations, tasting some delicious Malaysian food and smelling lots of different spices. We used scented playdough and decorated with Marigold flowers to create some fun festive designs. 

In the library we looked at the works of our current school author, Julia Donaldson, exploring her many books and characters and listening to our favourite stories.

October

We have had a lovely Autumn October. In Science we have been looking at Seasonal changes. 
During this time we looked at how the weather can change too. By making a Water Gauge and Wind Vane we were able to make observations throughout the week. We also took a look at the daily temperature. 

To check out the strength of the wind we created our own kites. We noticed that on the day we decided to trial them the wind had died down but had moments of gusty wind. At those times the kites lifted into the sky. 

The temperature stayed between 15 - 17C and our rainfall rose from 5cm upto 20 cm by the end of our observations. 

Throughout October we managed two Autumn walks, finding red, orange and yellow leaves. The walk was a peaceful one with the sounds of birds singing and a few last butterflies fluttering around. It was great finding the Wind turbine and watching the blades go round.

It will soon be Halloween, have a lovely halfterm and spooky halloween!

The End of Autumn 1!

This half term has seen so many exciting activities and opportunities for learning. We've taken part in cricket sessions, violin tuition, a trip to Bodmin jail and street dance to name a few!

This week our celebrations for Black History Month culminated in a sharing assembly whereby we saw which notable person of colour, from the past or present, each class has focussed on. In Talland class, we spent time learning about Mary Seacole - a black lady who, during the Victorian times, was incredibly selfless, nursing soldiers in the Crimean war.

After finding out about her struggles and successes, the children created their very own 'relief printing' tile from card. They then did wax crayon rubbings over these to produce their portrait of Mary. They used the 4 colours associated with Black History Month and found out about the significance of these.

We can't wait to see what exciting opportunities Autumn 2 brings!

We hope that you have a lovely half term: stay safe and enjoy some family time.

Hello Everyone!

The children have been busy investigating all kinds of pumpkins this week. In English we have been reading the story 'Pumpkin Soup' by Helen Cooper. We began by exploring a range of different pumpkins and used adjectives to describe them. The story inspired the children to make pretend pumpkin soup during play. They added all sorts of weird and wonderful ingredients. Reception enjoyed drawing and painting the pumpkins, while Year 1 wrote a list of ingredients for how to make pumpkin soup. We are really proud of the instruction writing that Year 1 have produced this week.

Today we took advantage of the weather and spent some time in the school garden, hanging up some home made bird feeders. We also enjoyed an art lesson, where we re-created some concentric circles, in the style of the artist 'Kandinsky

After half term, our enquiry question will be 'What was it like before I was born?' Every Friday, we will have a themed show and tell, where the children can bring in and talk about something from home. On the first Friday after half term, please can the children bring in an object or a picture from before they were born. 

Have a lovely half term break.

From the Penhallow team.