Badgers Newsletter
April 2017
Dear Parents,
It is hard to believe we are in the Summer term already! We hope you all had a lovely Easter
break. We have certainly enjoyed hearing all about the children’s adventures!
Topic work
We are going to be using the traditional stories of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and ‘The
Gingerbread Man’ as the basis for our learning this half term. The week beginning 1 May is a
short one with the school closed on the Monday and Thursday for Bank Holiday and Polling Day
respectively. During this week we are going to have Maths and Science Investigation days and
finish the week on the Friday by ‘visiting’ Jamaica!
Home-School Partnership
We will continue to develop the children’s literacy and numeracy skills on a daily basis. Hearing
your child read as often as possible is invaluable, as is playing games with any
additional activities such as practising high frequency words that come home.
Regular counting and singing traditional rhymes such as “One, two, three, four, five,
once I caught a fish alive” will also support the work your child is doing in school.
If you would like any advice on how you can help your child at home, please do not
hesitate to get in touch.
Cake Sale
It is our annual cake sale on Wednesday 10 May. We will be baking and decorating lots of cakes
ourselves, but we really will need as many donations as possible. Each child can buy two cakes so
potentially we need approximately 600 cakes!! We will also need some parents to sell the cakes
over the course of the afternoon starting at 1.30 p.m. therefore we won’t have our Badgers
meeting on that day. Please let us know via the contact books if you are able to help.
The Home-School Scrapbooks
The children love showing what they have been up to when they’ve been at home and it would be
helpful if all the children could put something in each weekend. Entries do not have to be
lengthy - tickets, food wrappers, photos or things collected from walks are enough to trigger
their memories so that they have something to talk and write about. It would also benefit your
child if you could practise a sentence with them to introduce what they are going to talk about.
PE and Swimming
A plea! Please would you ensure that your child has the correct PE kit in school each
week. Finding kit for children who have not got anything to wear for PE
wastes an enormous amount of our time, and does not help the children to
become independent. We suggest that the PE kit comes in on Monday and we will send it
home on Friday. Please ensure that your child has swimming kit on the days that they
are timetabled to go.
Overleaf you will find a topic web showing the learning during this half term.
Nicki White, Jenny Ricketts, Roxanne Milner-Brown and the Badgers’ team
Communication and Language
We will:

listen to stories and share our understanding
small world toys.
share favourite toys with each other.

use our scrapbooks to talk about our own
listen to others when they share their experiences
the seeds that we have planted.

and ask them questions so that we can find out
more and show each other that we have been
learn how to care for things in the classroom and in the
environment by for example, looking after our friends and
experiences of journeys and places we have visited.

Dance
We will learn to control our bodies and co-ordinate the
movements we make while using our imagination.
Gym
We will use the apparatus safely and explore different
ways to move our bodies.
Games
We will develop the ability to throw and catch a ball or a
bean bag and throw an object accurately at a target.
We will:

continue to learn how play co-operatively, take turns and
through a range of activities such as role play and

Physical Education
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
learn that is alright not to always be the winner and that
how we act can affect our friends and family.

talk about our emotions and how we are feeling.
We will be developing our fine motor skills using various
tools and equipment and know how to use them safely.
listening carefully.

We will:

Literacy
April 2017
be learning the stories of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’
and ‘The Gingerbread Man’.

Mathematics
We will:

practise counting accurately using objects. Some of us will
be adding and taking away using objects and number lines.

find one more or less than a given number using a number
Summer 1
writing for different purposes such as posters and
line.
invitations for our cake sale.

be learning about letter sounds and some of us will be using
Goldilocks and the Three Bears

The Gingerbread Man

our phonic knowledge to help us read and write words. These
children will also be remembering to use their finger spaces
be practising making lines and marks and some of us will be
learning how to form our letters and numbers correctly.
Expressive and Creative Arts
We will:

choose and use equipment and tools appropriately to help us create pictures and
use a range of techniques to create story maps for Goldilocks and The
Gingerbread Man.

develop the skill of observation to help us sketch, paint our own representations
and create models.

explore musical sounds and make up simple rhythmic patterns using musical
instruments, including reggae when we ‘visit’ Jamaica.

use our knowledge and imagination to act in role as characters from stories.
learn about money and use it to buy things in our role play

weigh lots of ingredients to make cakes for our cake sale.

compare sizes of things using language such as big, bigger,
biggest
Understanding the World
We will:

models.

the seasons and the order that things happen in a day.
shops.
and using full stops and capital letters correctly.

learn about time by talking about changes that occur with

observe, explore and talk about the changes that occur as we move into spring,
including planting seeds, watching them grow and learning about the different
parts of a plant.
find out about animals that live in Jamaica.
In ICT we will:

use speech bubble voice recorders to talk about the changes that we can see
happening in Forest School and our environment .

continue to develop our skills to programme toys and use a CD player.
In RE we will:

think about special places and why they are special to us.