Earth Day

Earth Day is celebrating its 50th anniversary today. It is a global event that happens every year where more than 1 billion people take part in what is the largest civic-focused day of action in the world.  Usually, people march, sign petitions, meet with their elected officials, plant trees, clean up their towns and roads. Environment Organisations and governments use it to make pledges and announce sustainability measures. 

The theme this year is Climate Action. Earth Day is running a Climate Action Challenge which you might like to get involved with at home. https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-challenge/ 

We would like you to take part in this day if you can. You may want to link it with Mrs Smith’s assembly task this week to make it even more relevant. 

You could:

• Plant a vegetable from seed
• Reuse an item like newspaper, carton or toilet roll tube to make a plant pot or maybe upcycle something in your house giving it a new life as a plant container
• Reduce your food waste
• Create a healthy snack
• Make a meal from locally sourced food 
• Try a plant based meal for lunch or dinner if you’ve never tried one  
• Make your own wormery  
• Make a bug hotel or a bird box using recycled items that could be found around the home 
• Sow wildflower seeds to create a habitat for bees and insects
• Make a pledge linked with protecting our environment
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair, Refuse, Rethink! 

You might have your own ideas about what you could do on this day.  Please send photos with a short explanation of what you did along with any environmental pledges to earthday@damers.dorset.sch.uk by Friday. 

Finally, you could watch Jane Goodall: “The Hope” documentary  on Wednesday 22nd April at 8pm on National Geographic and Nat Geo WILD.

Have a great Earth Day, we look forward to seeing what you got up to. 

Maths:

Whilst thinking about Earth day and Mrs Smith’s cooking themed assembly this week, why not include some maths learning. 

Counting – carefully count out how many seeds you have at home, how many recycled items you have found for a bug hotel or how many different types of ingredients you have for your cooking. 

Weighing – use scales to weigh out your ingredients for your cooking. Have a go at reading the numbers on the scales. Compare which food items are heavier and order them from heaviest to lightest. 

Shapes – what 2D and 3D shapes can you spot in your recycled items for the bug hotel? Are there any shapes in the food you use for your cooking or the kitchen items you use? 

Phonics

It is really important that you keep reading and writing those tricky words. To help with this you could try this spooky look, cover, write, check game. There isn’t a foundation stage option but the year 1 words are words that you will know. 

http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/spookySpellings/index.html

Silly Sentences

This week have a go at reading and writing some silly sentences.  Grown ups if you write one word at a time allowing children to read slowly and carefully. Choose sentences to suit your child or use ones below. Encourage your child to have a go at writing their own one for you to read too. 

A fox can sleep in a box.

The sun is wet.

A chimp can hang on a chair.

We go to bed at lunch time.

A cow can bark.

The pot can sing.

Segmenting to spell – hide the bear! 

Why not try to write the different areas of your home.

Grown ups can use one of your stuffed toys and hide it around a room in your house while you shut eyes. Open your eyes and find your toy, write down where it is or something that it is near! Places that your toy could be hidden are chair, stool, books, bed, lamp, picture, desk, freezer (as an extension use positional language – on top of the bed, under the stool, next to the books) Keep moving the toy around. 

Today is PE day!

We hope you have been enjoying joining in with Joe Wicks or the Cosmic Yoga PE sessions. For a little more variety you could always try a few of the following dances from Just Dance for Kids on YouTube!

We hope that you all had a lovely Spring Break and were able to enjoy some of the good weather. We are still missing all of you and hope that we can all see each other again soon. 

During the Summer term we will offer some home learning suggestions based on farming, growing and animals, this should fit nicely with the assemblies that we had just before the spring break too. We will be learning about plant life cycles and where our food comes from, typical farm animals and the names of their young. For our maths learning we will be exploring pattern, shape and doubles. 

Let’s kick off our new topic with this wonderful story by Eric Carle called ‘The Tiny Seed’. If you have a copy of this at home please read it today, if not you watch it here. 

Today we would love you to be seed investigators. Why not take a pad and pen with you on a walk and try to find as many things as you can that have grown from a seed? You or your grown up could write the names of the things that you find or draw some pictures. 

You could also take a look at the food you have in your house to see which foods have seeds in them or which foods may have grown on a plant or tree from a seed.

Don’t forget to check here from Monday to Friday from 9am for more learning ideas. We would love to hear what you have been up to so please keep commenting on the blog or post a picture on EExAT.  

Goodness me I have missed you during the Easter break but I am delighted that we have a chance to get all the blogs up and running today and to start our week together again – Good Morning everybody!

As always, your grown-ups have an email to help with the assembly this week and I’ve included a few extra clips in the notes if you would like to learn more.

It has been great to hear about all the growing that has been happening in homes and gardens over the last few weeks and I have loved hearing about the awe and wonder that many of you have experienced when seeing green shoots appear for the very first time. 

This leads us beautifully on to this week’s assembly theme which is all about the outcome of this focus on health and growing – food.

Think about all the special times that you have shared with family and friends and how often food has played an important role in this. 

These images may help but I know that you will have thoughts of your own too. Maybe it will be the times that you’ve had tea at a friend’s house, grandma’s spaghetti bolognese, the smell of baking bread at Cranborne, the awe and wonder of seeing lots of varieties of carrots in our school garden … all show us the importance of food in our lives but also the way that it often makes us feel great. Some of these things are still happening, but some may be on pause for a while or may be happening in a different way now as we discover new ways to keep in touch.

You will know that the adults that work with you in school are usually smiling, but I’m not sure if you know that one of the main things that helps them to do this (apart from all of you obviously) is food! 

Did you know that whenever Mrs Smith has a really tricky job to do, Mrs Baillie often knows and bakes the most delicious Northern Irish fridge cake called ‘15s’ to keep her smiling? Did you also know that Mr Misun sometimes orders in pizza to keep meetings running smoothly, Mrs Bracey keeps everyone planning creatively with her tasty cheese scones, Miss Barnes livens up many a staff lunch with her homemade falafel and houmous, Mrs Watts and Mr Stone often make Mrs Smith pancakes for breakfast, Mr Oram invests in expensive crackers to accompany cheese and to keep the grown-ups going long after you’ve all gone home, Miss Hudson has a great recipe for vegan cheese, Mr Tims loves baking and Mrs Smith has sometimes arrived home to a most beautiful parcel waiting on her doorstep, filled with her favourite foods and edible love from our carrot cake making expert Miss Nesbitt?!

Food plays such a special role in our lives and while many of us are now in lockdown, we are being given the chance to think about its importance, to grow our own, to celebrate our favourite foods, to cook meals together with our families and to think about love and how it sometimes appears in edible form when sharing food.

There is a lovely campaign at the moment, led by one of our supermarkets (other supermarkets are available and are doing an equally amazing job of supporting us all!) which is designed to celebrate how we pass on much loved recipes through generations of families and within our community. 

I know that many of you are doing similar things, cooking a favourite family meal and eating with much missed friends and family virtually where you can. 

Hopefully this will provide the inspiration for our community activity this week – a chance to share images of your best loved dishes / favourite meals / treats. Your grown up will help you to share images of your cooking and favourite dishes with me but I would also love it if you could share some of your favourite recipes, maybe decorating them and giving them a catchy title such as ‘Uncle Pete’s Pumpkin Pie’.

Alongside this activity this week, I thought it might be good to revisit a project that I shared with some of you in assembly a while ago … 

Newquay’s Community Orchard. You may remember me telling you about Luke Berkeley and how he had turned his life around with a positive focus on nature, community and the joy in growing and sharing food. The clip below shows the community’s Harvest celebration and the amazing way that food can bring everyone together.

And finally, I know that Mr Moore will be sending you information this week linked with the Earth Day celebrations that are planned for Wednesday 22 April. You may want to link some of the activities that are suggested by Mr Moore with our assembly this week in your quest to support ‘Climate Action’ too.

I can’t wait to hear from you (your grown-up will help you to share pictures and recipes with me). I will reply to any messages that come in and I will share all the highlights in our Celebration Assembly on Friday.

Let’s get cooking together this week Team Damers, I can’t wait to dine with you and look forward to the day when we are all back in school sharing a meal together again.

Mrs Smith ☺

Can you guess which egg belongs to which grown up at Damers? 

Email your answers to easter@damers.dorset.sch.uk before Thursday 9th April for the chance to win an Easter egg. 

Please mark the email ‘KS1 whose egg’

A	B	C
D	E	F
G	H	I
J	K	L
M	N	O
P	Q	R
S

Here’s a clue if you are stuck…. You can check what we all look like on the school website!

Mrs Scott

Mrs Keys

Miss Baker

Mrs Jackson

Mrs Prendergast

Miss Nesbitt

Mrs Kenny

Miss Goodridge

Mrs Bracey

Mrs Godfrey

Miss Norris

Mrs Baillie

Mrs Wray

Mrs Farrall

Mrs Beasley

Mr Misun

Mrs Huelin

Mrs Smith

Mrs Watts

To keep your family busy over the start of the Easter ‘break’ we’ve put together a quiz for you. Hopefully everyone will learn something new – I have!

For the chance to win an Easter egg, please email your answers to easter@damers.dorset.sch.uk before Thursday 9th April with the title ‘quiz’ and your child’s name. 

1. When was the first chocolate Easter egg made?
2. How many chickens are there at Damers?
3. What are the names of the Damers chickens?
4. How many days of lent are there (excluding Sundays)?
5. How do you say ‘Happy Easter’ in French?
6. How long does it take for a chicken egg to hatch? 
7. From which country did the Easter Bunny originate?
8. Where did the Easter Rising take place?
9. List these eggs in size from smallest to biggest: chicken, frog, emu, fish.
10. On which street in New York does an Easter parade take place?
11. What Easter event have the White House cancelled due to coronavirus?
12. Name five ingredients that are used to make hot cross buns
13. When were hot cross buns invented?
14. What is the shell colour of an emu egg?
15. The eggs of which creature are used to make caviar?
16. What % of parents have admitted to eating their children’s Easter chocolate?
17. How many Easter eggs are sold in the UK annually? 
18. Who is the voice of ‘Peter Rabbit’ in the film?
19. What is a baby rabbit called?
20. What do pretzels have to do with Easter?

The PTA invites you to join their Easter Bingo live on Thursday 9th April at 4pm. 

This is just for fun and a chance for families to join in something together from home!

There will be 3 games each with an Easter egg prize and you can request your bingo cards by emailing damerspta@gmail.com There is no charge and to keep it manageable we are limiting it to one set per family. Please request your cards by Wednesday at the latest.

On the day you will need to go to the Damers PTA Facebook Page and be ready with your dabber when we go live at 4pm.

Play along and comment ‘Bingo’ when you get a full house. We will only be playing for a full house – no lines, sorry! Then send a picture of your winning card so we can double check before proceeding with the next game.

Please bear with us; we’ve never done this before and there may well be some technical hitches!

 

The Easter bunny has been busy hiding an egg or a chocolate bunny in each classroom at Damers. 

You have one guess as to where it might be so have a think about the different areas in your classroom and leave a comment on this post before Thursday 9th April for the chance to win an Easter egg. 

Look at the pictures and create your own maths question.

For example

• If there was ‘one less’ bunny in a row, how many bunnies would there be in the row? 
• How many circles can you see? 
• Who is correct? Sam thinks if there were 272 ears, there would be 131 bunnies. Tom thinks there would be 136 bunnies altogether.  

Email your answers to easter@damers.dorset.sch.uk before Thursday 9th April for the chance to win an Easter egg. 

Please mark the email ‘KS1 maths question or ‘KS2 maths question’.

Easter bunnies

      

Easter chicks

Easter eggs

Easter nests

Good afternoon everybody!

You have once again filled my heart with joy this week with your transformation tales. You may know that Mrs Smith is a keen gardener so to spend my evenings hearing about your new planting and the moments you have ‘stood and stared’ at the beauty of nature all around us has been an absolute treat. You have told me about  …

• The joy of lying on a bed of buttercups
• Children planting a patch of grass they had grown with Mrs Goss last year
• Planting new life that will attract bees, butterflies and birds
• Children designing their own allotment planting
• Old planter renovation projects
• A Christmas tree that has been planted in preparation for the festive season …
• Turf laying and stone transportation
• Beautiful sunsets
• Tales of the joy of previous lettuce planting experiences
• Planting of edamame beans (as a favourite restaurant is no longer an option!)
• The recreation of beach scenes in garden plots
• The signs of blossom and new life that you have seen all around you
• Children growing plants for their cats
• The learning that has emerged about  life’s natural cycles
• And families sharing their seeds and pots, inspiring others to start planting too … (thank you Flora for the lovely packages that appeared in our garden bank!)

So, time to enjoy the green fingered achievements of Damers First School this week. You may see a few grown ups that you recognise in here as they have been busy ‘transforming’ too …

I have included two stories for you this week. The first is one that I have shared in assembly before so you may recognise it. It fits beautifully with our theme and shows how we can turn ‘grey’ situations around using the power and colours that emerge from planting … 

I felt the second story of the week was a great one for us to start the Easter holidays with as it reminds us how through our imaginations and the beauty of nature we can travel to many exciting, far and distant lands, even during a lockdown! (See if you can spot the badly behaved chicken. My audience were nowhere near as good as you are in assembly!)

See if you can find a magical place where your imagination can run wild, either in your home or in your garden over the next few weeks and do tell me about it during the holidays if you like (your grown ups can help you to send a message).

Stay focused on those green shoots and new beginnings everyone and enjoy your Easter break . Your Headteacher is genuinely lost without you!

With warm wishes for a happy holiday.

Mrs Smith ☺️