“Hello to all our new little friends at Damers.

Ruby and I hope you are keeping safe and well.  We are very sad that we can’t come to see you for a while and listen to you read. 

Instead we will send you a little blog telling you what we have been doing.  We hope you are still continuing with your reading because you were all getting so good and we both loved listening to your stories. I think we will both be amazed at how much better your reading has got when we come to see you next.   Ruby especially liked all the fuss and treats you gave her.

Ruby has been going for a walk every day and playing with her toy in the garden.  We miss you all so much and cannot wait to see you again and hear what you have been doing.

Do you recognise where Ruby is in the pictures.  She looks very comfortable, doesn’t she.

We will send you some more pictures soon.

Keep up the good reading. 

From Ruby your PAT dog and Mary xx”

PE Day. As it’s our PE day why not try a homemade obstacle course. See how creative you can get! Think about travelling low, crawling, sliding on your bellies, hopping, lifting your legs up high, stretching your arms. Warm up with some star jumps, the jelly bean game and balancing on one leg. Also don’t forget to check out the home learning packs. There’s loads of ideas about throwing and catching using different objects. 

 

 

Good morning everybody! I hope that you’ve all had a restful weekend and that you enjoyed our Celebration Assembly on Friday. This week we are going to think about Health and Wellbeing and the effect that nature has on our lives. I’m hoping that we will all become ‘Transformers’ through growing and gardening.

Your grown-ups have an email to help with the assembly and in this week’s notes I’ve included a clip for them that some of us watched together in school, linked with The Eden Project and the work of Sir Tim Smit. You may want to watch this together as a reminder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8unx8-pZxg

Those of you who met Sir Tim when he came to visit will remember his advice to you about dreaming big and how if we all join together we can transform places through hope and nature. So that is exactly what we are going to do this week!

I would like you to think about a space in your home, or your garden if you have one, that you would like to transform over the coming weeks by planting some seeds or caring for plants. Some of you may already have seeds and spaces that you have started to transform, but don’t worry if you haven’t as we can help and I have let your grown-ups know what we can do.

I would like you to take a ‘before’ snapshot of the space (this can be a photograph or a drawing) and we’ll then look at this again in a few weeks’ time once things start to grow. If Sir Tim had done this at the beginning of his project this would have been his ‘before’ and ‘after’ …

As most of you are now able to stay home and stay safe, I thought it would also be good this week to take a little virtual trip over the Atlantic to New York City to see another beautiful transformation project. The High Line is a public park built on a historic railway line which runs above the streets of Manhattan. It was saved from demolition by neighborhood residents and opened in 2009 as a beautiful public space where visitors can enjoy nature, art, and design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTxx1VTyUv8&feature=youtu.be

The High Line is supported by a team of dedicated volunteers. There’s a lovely clip below showing one of these volunteers, Gammy Miller, in action. I wonder if you can find any links between interdependence and wellbeing and what Gammy is doing within her community?

https://youtu.be/6LiLKgUdin4

So your mission this week, should you choose to accept it, is to start your own natural ‘transformation’ through growing and gardening. Your starting point may look like this …

… and if you ‘dream big’, who knows what your ‘after’ will look like!

Lots of you have already been telling me about the changes in nature that you can see all around you and I would love to see your pictures and drawings of the natural things that are making us all say ‘wow!’ at the moment too, now that we genuinely have time to ‘stand and stare’.

I can’t wait to hear from you (your grown-up will help you to share pictures, drawings and ‘wow’ moments with me). I will reply to any messages that come in and I will share all the highlights in our celebration on Friday.

Stay sheltered, safe, healthy and happy Team Damers. School is very empty without you.

Mrs Smith ☺️

I hope you all had a lovely weekend, don’t forget to let me know what you have been up to by either writing a comment on the blog or uploading a comment, picture or video on EExAT. It brightens my day to see all your faces and the amazing things you have been doing at home.

In our art sessions we’ve been looking at the artist Kandinsky. We’ve mostly focused on his circle art work. Let’s get creative! Go on a circle hunt inside and outside your house (if possible). How many different naturally occurring circles can you find? Take photos of them, draw them or create rubbings. Discuss if all of these circles are 2D shapes or are they actually a face of a cylinder? 

Take a look at some of these circles in nature. Have a chat with your family about where these circles are or occur. Can you think of any more natural circles?

Good afternoon everybody! (The chickens and I are sitting together in the Peace Orchard waiting to see if we can hear you all saying your good afternoon back just like you do in our assemblies at school!)

You have all made me smile so much this week with your amazing rainbows and tales of interdependence within our community. I have heard about …

• Rainbow tuned bells being played and heard by some very happy neighbours
• Children and families cheering up neighbours with food, chocolates, and messages via Skype
• Children setting up virtual nail painting salons
• Trumpet playing through the window of granny and grandad’s house
• Electronic messages being sent to our friends in care homes
• Families helping to ensure that our vulnerable neighbours or the homeless have enough food
• Children having their haircut for The Little Princess Trust
• Cake baking and rainbow painting for parents who work at the hospital
• Helping supermarket staff to collect boxes
• One little boy playing his violin in the sunshine to give his neighbours a moment of joy (- he played Mozart’s ‘La ci darem la mano’ which means ‘There we will give each other our hands’)
• Children spotting the tiny changes that are happening outdoors every day and sharing images of the wonders of nature with family and friends
• And finally, all those that joined in with our show of support for our key workers last night at 8.00 pm

Amazing efforts from you all and I think you will all enjoy looking at everyone’s rainbows. They  have also brought incredible joy to our community this week …

https://youtu.be/dhRD4aF9yrQ

I have also filmed a story for you with the help of the wonderful Miss Barnes. We have included pictures as it is a longer story but I wonder if you can work out why I chose this story this week? 

https://youtu.be/N5fXROzCf8o

Keep shining out like the little beacons of light in the Mousehole harbour everyone, stay sheltered and safe and have a lovely weekend. 

Mrs Smith ☺️ 

 

Starfall Phonics has some great games and stories to read. Meet Zac the Rat and Peg the Hen. Have a go at reading the sentences yourself before clicking on the ear symbol to hear it read back to you. If you click on the character of each page it will also do something funny! Some of the stories include split digraphs that we have not learnt in school but have a go anyway if you like. We have read stories 1 to 8 in class. Revisit some of these and then try a new one. 

Starfall Phonics

I was so pleased at how much you loved my last story that I have another one for you! This time I’m reading Abigail by Catherine Rayner. This is a great book to remind us not to give up and to remember that there’s always someone there to help us. Get comfortable and enjoy.

Story time with Mrs Bracey. Book 2

We hope you have been thinking about your number pairs. You can practice number pairs by recording additions or counting objects using the part part whole method – look at your learning packs to remind you of different ways to do this. Test out your number pairs to 10 with this game …

Save the Whale Number Pairs game

Find out some dinosaur information by watching Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures. Use this information to write a dinosaur riddle. Look at your home learning packs for an example. Think about the features of your dinosaur, their colour and what they like to eat. Remember to use your tricky bugs to help with your sentences. Try and remember some of the new vocabulary we’ve learnt at school too, such as herbivore, carnivore, extinct, fierce etc.  Test it out on a family member – someone in your home or Skype somebody to see if they can guess your chosen dinosaur! 

Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures