Smallthorne Primary Academy

Weekly Newsletter

Friday 3rd April

To our children, parents and community…

I hope you are all staying safe and well in this challenging time that we find ourselves living in. Now more than ever, it is important to remain hopeful for the future, because this time will pass even if it does not feel like it will right now. It is also important to be even more grateful for the little things like drinking a cup of tea from your favourite mug, sharing a special book or receiving a call from a best friend.

To help your child with this, they might like to start keeping a daily gratitude journal where they write or draw 3 things each day that they are thankful for. As mentioned last week, your child’s health and wellbeing and how they feel is the most important thing right now. If your child is finding it difficult being stuck at home, let them have a go at some of these activities…

1. Stay up late and star gaze.

2. Make hot chocolate and share a book with an adult. You could make a story den to read in.

3. Spot birds from the window or in the garden. Can you name the birds? Can you draw them?

4. Take 5 every day to breathe. Watch and follow this video to help you.

5. Put a piece of music on and draw to the music. What does the music inspire?

6. Sit silently for 15 minutes while you write down every sound that you hear around you. What can you hear? When you are done, classify the sounds into different types e.g. high/low, quiet/loud, manmade/natural.

7. From the window or from your garden, spend 10 minutes just watching the clouds. What shapes can you see? What animals do these shapes look like?

8. Put some great music on and dance like nobody is watching. Get the adults to join in too.

Today, we reach the Easter break. Over Easter, some children may benefit from switching off from learning and having a complete break, whereas some children may benefit more from keeping a routine and continuing to engage in learning. You, as parents, know your child best. If you think your child could benefit from engaging in learning, at the end of this newsletter you will find some fun activities for your child to do. Don’t forget…any work that your child does at home can be shared with their class teacher via email.

You may have received a phone call from school this week…all teachers will phone the families of children in their class over the coming weeks. This is so teachers can say hello, check in on how your child is getting on and see if there is anything extra that school can do to help. Myself and my leadership team will also be calling families to say hello and check everyone is safe and well. To say hello to all of our Smallthorne children, I have created a video on the school website. Have a look here… and play the video to your child. There will be a regular video blog from school leaders after Easter.

If I can leave you with just one message for your child, it’s this, borrowed from Winnie the Pooh:

“There is something you must always remember: you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.”

Wishing you a Happy Easter. Stay home and stay safe, Miss McCaffery

Staying safe and well

To help protect your family and others, please remember to stay home and stay safe.

This means not going to parks or other recreational areas and only going out for

essential items or once a day for exercise such as a walk or bike ride. It might seem

like staying home and social distancing isn’t having much effect as we see the virus

continuing to spread, however, social distancing will help stop more people catching

the virus and presenting symptoms over the coming weeks.

Public Health England advise to:

Only go outside for essential items, health reasons or critical work

Stay 2 metres apart if you do have to go out

Wash your hands as soon as you get home

To keep yourself informed, you can read the government guidelines here.

Easter competition

If you’d like to keep busy and have fun over Easter pick one of these competitions to enter…

Easter Bonnet Making Each year Early Years and Key Stage 1 have an Easter bonnet parade, so I thought that your child might still like to make their Easter bonnet and wear it at home. Perhaps as a family you could hold your own family bonnet parade. Here’s an example…

Easter Egg Making When I was at primary school, one thing I always remember is the Easter Egg Making competition that we had every year. So, I thought we’d take this idea for a whole school project and competition. Can your child make their very own Easter Egg in the theme of a Nursery Rhyme, Storybook, Character or Movie? They could paint a hard-boiled egg or use arts and crafts. Here’s a couple of examples...

Be sure to send a photo of your entry to your child’s class teacher. A winner from each class will be announced on the

first newsletter back after Easter break.

Reading on EPIC

All parents should have received an email invite to create an account for their child on EPIC. This is an online collection of story books for your child to read. An email will be sent out with suggested accelerated reader levels which match the colour band your child is currently reading at. If you have not received an email it maybe because we do not hold your correct email address. Please email your class teacher with your current email address.

SHOUT OUTS from Mr Beatie, Mrs Bainbridge and Mrs Dalton…

Harry has been a very busy bee this week – he’s completed lots of activities on Education City, written a

story, made a medieval shield and conducted some science investigations.

Kaiden has been keeping himself busy too, making rainbows, playing games, cooking and doing a bit of

karaoke – well done!

Even though Elissa has been in school each day, she’s still found the time to complete her home-learning

pack and has another one that she’s now busy working on – Go, Elissa!

SHOUT OUTS from Miss Bailey and Mrs Roper…

TT Rock Stars Education City Teach Your Monster to Read

Nicole – Break Through Artist Jennifer – Wannabe Frankie Layla-Maii Abigail Daisy Lucy Hari Jathushana Noah Riley Jenna

Frankie – completed all activities. WELL DONE! Nicole Jennifer Lucas Daisy Layla-Maii Noah Ollie Jenna Layla-Rose Riley Ruben

Layla- Maii – completed fun with words Ollie – completed first steps Lucy – completed first steps Oliver – completed first steps Noah Lily-Rose

A MASSIVE shout out to all the children who have sent me pictures of the work they have been doing at home, it is

so lovely to see what busy bees you have been. WELL DONE!

Well done if you have created an ‘Epic’ account this week. I have noticed that lots of you have started to explore all

the books that are on offer. WELL DONE Scarlett, Riley, Layla-Maii, Noah, Frankie, Hari, Taylor, Evie-Rose, Jennifer,

Nicole, Lucy, Jenna, Daisy, Lucas, Ruben and Freddie.

SHOUT OUTS from Miss Bashir and Mrs Barlow…

We can see lots of you are going onto Education city and doing your Home Learning. Well-done Sienna, George, Joshua, M'Caide, Charlie-James, Eli, Riley. Keep it up!

Well done to the following people who have been working hard on Teach Your Monster to Read this week: M'caide

and Charlie for completing an island and gaining your first certificates - they will be emailed to your parents today!

Well done to George - for the second week running you have completed an island and had another certificate!! and

a big well done too for Charlie and Joshua who have visited the Teach Your Monster Islands this week and completed

some of the tasks. Keep it up boys. I wonder who will be on the shout out list after the Easter holiday?

A message from Mr Daniel…

Hello Year 4! I’m missing you all already! I hope you’re staying safe and having fun learning from home. Please

remember to check our school website for Home Learning activities for you to complete. A big shout out to Skye,

Phoebe and Macie for getting over 60,000 coins on TT Rockstars! That shows to me that you are logging on regularly

and really trying to be the best at your timestables. Well done! Another well done to Ruby, Ellie, Lucas and Cerys for

gaining 100% on most of the activities completed on Education City. I’m really proud of you!

It’s so great to hear from you via our email address. Heath, Macie, Bailey and Harry have sent me an email to say hi

and shared what they have been doing at home. It’s made my day receiving them! Please keep in touch. Do not

hesitate to send me an email to share what you have been doing or if you have any questions about our home

learning.

Parents, I know it can be a little overwhelming with what is going on, so if I can help with anything, please drop me

an email. Take care, from Mr Daniel.

A message from Mrs Lewis…

Hello Year 3. How wonderful to see so many of you joining Epic! Romany, Chioma, Lucy, Rylan, Charlie, Chris, Poppy,

Holly – hope you’re enjoying all the reading on there. I think we should set ourselves a challenge to get everyone

joined up by Easter! TTRockstars are also going great with Lewis, Rylan, Isabella and Chris playing this week. Don’t

forget – you can challenge teachers too!

What have you all been up to? Let me know through the class email so you can have a shout out after Easter.

Missing you all, take care, Mrs Lewis

A message from Mrs Bryant and Mrs Sutherland

Thank you to Emily, Dylan, Cory and Liam for emailing us and letting us know what you’ve been up to: Glad Cory has been working through his test papers, practised his maths and enjoyed some reading. Liam, can’t wait to see your volcano and what super work on your timetables and arithmetic. Emily, what a super week you’ve had, looking forward to seeing your crystals and loving your rainbow. We’re so pleased Dylan that you’ve carried on with your writing - We can’t wait to tell people that we knew you before you were famous. Hope you’ve shared that bread with your mum!

We’d love to hear what the rest of you have been doing.

Remember to email and let us know-send us some photos. Well done to those of you that have logged onto

Education City or joined Epic. Keep working hard, look after yourselves and enjoy adventures at home.

A message from Miss Peake for Nursery…

Hi everyone. I’m really missing not seeing you all, so it was lovely to have a chat with some of you on the telephone this week. I tried to call all of you but because the school number shows up as a withheld number some of your grown-ups didn’t know it was me calling and didn’t answer! It was great to hear about what fun you have been having at home and how much you are learning too. I have been busy choosing some activities for you to do on http://www.educationcity.com You can also have lots of fun learning to read on https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/ If you don’t have a username and password your grown-ups can email me Nursery1@smallthorneprimary.org.uk I’m very happy to see how much work Prince and Amaiya have been doing on Education City - well done you two super learners. Now I don’t want you all forgetting how to hold your pencil properly in your ‘birdie beaks’ and you were getting so good at writing your names. Make sure you practice writing your names at home. Oh, and you were also getting super at drawing so keep doing that at home too. You could email me your pictures for sharing on the newsletter! Don’t forget to upload pictures of what you are doing at home to your LearningBook too. I hope you have been looking at your number cards lots. Who can tell their parents about the Tentown characters? You could count some of your toys and find the number card that matches. You can also use your number cards for sorting numbers into the right order. I hope you are keeping fit at home? I know how much you loved doing cosmic yoga at school, maybe you could get you grown-ups to join in with you at home: https://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga Keep sharing books with your family. You know how much I love stories. I can’t read stories to you at the moment so I’ve been reading a story to my dog, Darcy. I hope you are still being good for your grown-ups. Take care. Love Miss Peake Have a look at the extra home learning on the next two pages…Don’t forget to also use our school website Home

Learning page: https://www.smallthorneprimary.org.uk/home-learning/

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