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JUNIOR DEPARTMENT NEWS
This week in Reception
Reception have been rehearsing and working on their Christmas Performance. They are very excited for next week! Can you guess what the play might be about from looking at the pictures?
Year 1 have been busy as usual this week and the children have been hard at work rehearsing for their Nativity in the Performance Hall. Although things are beginning to feel a little festive, we are still exploring the world of dinosaurs, describing their different features and reading lots of dinosaur-filled stories.
In Maths, using the White Rose Maths Scheme, the children have been building on initial number sentences by looking at and calculating fact families. The highlight of the week is still a visit to the library where the children can explore and choose a book to take home and read with their family. With the presence of some festive books AND a Christmas tree in the Junior Hall, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
When the Queen’s handbag is stolen by a naughty swan, who better to save the day, and indeed Christmas, than Year 2? As you can see from the photos, rehearsals are well underway for ‘The Queen’s Christmas Presents‘ our non-traditional homage to the festive season with a rather traditional message. Thank you, parents, for joining in with the Christmas spirit in practising our songs and lines; Santa Claus is, quite literally, ‘Coming to town’!
Enjoy our window art candles as you pull into ‘Kiss and Drop’ lighting us into our final festival of light and look out for our Advent challenges next week.
Year 2 have also been inspired by the colours of the final autumn leaves on the trees, and in art, they have made some stunning leaf designs.
As part of their TPR studies, Year 2 have enjoyed learning about Islam over the last few weeks. We explored a range of artefacts and evolved ideas about what they all might be used for. We had a virtual tour of the London Central Mosque and listened to the call to prayer. We then matched up the Five Pillars of Islam with a symbol to represent each one and labelled the main features of a mosque. Finally, we explored a range of beautiful prayer mats and had a go at designing our own. Mrs Bullock even brought in a travel prayer mat that can fold up into a pocket and has a built-in compass so we can locate Mecca!
Alex T Smith (author of Claude & Mr Penguin) and Winston return this year with two new ‘Advent’ adventures. Both contain 24 & a half chapters, giving a chapter 
for each day in the run up to Christmas, and a mini-chapter to enjoy on Christmas Day itself.
‘How Winston Delivered Christmas: A festive chapter book’ retells Winston’s original picture advent book in illustrated full chapters for newly emerging readers. Whereas ‘How Winston Came Home for Christmas’ is the new picture book sequel. In line with the original picture book, the story for each day is delivered together with a simple craft suggestion, making it a fun family activity.