This week the children all received their St Johns bear, a beautiful gift, for which we owe our thanks to the P.T.A for organising. The children loved them!

Our learning this week focused on the changing of the season. We read the story Leaf Man and went on an autumn walk, during which we collected autumn leaves that we used to make our own leaf people. We created autumn tree paintings, mixing the primary colours to make orange, green and brown and used broccoli to print the leaves.

We learnt about Harvest and along with our buddies and the rest of the school, we attended the Harvest church service celebration. The children all behaved beautifully and we were very proud of them. Thank you for all the generous donations. We talked about how Christians believe that God made the world and everything in it and so they thank God for the Harvest. We thought about what we are thankful for and wrote these down on Autumn leaves.

In phonics this week we learnt the new sounds g, o, c, and k. The children are bringing the flash cards for these sounds home today. I am beginning to assess blending skills and am starting to give out reading books, this may take time and every child learns to blend sounds to read words at their own pace so please don’t worry if your child does not receive one straight away, they will bring one home when they are ready.

In maths we played games with conkers and created patterns, using autumn treasures and classroom objects. We explored pattern with sounds and actions and Mrs Warrener even made a pattern with our snacks at snack time!

The children are becoming increasingly independent and getting used to looking after their own things, but they do still misplace them sometimes. Please remember to label everything with their name, that way it should make it back to them again. On that note, we will soon be getting changed for P.E! If you haven’t already sent in a P.E. kit for your child, it would be great if you could. Once everyone has a kit in school we will start our P.E. lessons. Could you also ensure your child has a change of underwear in school that they can keep in their P.E. kit bag. Even if it has been a long time since they had an accident, sometimes when children are engrossed in an activity in school, they can leave it too late to go.

Thank you for your support, have a wonderful weekend,

Jo Bentley

Please do not hesitate to email me with any questions or queries: jbentley@stjohnsprimary.org