Letter from the Head of Infants

Dear Parents,

Term One is rapidly drawing to an end, and what a busy time we have all had!  This newsletter has a distinct Christmas feel to it…

EVENTS

The Junior and Senior Carol Concert will be held again this year in St. George’s Church, Minden Road, on Wednesday, 26th November 2014. Pupils are now rehearsing regularly in school for the Carol Concert which is one of the musical highlights of our Dover Court year. The programme is created around the traditional Christmas Nine Readings and Carols.

Our Infant children are busy learning lines and rehearsing moves for our upcoming Christmas Production ‘Stable Story’. We look forward to seeing you all at our two concerts next week:

• Thursday 27th at 11:00am and
• Friday 28th at 7:00 pm

Programmes will be sent home on Monday – Please bring your programmes along to the performances as they are your ‘tickets’.

All students, with the exception of our Nursery children are expected to attend both performances. We appreciate that it will be a late night for Infant children on Friday, so if you wish to collect your child from school at lunch time on Friday to give them a little rest before the show, you are most welcome. There is something very special and magic about the evening performance, as well as being very exciting for our students to come back to school in “the night time”.

Don’t forget the Christmas Fair (a charity fund raising event) on Thursday 27th November 12:30 – 2:30.  Stalls include: candy, jewellery, face painting, balloons, Christmas stockings, cupcakes as well as a chance to visit Santa’s Grotto!

We also look forward to seeing parents at our Parent - Conference evenings on Monday 1st and Tuesday 2nd of December, where you can have an in-depth discussion with class teachers about your child’s individual progress.  Specialist Staff and Therapists are also available on these evenings to meet with you if you wish.

IN AND AROUND OUR CLASSROOMS THIS WEEK:

It’s looking a lot like Christmas in Nursery. Students spent last week talking about the first Christmas and the birth of baby Jesus. Everyone helped put up the stable and coloured pictures of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Stable animals and angles. This week Nursery classes have been talking about Father Christmas and decorating their Christmas trees.  The children are working really hard to learn the words to all of concert songs and can’t wait to perform in front of their Mums and Dads.

This half term, Reception have been learning about ‘People Who Help Us’. The children have been keen to learn about the emergency services, people in school and the community around them. As part of their Literacy lessons students have been learning about writing letters. The children decided that they would like to write a ‘real’ letter to their parents, inviting them to our Christmas Production. They learned about the layout of a letter and the keywords to use when completing the envelope. Their class teachers then took the letters to the post office and the children were very excited when their letters arrived in their mail boxes!

The Reception classes have set up writing tables for the children to use freely and it has been lovely to see the children writing letters to their friends and posting them in the class post boxes.

In their Maths lessons Reception children have been learning about two part patterns.  The children have enjoyed creating their own patterns using a variety of materials.  They have used interlocking cubes, paint and stamps.  They have decorated their own umbrellas using a two part pattern with different colours of tissue paper.

The Year One children have been studying 'Meerkat Mail' by Emily Gravett.  The story is about Sunny the Meerkat and his adventures around Africa. The children had a great time making their own mini meerkats out of clay​. They took their meerkats around Dover Court School to see if they could find a new home for Sunny. They had a great adventure and the children wrote some brilliant stories!​

In the Year Two classes this week our students have been exploring the force of friction as part of the Forces and Movement topic in Science. They have been investigating how the surface of a ramp can affect the distance a car travels. They worked in groups to plan and carry out their investigations and measured how far the car travelled each time using a metre stick. They noticed that the rough surface slowed down the car so it didn't travel as far as it did on the smooth surface. 

Thank you again parents for your support and we look forward to seeing you soon for the upcoming events.

Anne Curtis