The first exeat is approaching and the children are ready for a rest from all the flu and colds that have been spreading around. Those that have been in school have been busy with all their lessons and I have loved seeing the standards that they have achieved since the start of the Autumn Term.
I just want to draw your attention to the maths work that the children are doing in their classes. From Nursery and Reception where we start with counting and 1:1 correspondence to Year 1 where they have been completing addition and subtraction sums, doubling and, using those skills they have been applying them in problem solving activities, to Year 2 where the numbers become larger, the sums more complicated and the children have been learning about money and using coins to make amounts, pay for items and give change.
During the week other subjects and activities support the maths teaching. In Music the children learn about patterns and it is a new pleasure to watch them beating to a pattern on our outdoor musical equipment. In French, the younger ones can count to ten in French and the older ones are now very competently counting to 20. Each week, the House Captains add up the house points that everyone has been awarded and in our weekly assembly with Mr Milbank, we work out which house has the most number of house points, before adding on ten for the house with the greatest number of words read in the week.
I wandered into a Year 2 Science lesson this week to find the children making pyramids out of straws and using their understanding of shape and balance to create one that could hold a scarab beetle at the top, whilst Year 1 have been making shape pictures following the design ideas of Kandinsky – both year groups using the interest generated in their termly topic to support learning in a variety of areas of the curriculum. In Nursery the aroma of cooking from delicious cookies that they have made from measuring out ingredients is always a welcome one on a cold day!
One of the most valuable lessons from learning all these different aspects of mathematics is that maths is everywhere and can be applied to our lives on a daily basis! Please do encourage your children to use maths in their daily lives at home whether by cooking, using money to buy small items in the shops or by finding numbers when you go out walking.
Jenifer Hillman | Head of Pre-Prep
