Monday 9th October

We have an incredibly busy week this week with lots of things going on besides the normal weekly curriculum.

On Tuesday we must say a fond farewell to two of our children (one in Year 4 and one in Year 6), as they leave us to go and begin an exciting new life in Australia with their family. We wish them all the best of luck! There should be a note in your child's diary regarding special arrangements for that day.

On Thursday morning we are off to visit Penketh South to watch a Science show by the Kinetic Theatre company.

On Friday we celebrate our Harvest Festival with a Mass at 9am in the Hall. Parents and friends are more than welcome to join us in our celebration. A big thank you must also go out for the very generous donations brought into school last week.

If we have time in amongst all this(!) these are the things we will be learning this week.

In Literacy we are completing our study of Grandpa Chatterji - the children have already been making connections between the characters and will be bringing this to a conclusion before the week is over, and reflecting on all that they have learnt.
We are looking closely at adverbs this week as our sentence level work. We will be making collections of words ending in ly that would be super for descripions, e.g. quickly, confidently, etc. Perhaps you could have a go at collecting some at home.
For our word level work we are going to be exploring and investigating the effect the letter e can have on a word. As well as keeping going with all the previous spelling activities you may also like to try:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/dynamo/den/index.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/spellits/

In Numeracy we are continuing to all develop our skills in the basic understanding of place value as well as moving towards individual class topics. Can I suggest that for this week you encourage your child to explore the different topics on the mathszone site:
http://www.mathszone.co.uk/

http://www.artsconnected.org/toolkit/ - grade 2 is the equivalent to Year 3 roughly

We are also beginning our push on your children knowing their times tables with quick recall. If you feel confident already check out:
http://www.northwood.org.uk/times%20table%20trivia%20x%205.swf

In Science we are concentrating on pulling together all our learning from the last couple of weeks and making sure we know the functions of a skeleton and the names of the main parts of the skeleton. Now would be a good opportunity to review:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/8_9/moving_growing.shtml

http://sv.berkeley.edu/showcase/pages/bones.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/podsmission/

As well as this we will be looking at solids, liquids and gases as part of our practical science. In particular we will be testing different liquids to see their consistency. You may want to have a go at classifying liquids around your house. Try pouring different liquids down a tray and talk to your child about what they notice about how it moves - quickly, slowly, thickly, etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/revisewise/science/materials/08_act.shtml

In Art we are exploring Indian patterns. The children will be creating a simple pattern and testing it to see what happens if they try to keep using it on a piece of paper. Check out these sites for a bit of experimenting:
http://www.artsconnected.org/toolkit/ - check out the activities on shape and symmetry in particular

http://www.hennapage.com/henna/what/lineart/index.html - some traditional henna patterns from India for you to look through.

We begin our music topic this week which also looks at patterns, but this time in sound. Have fun on this super site from the bbc:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/schools/4_11/music/mm/

As part of our Citizenship we are continuing to talk about things in the news. It would be great if you could find time for your child to catch at least one Newsround on BBC1 this week. We will be talking about how newspapers show the news compared to television.

If you could continue to try to hear your child at least three times a week and write a comment in their diary each time that would be fantastic. Also don't forget your child's spellings and High Frequency Words. They will be checked sometime after the Half Term holiday.