Dear Parents and Carers

It has been a fun and exciting week full of unique and wonderful experiences.  The three aims of this school are to create a love of learning, teach children to be good citizens, and get them ready for the world of work. In our current learning experience, we are finding out about who helps us in our community. Over the next few weeks we have arranged for various people to come into school to share their job with the children.

Teddy Bear Hospital

This week we welcomed a group of final year medical students from Plymouth University who are currently based in Torbay Hospital. They provided a carousel of activities including:

• Hand washing – Why do we wash our hands? When do we wash our hands? We learnt and practised the correct hand washing technique. We even looked at the germs on our hands using a special UV light.
• Heart – Where is our heart? What size is our heart? What does the heart do? We used a stethoscope to listen to our own and a friend’s heart.
• Healthy eating – We sorted foods into groups and talked about the importance of a balanced diet.
• Lungs – Where are our lungs? What do they do? We used a spirometer to measure how much air we breathe out in one breath.
• Teddy Bear Hospital – The Doctors wrote ‘paw-scriptions’ and put plasters and bandages on the injured bears.

It was such a fantastic and inspiring experience for all the children. They were engaged in all the activities and talked to the doctors with such confidence and enthusiasm. The doctors spoke about how they are training to be doctors and that they demonstrate a love of learning by attending University for five years. Many of the children made comments about being a nurse or doctor when they are older.

Woodland Camp

In the woods this week the children were very busy laying bark on the path down to the woods. They demonstrated teamwork digging, loading and spreading the bark on the path to make it safe for everyone.

Who helps us in our community?

This week we have been talking about the people who help us. We explored the word ‘community’ and what it means. We made our own community maps. We will continue this over the next couple of weeks.

Vocabulary

Here are some of the key words we will be using. Please support your child by talking about these words at home.

Add, part, whole, represent, sphere, cube, cuboid, pyramid, cylinder, cone, community, emergency, siren, paramedic, nurse, doctor, ambulance, yesterday, today, tomorrow, past, present, future.

Share a Story event

Thank you for your support at the Share a Story event this week. It was great to see so many families enjoying reading. We hope to make it a regular event as it brings so much joy to the children. The next date will be 25^th February. It will be an exciting story telling event hosted by a special guest. Due to this, the event will run from 2pm – 3pm so please save the date in your diaries.

Maths

In Maths this week, we have been adding two single digit numbers together. We talked about the two different parts (e.g 4 and 5) and how we can combine them to make the whole amount. We began the week by combining the two parts and then counting all of them. By the end of the week some of us were starting to count on from the bigger number. In the example below, we knew there were 5 bees so we didn’t need to count them individually – we started at 5 and counted on 4 more for the caterpillars to get the whole 9.

To help with this we have been counting to 20 but starting from any number not just 0.

Pop-Up Café - Our Pop-Up café will continue to open every Friday at the end of the school day. Teachers will take it in turns to bring children to serve drinks and snacks. There will be hot chocolate with cream

and mini marshmallows. We will also have biscuits and sausage rolls cooked by our kitchen team.

Please support us in this endeavour.

Home Learning

• Bring in a baby photo or e-mail one to

  admin@preston.torbay.sch.uk

• Draw a map of your local community and label it. For example, Post Office, Fire Station
• Draw a picture of someone who helps us in the community. Can you write a sentence with it?

Dates to remember

Parents Evening – Monday 3^rd and Tuesday 4^th February

Half Term starts Friday 14^th February

Return to school Monday 24^th February

Story Telling Event – 25^th February 2pm-3pm

From Mrs Bastin, Mrs Clague and the Foundation Stage Team