Our topic for the next seven weeks is ‘Christmas Around the World’. This week, we introduced our topic and started by identifying different countries on a map of the world, where we live on our planet and  introduced some current festivities happening around this time including Halloween, Bonfire Night and the Mexican celebration Dia de los Muertos. In week 2, we will learn about Remembrance Day and the celebration of Loy Krathong (Thailand). In week 3, we will learn about the American holiday, Thanksgiving and the Jewish celebration Hanukkah. From week 4 onwards, the children will be learning more specifically about Christmas celebrations around the world, and how this is celebrated in different countries such as Norway, Mexico and the Philippines. We will also learn about different traditions around gift giving and Father Christmas, such as the Yule Goat who delivers presents at Christmas and The Spanish tradition of Caga Tio. The children will also participate in their own self-directed research projects, choosing a country and learning about how Christmas is celebrated there. Our focus books for this half term are The Australian Twelve Days of Christmas, Christmas Around the World by Lesley Sims and Joy to the World! By Kate DePalma.

We will be continuing with our off-site activity, swimming, for the remainder of the term. This will take place every Tuesday morning so please do remember to keep sending your child in on this day with a swim kit inside a named bag. This should include swim clothes and a towel. You can also send in shower gel if you would like to.

For our White Rose Maths sessions, some of us will be moving on to a new area of focus; mass and capacity and will explore standard units of measurement, whilst others move on to building their understanding of addition and subtraction.

For our White Rose Science sessions, we will continue with our biology focus on animals and what they need to survive, before moving on to our new ‘humans’ and what we need to live a healthy lifestyle (exercise. hygiene, having a healthy diet etc.).

In our Jigsaw PSHE sessions, we will be focusing on our new topic ‘Celebrating Difference’. We will learn about discrimination and prejudice, judging by appearances and how to identify bullying behaviours and how this can impact on the people being bullied.

Our ICT focus this half term is the Twinkl Scheme of work, ‘Programming Toys’ where our pupils will be  introduced to the principles of programming and algorithms through the use of Bee-Bots (or similar programmable toys). We also have some pupils exploring ‘Kodu Programming’, a programming language made specifically for creating games.

Our R.E. focus this half term is The Bible and The Nativity and why these are important for Christians. We will spend the first half of this term learning about the Bible, the different testaments and learning some of the important stories within it, before moving on to learning about the Nativity, who Jesus was and the events surrounding his birth.

If there is any other information you would like me to provide you with or if you have any questions, please do get in touch.

Nikki and the Monarch Class Team