This week, we took some time to think about Remembrance Day. We talked about the past and how grown-ups were once children too!  We know this can be quite tricky to understand, so we used our spotlight stories to help us.  We read two stories which were both written by Martin Waddell, who also wrote Owl Babies and many other familiar stories.

First, we read the story of Grandma’s Bill which is about a boy called Bill who is looking through an old photo album with his grandmother.  She explains that his grandfather was also called Bill and, together, they look at photos of his life.  We could see that the Grandma in the story was once a young girl herself and, as the story went on, she became older in the different photos until she looked like the lady on the front cover.

image from amazon.co.uk

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a video of this story for you to revisit at home but here’s a video of our second spotlight story; Once There Were Giants:

video from youtube – Grandma Fran

This story helped us to begin to understand that everyone starts their life as a baby and eventually grows into a grown-up.  We looked at a photo of Miss Cronin as a baby and all agreed that she does not look like that anymore!  Several parents were kind enough to send in photos of themselves when they were younger and their children did some excellent talking, explaining that this is what their parent looked like in the past.

Some families sent in photos of older generations, such as grandparents and great-grandparents.  These photos were more likely to be in black and white and we learnt that this is because the cameras that took photos in the past were not able to capture colours – even though the colours would have been in the world, just as they are today!

We heard some incredible stories about relatives who had been alive during World War II and the children spoke about them with such a sense of pride:

• a great-grandfather who was a test pilot for the RAF and was the first British man to go faster than the speed of sound in an airplane.
• a great-grandfather who served in the Royal Navy and was awarded several medals for his brave service.
• a great-grandmother who ran a steel company taking over from the men.
• a great-grandmother and a great-grandfather, both flying during World War II.

We learnt that the 11th day of the 11th month is a special day called Remembrance Day when everyone, all around the country, takes time to remember people who have died in wars.  On Thursday, we joined the rest of the school at a special mass for Remembrance Day and, at exactly 11am, we stopped playing and talking to be silent for 2 minutes.  This CBeebies clip helped us to understand how sad and dark wars are and why poppies are used to help us remember those who have died.

video from youtube: CBeebies channel

Each class made a poppy wreath which was handed to Mother Helen during our special mass.  We painted sections of egg boxes red and then added a black spot in the middle.  These were then carefully stuck onto a green hoop.  You can see a photo of the wreaths in this week’s school newsletter.

Our new sounds this week were three more bouncy sounds: k, u and b.

images from https://www.slideshare.net/msg719/abc-pronunciary

Our handwriting focus this week was the letter m: we practised writing m using the caption ‘Maisie, mountain, mountain’.  If you are practising this letter at home, please don’t forget Maisie!  This letter starts at the top, comes down Maisie, then back up over two mountains.  It does not start at the bottom of the first mountain!

And in Maths, we started to explore the stem sentence “____ has more than ____”.  We were joined by Gruffy, who is friends with Stanley, our sloth.  They had been sharing out chocolate cookies and could not agree on who had more.  So, of course, we stepped in to help them work out the problem!

In R.E., we listened to the story of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary and in ICT, we practised our mouse skills, playing this subitising game.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday.