Copper Base Blog

Enjoy this fun attention circle activity with Mrs Kenny….

Mrs Kenny paints with balloons

Happy Monday everyone!!

We hope you have all had a good weekend, have you been looking for minibeasts in your garden?

This week we would like you to have a look outside and see what you can find……..

Perhaps a woodlouse

Or a spider   

Or a butterfly 

So many minibeasts you might find!

Today we would like you to start a book about minibeasts and see what information you can find out.

So first choose one of the minibeasts you found, draw a really careful picture and your challenge is to find out 3 interesting things about them.

You could perhaps make a page like this  

Enjoy your exploring! We look forward to seeing what you find out.

This craft looks fun too

  or  

I’m sure you will see many flies in your garden!

Don’t forget your words too

These are some good facts to read

Let’s start the week by remembering and learning some number bonds.

Watch the video and sing along. They are catchy and fun.

Now have a go at these games – you need to find the matching pairs to make ten in the ball game. Try and play for 10 – 15 minutes.

Number Balls

https://www.mathplayground.com/number_bonds_10.html

Choose the number bond option and play this game below

Hit the Button

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

Here are some fun ways of helping you to remember number bonds – have a go at these creative ideas.

Biscuit Making

Post-it note pairs

Paint a Number Bond Rainbow

If you can print – print off the worksheets below and have a go at home. We can print the sheets off for you if you need them. Please let the school office know.

For a slightly harder activity click on the activity below.

If you would like some guidance or help with number bonds please contact the school office and we will get back to you to support you and your child at home.

Good morning everybody! 

I hope that you’ve all had a lovely weekend and are ready for another week of learning either in family homes or, for some, back in school. 

Following the wonderful growing transformations that you shared with me last week, I thought we’d start with another moment of awe and wonder. I hope that you can sit back and relax as we watch Mother Nature proudly share other breathtaking transformations that happen all around us every day.

Mother nature – time lapse 2015

We’re going to continue with our theme of ‘Changing Me’ this week, focusing on our very own life cycles. I know that our Year 4s are currently looking for photographs of how they looked on their first day at school compared with now, so I thought we could all join them this week and take a moment to think about how we change over time.

You may have some photographs that you could look at at home. I wonder if you can spot all the ways that you have changed physically over time?

I’ve included a few below of a little girl aged 2, 4 and 7 years old. (She was very relieved to find that at least one was in colour!) I wonder what she looks like now … ?

As we grow, we experience physical changes but we also start to think differently too. I wonder when you have a look at your photographs whether you can identify what was important to you when you were a baby and whether this is the same as what is important to you now? Has anything changed?

As babies we tend to think about ourselves a lot and what we need to stay happy – food, warmth, milk, clean nappies and so on,  and if those things don’t happen quickly we might let out a bit of a squeak! But as we get older we start to think about others and the world around us more and that’s the aspect of change that we’re going to focus on this week. 

In Damers we often refer to ourselves as ‘Agents of Change’ and one of the ways that we show that the children in our school are powerful agents of change is through our termly class ‘Roots and Shoots’ pledges.

I’ve included a few of my highlights from the last couple of years below, where children in our school have focused on making a positive change which affects animals, the environment or their community. 

Children have planted garden areas that attract butterflies, have played an active role in supporting a local foodbank and have raised money to help animals that have been affected by forest fires.

Children have encouraged Poundbury residents to feed the birds and other local wildlife.

Children have shared their love of reading with the local community, traced the journey of their food to protect the environment and built bug hotels to provide shelter for our minibeasts.

There are many more examples of pledges from each class and so many children have contributed to the fantastic positive changes that have happened as a result of these pledges.

At the end of each school year we celebrate some of the children that have made a significant difference to their community, animals or the environment in each class through our ‘DASP Citizen’ awards.

DASP Citizens are celebrated in all of our local partnership schools and are usually voted for in each class in each DASP school. This year will be a little different, so this is where we need everyone’s help, whether at home or in school. 

Between us over the next few weeks we are going to nominate our DASP Citizens. This year’s nominations are going to come from you and I would like you to share your nomination for someone in your class that you feel deserves the DASP Citizen award. 

In addition this year I am going to invite your grown ups to join in too as they may wish to nominate you! 

Remember what we are looking for – someone who has made a positive difference to their community (this includes their friends and their class), to animals or to the environment.

So – your task this week (children and grown ups) is to send me your nomination including; 

1. The name and a drawing / picture of the child that you are nominating, as well as …
2. The reason why you think that they deserve the award and the difference that you think that they have made to their community, animals or the environment.

I am going to plan a slightly longer gap for this one to allow everyone time to get their nominations in, so our next Celebration Assembly will take place on Friday 3 July. Award winners will be announced following this assembly.

Have a lovely week everyone and remember the beautiful quote that we so often use in our assemblies in school when we are thinking about change and our role within it.

I can’t wait to hear your nominations!

With warm wishes 

Mrs Smith 🦋

Good afternoon everybody!

Thank you for the wonderful insight into your growing projects this week. You have all clearly been nurturing your pots, gardens and allotments well throughout lockdown and are now starting to enjoy the fruits of your labours. So many signs of new life, some edible, some helping our bees and other pollinators and some just breathtakingly beautiful.

I have loved hearing your stories once again this week and so many of you were able to share your own first hand experiences of nature’s cycles as well as representing them so creatively. I particularly loved the duckling tales and the many celebrations of the Damers favourite – the journey of the caterpillar.

I was also delighted to hear about all the seeds and seedlings that you were able to take from our garden bank, or that went home in your first learning packs. Thanks to your tender loving care they are now growing well and are  brightening window sills, pots and gardens. Some of you have experienced cooking with your own home grown vegetables for the first time and have told me how delicious they taste too! I know that some of the children in school this week have enjoyed harvesting rhubarb and strawberries and have been creating wonderful dishes with these at home too.

Joe in Year 3 shared his thoughts about growing:

“It’s great seeing the plants go through their stages of life and seeing the leaves come out. I’m really looking forward to the sunflowers coming out and brightening up our garden. When we don’t water them they go floppy but the instant you give them water they spring back into action. We also have a cherry tree and tomatoes. The cherries are turning red and the tomatoes are getting bigger. I noticed how the fruit pushes away the flower and grows bigger and bigger. I just like growing things really!”

Many of you have been able to share observations of interdependence in your growing spaces and the wonderful teamwork that has been happening within your own transformation. I wonder if you can spot the ‘transformers’ that have been enjoying Mrs Smith’s vegetable plot over the last few weeks in today’s celebration …? 

Thank you once again for all of your contributions to our celebrations, they always brighten my week and the films always make me cry when I see what we have achieved together. Our thanks as always to Miss Barnes for pulling these all together so creatively.

Today’s story is a perfect celebration of the transformations that can be achieved when everyone works together and this story was recommended to me by the lovely Ruth in Year 1. Ruth very kindly brought her book into school this week so that I could share this beautiful story with you too.

Have a great weekend everyone, I think that vital ingredient for all of our growing (sunshine) is about to return.

With warm wishes to you and your families, 

Mrs Smith 

We have enjoyed What the Ladybird Heard and What the Ladybird Heard Next – let’s find out what she heard on holiday…..

Practise your days of the week – what day is it today? Watch this clip below to help you….

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zrqqtfr/articles/ztjg39q

These games will help you memorise the days of the week and name all seven days.

https://www.turtlediary.com/game/days-of-the-week.html

Games to Play today…

Choose from some of these numbers games to play today.

Comparing numbers quiz

https://www.education.com/game/comparing-numbers-quiz/

Ski Race Numbers

https://www.education.com/game/ski-racer-even-numbers/

Karate Cats Maths

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zjkphbk/articles/zf4sscw

The Guardians of Mathmatica

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zd2f7nb/articles/zn2y7nb

Enjoy listening to this Mini-Beast song again….

Log on to oxford owl and choose a book to read with your grown up.

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/

Hello everyone!    

Today we would like you to carry on with these reading projects!

We hope you are learning a lot about mini beasts while you read…………..this will be useful for your jobs next week, making an information book about mini beasts, so keep that information in your head!!

Mini- Beast Fact Cards

Here are 4 more Mini- Beast fact cards to read.

When you have read a page choose one important thing to remember, ask your grown up to write it down for you. Keep it safe!

Remember to practise your words too!

Perhaps play a game to practise

Roll a dice and see which word you could land on, can you say it? Can you write it?

Word searches are fun and help you recognise words. Have fun, happy learning!

Choose some tricky words to read and spell from yesterdays post.

Hello everybody!!    

Today we are going to mix our jobs together!

We would like you to do your reading from the blog today  – try the mini – beast facts below.

Also let’s read and practise spelling tricky words             

Here we go!

Choose a few to practise reading and writing. Write with pen, with chalks, with paint brushes or fingers in the air.

Work hard…..happy learning!