Happy Friday everybody! So let us cut straight to the chase - we are very excited to tell you that we are planning to share our Christmas Production with you all in 2 weeks time!
Christmas Production
You should have been emailed a letter on Wednesday explaining our arrangements for sharing our Christmas Production with you.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DzjOwt8GIfwdOt9SMEeqhLhzzNWMSVh4/view?usp=sharing
We have spent the last week practicing in the hope we would be able to go ahead with this and it is with fingers firmly crossed that we have set the following dates:
- Wednesday 15th December at 9:30am
- Thursday 16th December at 9:30am
There will be 2 tickets allocated per family. Please email us on our usual address (also at the end of this post) which day you would like your tickets to be allocated to. You can, if you wish, choose to have 1 ticket for Wednesday and 1 for Thursday or both on the same day. We will allocate and confirm dates at the end of each school day on a first come first served basis. Programmes, which will act as your ticket, will be sent home at the beginning of the last week of school in time for the performances.
It will be so lovely to welcome you all back into the school for such a special occasion!
Christmas Jumper Day - Friday 10th December
Article 28 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that "All children have a right to an education." We take this right very seriously at Down Hall and just over 3 years ago, the School Council chose to raise money to sponsor a child to go to school who currently did not have this right.
We are now in our 4th year of sponsoring Thoko, a girl from Malawi, to go to school. It is through wearing our Christmas jumpers and making a donation on this day that pays for Thoko's education for the whole year! So feel very festive in your Christmas jumper on Friday but also feel very proud when you make your suggested £1 donation that you are making a massive impact on the life of another child.
You can read an update on our School Council activities here.
Remember, your child is wearing normal school uniform except for a Christmas jumper on this day. In Key Stage 1, we also use our Christmas jumpers in our Christmas production so if the children could bring in a named plastic bag as well on Friday, at the end of the day we will ask them to put their jumper into this bag so we can keep it in school for a production in the following week.
Please bear this in mind when getting dressed for school on Friday and ensure that your child has something underneath their Christmas jumper to come home in.
Maths Homework
This week we would like you to look at pages 26-27.
For Year 1's this is looking at addition. Take the time to do lots of practical adding using different everyday objects and verbalise the process clearly. There are lots of practical games on Top Marks if you wish to consolidate these skills further:
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/addition-and-subtraction
For Year 2's this is looking at inverse operations. Addition and subtraction are the opposite or inverse of each other. So if we know that 25 + 12 = 37 then it follows that 37 - 12 = 25. It is good to go through the process of solving these calculations to prove this relationship and consolidate learning. Again there are lots of games on Top Marks to further explore these ideas:
Don't forget to keep up all your fantastic efforts with your reading at home. We cannot emphasize how important to your child's general progress in all aspects of their learning regular reading is. It remains one of the simplest and most impactful things you can do to support your child's education at home. We are still updating the Big Cat online library for all our children as they move up reading levels, so don't forget to use this resource if it is useful to you.
As always, we are available on our Key Stage 1 email. If you have any questions or concerns about anything, please just ask and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
