Week 5 and 6

Dear Parents,

Over the past two weeks, our Grace and Courtesy lessons have focused on social interactions.
When passing someone in a narrow space, we remind the children to say “Excuse me.”
When asking for something, we encourage polite requests using “Can I… please?” rather than “I want…,”.
We also practiced responding to greetings from teachers and staff with a cheerful “Hello” or “Good morning.”
Additionally, we discussed the importance of kindness when playing or working together. If a friend asks to join a game or activity, the polite response should be welcoming rather than rejecting.

We would also like to thank you sincerely for your generosity in bringing snacks and flowers to school. The children take their snack duties seriously, peeling carrots and cucumbers, spreading jam or peanut butter, and carefully cutting flower stems. During snack time, when everyone thanks the snack duty helper, the child feels a great sense of pride.

As mentioned in the parent information meeting, this is part of Montessori Practical Life. Snack preparation and sharing are valuable exercises practiced in most Montessori schools, guided by principles of healthy eating and community building. The children enjoy this experience greatly as they share food together with their friends.

In Week 5, we concluded our unit on All About Me by focusing on feelings. We identified a wide range of emotions and discussed how we express them. We also explored strategies to turn our feelings around or ways to help ourselves work through them.

We have started a new unit on Our Five Senses, beginning with ‘sight’. The children explored a 3D model of an eye and learned about how our eyes function. They also played a “guess the missing object” game and created their own optical illusion called Bird in a Cage. To end the lesson, we discussed the importance of protecting our eyes from the sun.

Year 1 additional learning covered – Week 5 and 6

Phonics
To identify sounds represented by more than one letter, for example /ch/, /sh/
To use phonic knowledge to read decodable words. Reading CVC words and adjacent vowel / consonants using sounds covered.

Language / Literacy – Reading. Guided Reading groups – Practising fluency of reading and gaining the confidence to recognise sounds and blend them to read words.  Reading comprehension, to be able to answer direct questions about the book.

Language / Literacy- Weekend news
The children planned their writing by recording key words on their planning sheet:. ‘My weekend snapshots’. They concentrated on using capital letters and punctuation when writing their sentences.

Using their writing from Monday – weekend news, the children rewrote the sentences by adding further information and connective words: First, Next, Then, Finally.

Maths
Length
The children had the opportunity to compare objects and learn new vocabulary when describing the length of objects:  longer than, shorter than, longest, shortest.
Odd and even numbers
The children have continued to identify and understand even and odd numbers as ‘every other number’ when counting from 0 to 20.

Number names
Learning the names of the numbers was a fun time had by all. We played matching games to familiarise ourselves with the visual name of numbers and practised writing the names on our white boards: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Parent Teacher Conferences
Please be informed that Parent Teacher Conferences will be held in person /face to face, in the classroom, on the 29th and 30th of September.

On both of these days, all children; Nursery, Reception and Year 1 should be picked up at 12:00 (Lunch will not be provided).

Please use the attached document to sign up for the time that is convenient for you. Parents with 2 children in the class kindly sign up for back to back slots where possible. A gentle reminder to log in using your child’s school email address. Thank you.

Please arrive on time to adhere to our schedule. We will strictly follow allocated time slots, and there will be no extensions for late arrivals.

Peace Performance
Our Peace Performance will be held on Thursday, 27th November, at 11:30 a.m.
Please let us know by Wednesday, 24 of September if your child will not be attending this event. Further details about the performance will be shared closer to the date.

Kind regards,
Montessori Team