Dear parents and carers,

Teachers across the school are doing an amazing job of planning high quality work for your children to complete whilst at home (and for those in school).

As you are aware, the government has set very clear guidance regarding the amount of time which should be spent by children on schoolwork.

The amount of remote education should be a minimum of:

• key stage 1: 3 hours a day
• key stage 2: 4 hours a day

We have ensured that a wide range of subjects are covered within this time and are particularly mindful of the need to ensure children have time away from screens.

 That said, we remain keen to stress how vitally important it is that your child is reading every single day; and while at home, we have provided online resources to facilitate this.

In Reception we are using Oxford Owl. Your child can then select and read the books according to the coloured band that they would normally choose from at school. If you need a reminder of which coloured band they normally choose from, then please ask.

In addition to this, we set weekly reading challenges! We hope you are enjoying these. We love to see the results of your challenges that you have been sending in. We have also been posting storytimes. This is because we love to have a storyime in Reception everyday. We ask that you please build a storytime into your daily routine, perhaps at bedtime to keep the love of reading alive.

World Book Day 2021

 Next month on the 4^th March is the annual celebration of reading across the country!

As we expect to still be in a lockdown situation, Newdale would like to introduce an Alice in Wonderland whole school theme. We hope that by having one theme, this will support families who have children in multiple year groups.

More information will follow, but we would encourage dressing up for those who enjoy this and of course a mad hatter’s tea party of your own! We understand going out to buy a costume may be a challenge at the moment, so encourage you to get creative and put something together of your own at home just for fun. We will  be having a ‘hat’ theme so even just making a hat for the event to get into the spirit!

 Kind regards, 

The Year Reception team

Home Schooling Art Day 2021

You will have received the message about Art Day on Monday. For those children in school that day, we will also be doing the activities. I have attached the sheet of activities for you to see what we are doing.
Please can I draw your attention to the handprint art activity. For this children are welcome to bring in their Grandparents handprint, which as outlined on the sheet could be passed onto you virtually or through the post. We will need to quarantine these before we decorate. If you can’t receive a handprint then we can make our own representation. If you don’t have a grandparent, then this could be for some other special person you are missing at the moment.
As we won’t be able to hold our annual tea-party this year in school,  then after school you may also choose to take part in the suggested virtual tea-party too.
Thank you everybody. We can’t wait to get creative!