Chokito Recipe

Many children (and adults) enjoyed the sweets we made for India Day, so here is the recipe.

Chokito

To make about 40 sweets.

250g of Dried Stoned Dates

100g of Butter

75g of Caster Sugar

2 tbsp Milk

100g of Puffed Rice

50g Drinking Chocolate

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Desiccated Coconut or Hundreds and Thousands to coat.

1.  Chop the dates and dice the butter.  Place in the saucepan with the sugar and milk and warm gently stirring for a few minutes until the butter melts and the dates start to soften.

2.  Place the remaining ingredients except for the coatings in the mixing bowl and then pour in the date mixture.

3.  When cool enough use your hands to shape the mixture into about 40 small balls, placing them on a tray as you make them.

4.  Sprinkle the desiccated coconut or hundreds and thousands over the balls, then roll each one carefully until it is thoroughly coated.

Inspiring India Day

We had a wonderful day on Tuesday celebrating the end of our India topic.  Many thanks to all of the parents that were involved in making the day go so smoothly and of course to Mrs Webb and the children for their excellent cooking skills and Mrs Brooker and team who painted many hands with beautiful Mehndi patterns! 
Our action packed day began with a talk from firefighter John where the children learned about fire safety at home and also got to see the special "how to train your dragon family" fire engine, they even got the opportunity to use the hose!  Firefighter John also linked his talk to our India Day giving us a fun activity sheet showing how to be safe during Diwali celebrations.  Thank you John.
After break we began to prepare for our celebrations in the afternoon, Mrs Mistry-Dyer brought in some amazing artefacts and hands on activities that the children really enjoyed, Mehndi patterns were drawn on hands, Rangoli designs were chalked on paper, Dances were practiced and Sweets were made!
The cafe opened with a buzz at 3:20pm and was a huge success, so thank you to everyone who took time to come and join in, have a taste and enjoy their children's learning with them.  Please look out for our display in the entrance hall, near the hall for photos, menus for the cafe, recipes and descriptions of  the day.  More to be posted on blogger soon.

POWSA AGM

Just a quick reminder that the POWSA AGM is happening this Thursday 23rd October 19.45 in the school staffroom.
This is a great opportunity to meet the current POWSA Committee, find out what we do for the school and enjoy home made goodies! We are a committed, friendly but small band of parents and we are always looking for new members. the level of your involvement in planning, implementing and running POWSA events is entirely up to you. We don't expect you to be at every meeting and at every event from start to finish but with more members and if we all do a little bit then there is plenty of time for us all to enjoy each event with our families as well as helping out.
It is a lot of fun and in return you receive a huge amount of satisfaction and feeling of pride that you have raised funds which are used to help all our children and our fantastic school.
Please consider coming along and finding out a bit more. Hope to see you there, POWSA.

The Great PoW Poetry Competition!!!!! Get Writing!!!!!!

What a wonderful, exciting and inspiring time of year we are immersed in - beautiful autumnal colours, leaves floating to the ground and flooding the pavements, conkers peppering the streets, crackling fires, Diwali, Halloween, Bonfire Night, moving towards winter and all the excitement of Christmas............so let's fire up our creativity and use it to compose a poem!

I am thrilled to announce The Great PoW Poetry Competition!

The theme is Autumn/Winter.

BE AS CREATIVE AS YOU LIKE! Your poem can be as long or as short as you like, it can rhyme or not, you can use any particular style (Acrostic, Haiku, Tanka, rhyming couplets........) However you choose to construct your poem make sure it conveys the theme, remember the presentation of you poem is important too and why not illustrate it as well!!!!!

For Reception ONLY: if writing your own poem is a bit tricky, why not find a favourite poem about this theme and try to copy it, get an adult to help you write one, use a computer or even record yourself reciting one!

There will be one winner per class so, PUT YOUR NAME AND CLASS ON YOUR ENTRY AND HAND IT IN TO YOUR CLASS TEACHER BY FRIDAY 7th NOVEMBER.

The winners will also be displayed on the New Golden Writing Wall!!!!!

We are a very creative school with a bubbling and overflowing imagination so I would love to see as many of you as possible having a go...........then we can have more competitions like this!!!!!

Get writing!!!!!!!

Good Luck - Mrs. Johnson (Literacy Coordinator)

Farm visit

We had a lovely energetic morning visiting Maiden Castle Farm on Thursday. Hazel Hoskin was taken aback with the level of questions from the children and they were genuinely interested and excited by the big forage harvester and the combine! Luckily the children managed to see the Forage harvester in action which was exciting to see from the front! A few children collected left over maize (which we all thought looked exactly like corn on the cob!) and then saw the process of milling to make the maize ready for animal food. The walk to and from the farm was as enjoyable for the children especially with the muddy puddles! If your wellies are still in bags then do give them a good wash to get rid of the farm smells!
There was some super listening and the children represented the school well. Thank you also to the the three parent helpers who came along too, much appreciated. 

Maths Learning - Week Beginning 13th October 2014

This week we have been looking at different methods for subtraction.  We have counted back in 10s from a range of starting points and begun to apply this to subtraction on a number line.  Counting back over numbers like 100 or 80 is often a challenge for this age group, but the key is lots of practice.  To practice at home, pick a two digit number such as 54 and count back in 10s: 44, 34, 24, 14, 4.  If your child finds this hard try counting forwards first and then try again backwards until they can do it.  On the other hand if it is easy try counting back in 10s from a three or four digit number especially where it crosses a hundreds boundary, for example: 1046, 1036, 1026, 1016, 1006, 996, etc.
The other skills we have been looking at is how to add or subtract quickly and efficiently over 10s boundaries.  For example:  Can the children work out 7+9 without counting on their fingers?  The next step will be to transfer this skill to harder questions such as 36+8 or 97+9 or even 678+25.

Literacy Learning - Week Beginning 13th October 2014

This week we have been looking at our sentences and how they are formed.  We have revised our CAPITAL LETTERS and are aware of the need for full stops.  We have also begun to look at the type of words a sentence needs to make sense.  We will be continuing to learn about Nouns and Verbs over the coming weeks. 
The children have also been challenged to write compound sentences, using connectives (but, and, so, because, etc) to join two simple sentences together in order to make their writing more interesting for the reader.  It is very pleasing to see how much more confident the children are now with their writing and how much their handwriting has improved since the beginning of the year.  Please continue to remind your child about their capital letters and full stops if they do some writing at home.

Off to the Farm - 16.10.14

Hopefully the weather will be a bit better tomorrow as year 2 head off to the farm.  Wellies, waterproofs and long warm trousers are a must.  The children will return to school in time for lunch.  Many thanks to those of you who have volunteered to come along.

'Vegtastic' end to the week!

We hope those of you that could join us this morning for our Harvest celebrations enjoyed yourselves and felt that the essence of Harvest was captured? The children really enjoyed learning the song 'Let's Harvest' as well as signing the entire song! A well done to the class, a real achievement doing both and to an audience!

Spellings - learning is going well, please come and ask about your child's scores. We will make sure that the books are out for parent consultations. Please try to find a few ways to practice the spellings. Some children learn by writing them out but others do need to break words down and learn them in segments. Try writing out words on stickies, then a quick check up on one word whilst serving up breakfast or putting bowls in the sink! Frequency is best to help spellings to sink in. Also, this provides super practice of home learning, ready for future work and years ahead.

Finally, if you haven't already, please sign up for a parent consultation, forms are just inside the classroom door. We would endeavour to see every child's parents so please do contact us if you need an additional time.

Farm to Fork Week - Week Beginning 6th October.

We have had a wonderful time this week busily preparing for our harvest celebrations on Friday.  The children have been learning about Fairtrade Chocolate production, tasting Indian Food, creating beautiful works of art and practicing their Harvest Songs.  The children have been really enthusiastic learners throughout the week.  Well done Year 2.

Maiden Castle Farm Trip Cancelled

The trip to Maiden Castle Farm due to take place on Tuesday 14th October is now cancelled.  We will be doing our best to reschedule this trip to support our learning about food, farming and harvest.

Tasting Indian Food

This morning Year 2 enjoyed tasting a variety of Indian food with Mr Farrington. We tried lots of fruit, five different curries (home made!), rice and a range of tasty snacks such as samosas, pakoras and onion bhajis with lime pickle! Mr Farrington showed the class lots of photos of his time in India, including cafes, street markets, school lunches and lovely nutritious meals. We even watched a coconut being smashed open and some of the children had pomegranate juice squeezed into their mouths! We all have a right to nutritious food!

Can anybody help?

On the 20th of October we will be having a Rights Respecting Week to celebrate 25 years of the UNCRC. 

The Children's Voice have decided that they would like to see some of the UNICEF articles of the Rights of the Child displayed in our school entrance. Each year group will be designing and making a flag portraying one of the articles. 

This is where we need your help! We are looking for some plain white flat sheets usually used for bedding that we could have please. As an Eco School we encourage recycling old unwanted items so was wondering if anyone has any old sheets that we could have for our project please. If so please can you either give them to your child's class teacher or pass them on to Mrs Thorpe in Year 1. 

Many thanks 

Home school home learning

Whole school home learning

This week all children will be bringing home a whole school home learning project. We are really proud to be a Rights Respecting School and will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the UNCRC in the week beginning 20th October (more information to follow soon). 

Article 8 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child:

‘We have a right to an identity’

We are going to be designing a school flag to be displayed at The Thomas Hardye School as part of our DASP Rights Week Project (starting on the 20^th October). 

We would like the children to design something we can add on our flag linked to our theme. One design from each class will be chosen by the 'Children’s Voice'. It could be a picture or suitable quote/words or both, keeping it simple is key to ensuring it is eye catching.. 

Why are the children proud to be them? What makes them special? All entries to be given to class teachers by the 10^th of October.

India Day Invitation

On Tuesday 21st October Year 2 will be having an "India Day" where the children will be taking part in 4 fun activities relating to our India topic.  We would like the children to dress up for this occasion and a letter will be coming home next week with some ideas about what they could wear.  At the end of the day we would like to invite you all to the classroom early to watch an Indian Dance and to sample some of the food that the children have made.  Come along from 3:20pm onwards and see for yourself what fun we've had learning about India! 

Maths Learning - Week Beginning 29th September

We have continued to work on making our addition and subtraction methods quick and efficient this week.  Children working independently in the classroom have been choosing their own methods for adding and taking away and have impressed us with what they can do! 
Mathletics is starting to take off and is an ideal place to practice those addition and subtraction skills.  We have had 3 certificates so far where the children have earned 1000 points within the space of a week.  Well done Noah, Megan and Holly! 

Literacy Learning - Week Beginning 29th September

The children have had great fun this week making up their own versions of Little Red Riding Hood.  There has been lots of wonderful creative thinking about how they can change the characters and setting of the story to make it their own.  The children have also demonstrated their ability to use punctuation, adjectives and connectives to make their writing even better.  We have also been really pleased to see lots of children beginning to use their neatest joined handwriting at all times!  At home you could try describing some of your favourite book characters to each other to encourage your child to use exciting descriptive words.

Whole school home learning

This week all children will be bringing home a whole school home learning project. We are really proud to be a Rights Respecting School and will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the UNCRC in the week beginning 20th October (more information to follow soon).

Article 8 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child:

‘We have a right to an identity’

We are going to be designing a school flag to be displayed at The Thomas Hardye School as part of our DASP Rights Week Project (starting on the 20^th October). We would like the children to design something we can add on our flag linked to our theme. One design from each class will be chosen by the Children’s Voice. It could be a picture they draw or suitable quote/words. Why are the children proud to be them? What makes them special? All entries to be given to class teachers by the 10^th of October.