Home Learning Adventures!

Henry demonstrates the challenges of Big

Maths at his kitchen table. We hope you

weren’t timing this Henry! Well done for

managing to get it done with your furry

friend

Teddy in Emerald class and his mum have

set up a stall outside their house and are

selling bits and bobs to raise money for the

NHS. People have also been donating items

and because there are many passers by,

having their daily exercise, the stall is doing

a roaring trade! So far they have raised

nearly £400. Teddy is enjoying collecting

the honesty box and each day and counting

the money. Great maths practise Teddy and

such a super fundraising idea. I wonder how

much you will raise in total?

Well done Florence, we love your

super work on ordinal numbers that

you completed all by yourself!

Millie has been busy making the

decorations for her bug hotel. These

look gorgeous! Millie and Mrs.

Stevenson have been waving to

children as they pass their house in

the village. They have put out seeds

for families to collect and do their

own planting at home. How lovely to see these messages of thanks left by Elsworth

children and some of the villagers. I wonder if any of the seeds have germinated yet?

Elsworth Extra Issue 14 – May 2020

Edward has been busy designing

and making an Easter bonnet. The

Fitzwilliam Pony Club ran a

competition as there is no riding at

the moment and Edward won the

Age 5 and under. Well done

Edward. Is that your riding hat

we spy under there?

Here is Edward with a wooden box

that he made with his grandad.

He was learning about shapes,

using maths and DT. Edward is

going to use it to put seeds in. He is

also learning to reverse a tractor.

Later on he practiced with a trailer

too. What a great skill to have and

one that many adults find difficult!

Isla has been doing the most amazing writing on the topic of

Space. Here is a diary of a space traveller, a job advert for an

astronaut and a fantastic piece of history writing, comparing

Neil Armstrong, Tim Peak and Helen Sharman. Wow Isla,

fantastic work

Finn and Imogen have been enjoying the story of the

Bog Baby (one of my favorites) and creating their own

Bog Babies in the woods. They have also been ‘drawing

with Rob’ and Finn has been sewing and written a

wonderful shape poem

about love. Well done

both of you. You have

been really busy.

Have a read of the

poem and see if you

love any of the same

things as Finn.

Ava has done a fantastic

job of drawing and labelling

the part of a tree, including

roots, trunk, branches, leaf

and flower. A super job Ava

– well done.

Abi in Emerald and Felix C in

Sapphire have enjoyed thinking up

new flavours for crisps. I would like

to try both of these! How about

lemon and lime flavour, or cucumber

perhaps? They sound delicious.

Charlie took advantage of a food order that arrived in dry ice. Here

is a presentation of his investigations. Charlie found out that the

dry ice lowered the temperature of the surrounding air (turning

water vapour in the air into solid ‘fog’), it lowered the temperature

of a glass of water (measured with a thermometer), and it turned

the water in the glass to ice. Great experiments Charlie. The dry

ice looks very exciting to work with and I know you will have done

so very carefully.

Here is Jack also doing science. As part of the science Miss Barker

set, Jack and his dad dissected a daffodil. Great work Jack – keep it

up!

VE Day Celebrations - Poster

Friday May 8th marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day. The celebrations will

look very different this year and there may something special that your

village community has decided to do. If you would like to mark the

occasion alongside children from other Cambridgeshire schools, you have

been invited to photograph yourself (landscape orientation) with your

homemade poster with the words ‘To those who gave so much, we thank

you.’ If you email these to the office by 2pm tomorrow, we can

contribute to a county wide media release on Friday. It doesn’t give you much time I’m afraid, but it’s a lovely, late

notice idea from the LA! If you can’t meet this deadline, staff and children will be doing our own Elsworth version that

we will send out on Friday. The deadline for this will be 11am Thursday morning.

Miles for Medals Challenge

Our Daily Mile challenge last term was based on learning about the Paralympics

through our Daily Mile Local Champion, double Paralympian, Sam Ruddock. It has

been rewarding for everyone to hear how much the children enjoyed taking part

and how it re-motivated some staff too! In all, 25 schools took part in the

competition and all of the participating schools will receive a large 15 minute

sand timer as a thank you for embedding the Daily Mile into school life. Most

exciting of all however, is that Elsworth School won the Gold Medal for the most

distance covered. Our prize is £400 of playground markings!

Well done and thank you to everyone who took part and Special thanks to Mrs

Thomas who organised us all so brilliantly.

I am sure we are all looking forward to choosing our new markings and using them

too!

Live Q & A session for Children

Our South Cambridgeshire MP, Anthony Browne, will be running a special question and

answer session for the children of South Cambridgeshire on Friday 15th May at 11am. If you

have a question for Mr. Browne about Coronavirus, or anything else, please email it to office

by Monday 11th May. We will send it off to Mr. Browne and let you know the details of how

to log in to the live session. I am sure that this opportunity will appeal to some of our

budding politicians, who love to think about what’s happening in the world around them and

ask challenging questions.

Early Intervention Family Worker Parent Survival Tips

Science experiments for little ones

There’s lot of fun stuff to do over at the cbeebies website, here is the link to some cool science experiments (I like the fizzy lava lamp). https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/curations/science-experiments-tlgc

How to train your dragon

Cressida Cowell reads a chapter a day of her lovely book ( from her very messy shed)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyUNZa7_Gjo&list=PLE5MZB5pedUMNJLdgu0wYaSlL0dRLHcU0&index=2&t=0s

Why do we sleep?

For children who don’t want to go to bed, it can be useful to explain to them why we do it. Did you know we can spend around 25 years of our lives sleeping! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoCL0IB4u4g

Parent Tip

Thinking about needs and behaviour.

Children behave in less than desirable ways for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes behaviour can be linked to a child’s needs.

Children will often use behaviour to try and communicate their needs. Think of a baby crying, the parents will usually be going through a checklist to try and find out what the baby needs: Is he/she hungry, wet, ill, bored, uncomfortable?

Once the need is met, the behaviour will become easier (in theory, I know it’s not always that easy). It’s the same for older children, they are not always able to communicate what they really need, so sometimes use behaviour instead.

It can therefore be useful to apply the same principle to older children, although it can be trickier sometimes to work out what a behaviour is trying to tell us, and what the need might be. You might have to observe your child’s behaviour over a period of time.

Here’s an activity for you to do in the coming week.

Make a list of your children's needs (think of as many as you can)

Look back at some of the more challenging behaviour you have experienced, and try and work out if it might have been due to your child trying to communicate a need.

Early Intervention Family Worker

Parenting isn’t always easy and children don’t come with instructions. If you are struggling with any aspect of your child’s behaviour or have any other concerns I am available to support you via phone/ email during the current crisis. Common issues that families ask for help with include: challenging behaviour, sleep difficulties, anxiety/emotional wellbeing, discipline, self-esteem, sibling rivalry.

I run a number of workshops in schools on particular parenting topics, and am currently working on adapting these into bitesize self-help booklets that can be emailed to you individually.

Available now

Sibling Rivalry Positive Discipline Understand Challenging Behaviour Contact: janeelizabeth.rogers@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

01954 284650 07901008850