Please see below for some examples of the amazing work we've been doing

The children have been busy making a lovely range of decorations to take home. The Nursery looks very sparkly and so do the children on occasions! Everyone practised very hard for the singing to parents which we hope everyone enjoys watching. The children did a brilliant job learning the words and actions and performing the songs so well. We also really enjoyed being able to perform "live" for you on Zoom. Weren't the children fantastic?!

We have a couple of book recommendations this month. Check out Ollie's christmas Reindeer by Nicola Killen, this is an imaginative story for children to enjoy. Also worth reading is Little Owl and the Star by Mary Murphy. A lovely simple Nativity story. Happy Christmas from all of the Nursery!

The children in our Nursery hove been busy playing with the ‘Clean Mud’ which is great for developing those fine motor skills. Our pupil pictured reported “It’s squishy and cold”.

There’s always lots of different opportunities to build things from different materials. The other picture here shows one of our pupils busily building a giant robot from boxes.

We’ve also enjoyed seeing the children taking full advantage of our newly remodelled outside learning space.

Our book suggestion for you this month is ‘Oliver’s Vegetables’. We had lots of fun reading this and then tasting some of the vegetables. We learnt about where our vegetables grow and what you can make with them. We also made vegetable soup from some butternut squash that we picked from the school allotment. We all tasted the soup, it was yummy!

Each year group has prepared a performance for you and recorded it. We hope you enjoy watching our Harvest Assembly. You can also watch the full (All year groups) version here.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (Nursery and Reception classes) at Lowther has an exciting and creative curriculum. To find out more about life in Early Years at Lowther and our curriculum offer please follow these links:

Here you will find some helpful calculation guides for early years through to year 6 for maths learning and practice. Please click on the images to display/download the full documents in PDF Format.

Phonics is one part of how we teach children to read at Lowther.

Here at Lowther we follow Letters and Sounds from the Government guidelines of teaching phonics. This is six phases of learning which runs from Nursery into Year 2.

Phase One of Letters and Sounds concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2 at the beginning of reception. The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

It is intended that each of the first six aspects should be dipped into, rather than going through them in any order, with a balance of activities. Aspect 7 will usually come later, when children have had plenty of opportunity to develop their sound discrimination skills.

The aim of this aspect is to raise children's awareness of the sounds around them and to develop their listening skills. Activities suggested in the guidance include going on a listening walk, drumming on different items outside and comparing the sounds, playing a sounds lotto game and making shakers.

This aspect aims to develop children's awareness of sounds made by various instruments and noise makers. Activities include comparing and matching sound makers, playing instruments alongside a story and making loud and quiet sounds.

The aim of this aspect is to develop children's awareness of sounds and rhythms. Activities include singing songs and action rhymes, listening to music and developing a sounds vocabulary.

This aspect aims to develop children's appreciation and experiences of rhythm and rhyme in speech. Activities include rhyming stories, rhyming bingo, clapping out the syllables in words and odd one out.

The focus is on initial sounds of words, with activities including I-Spy type games and matching objects which begin with the same sound.

The aim is to distinguish between different vocal sounds and to begin oral blending and segmenting. Activities include Metal Mike, where children feed pictures of objects into a toy robot's mouth and the teacher sounds out the name of the object in a robot voice - /c/-/u/-/p/ cup, with the children joining in.

In this aspect, the main aim is to develop oral blending and segmenting skills.

To practise oral blending, the teacher could say some sounds, such as /c/-/u/-/p/ and see whether the children can pick out a cup from a group of objects. For segmenting practise, the teacher could hold up an object such as a sock and ask the children which sounds they can hear in the word sock.

The activities introduced in Phase 1 are intended to continue throughout the following phases, as lots of practice is needed before children will become confident in their phonic knowledge and skills.