Whitehouse Common Primary -

Let's Go Cultural at home!

Hello! Hallo!  ¡Hola! Yia sou and Merhaba

I hope that you're all safe. well and happy at home, exercising with Joe Wicks, dancing with Oti, enjoying story time with David Walliams and of course keeping up with your activities sent by your class teachers.

I thought you might like some ideas of how we can carry on with our Let's Go Cultural! project whilst we're not physically at school, so here are some suggestions. You can send anything you produce to your class Showbie and your teacher can pass it on to me, or tweet it, or send it to our school enquiry email address and it'll get to me that way. 

Most of all, stay happy and safe, and keep smiling. 

Sra Stevens xx

PS Spanish will follow tomorrow! And watch out for photos and videos of our exciting project week in school!

1. Did you enjoy our Erasmus+ visitors being here? What did you do and learn while our visitors were here? What was your favourite memory? You could write a thank you letter or a recount, or record yourself dancing or talking about your experiences.

2. Find out about famous monuments in Austria, Spain, Greece and Turkey, and in particular in Styria, Cartagena, Elefsina and Istanbul.

3. Festivals and celebrations – explore festivals that are celebrated in our partner countries throughout the year. Do we celebrate them too? Are they similar to a festival we celebrate? How are they celebrated? Food? Dance? Music? What about festivals we celebrate?

4. The next phase of our project looks at traditional games and pastimes. Why not find out about traditional games played in England/the United Kingdom.

Talk to your older relatives (or write them a letter!) – what did they play as children? What toys did they have?

What games were played at breaktime in the past?

What equipment did they need?

You could make some posters or even a video to explain what you discover!

5. Traditional tales and stories from England as well as our partner countries are also something we’ll be looking at. Have a look for some stories that originate from Spain, Austria, Greece and Turkey. You could retell them using a storyboard, or even act them out!

6. Check out the project blog to see what our partner schools have been learning about too!  

https://erasmusplusletsgocultural.blogspot.com/

There are suggestions above but there are lots of other things you could explore about our partner countries. Geography, history, art, famous people and much more!

Have fun! 

Guidance for activities in line with Early Learning Goals

Dear parents / carers,

Firstly I would like to thank you for all your efforts in supporting your children with their learning during this challenging time.

I hope that you are finding the suggested activities and resources useful in supporting the work that you are doing each day.

Please also be reminded of the importance of spending time together during this period and of the impact of talk, imaginative play and social time (playing board games, spending time in the garden, bike riding and walking etc.) on your child’s development and learning.

Make the learning fun and use the opportunity for additional time at home together to put learning into meaningful and ‘real-life’ contexts.

With uncertainty around current plans, I have put together some additional activity ideas relating directly to the Early Learning Goals.

The intention is that, by the end of the academic year, most children will be achieving most of the Early Learning Goals. They need to be achieving all elements of the goal independently in order for this to be considered as ‘achieved’.

Although we are aware that time away from school will reduce the amount of input we can give directly to this, I have listed each Early Learning Goal with some key suggested activities which will support your child in making further progress towards them.

Please continue to support your child in all aspects of their learning and continue to spend a little time (10-15 min) each day to practice phonics, read together and practice letter formation and name writing. It would also be beneficial to keep revisiting basic maths skills each day (10-15 min) such as counting to 20 and beyond, touch counting objects accurately to 20, knowing number pairs to 10 (number bonds) and within 10 e.g. 1 + 4, 2 + 3 and 5 + 0 all total 5 etc.

Keep enjoying quality time together, keep having fun, keep smiling and laughing together and take care of each other.

With warmest wishes

Mrs Slassor

Emergency Childcare - Easter Period

If you are a Key Worker and need Emergency Childcare over the Easter Period please complete the booking form here so that we can ensure staffing numbers are correct.

PLEASE NOTE: Childcare provision for Whitehouse Common children will continue to take place at Hollyfield Primary School and as you will already be aware, we are no longer able to offer before or after school care.

Booking Form

Update to Parents - 27/03/2020

Dear Parents,

I cannot believe that a week has passed since our school closed to all our wonderful children, apart from providing much needed childcare for the children of key workers. I am sure, like me, you could never have imagined that this would happen. I cannot express how I feel about this, but am comforted that this is a temporary arrangement and that sometime in the future we will be back at school or ‘doing the school run’ yet again.

As a school team, our main priority now is to try and support our key workers so they are able to do their jobs supporting the infrastructure of our country and saving lives. You may be aware that, from next Monday, we will be providing our key worker child care provision, run by our own staff in a self contained part of the building, at Hollyfield Primary School.

We all need to be mindful that an unprecedented situation like this is going to add layers of anxiety and stress to our lives so we need to look after ourselves and take time out to relax. Many of our children can teach you relaxation techniques that they have learnt recently in school and I am sure you will have ideas that you could share with them too. (This could also be lots of fun!) Please do note that there are many support mechanisms in place for children and adults and a range of information can be found on our website.

Please may I take this opportunity to remind you that homework for children is on our school website. There is much there for the children to do and we will review and update this after the Easter ‘holiday’. Staff will also be making contact with children in their class approximately every 2 weeks to have a general chat and maintain contact. Mrs Horne will also be calling children who she sees on a regular basis for extra support.

On behalf of all of the staff team here, I would like to say that we do miss all of the children very much and look forward to seeing them and you soon, when it is safer to be back in the community. We hope you will all join in with the 8pm clap for our key workers; we will all be doing this too.

We wish you strength and we wish you well.

Best wishes

Mrs Debbie Allen

Head Teacher

Mrs History

Dear Parents,

We have been sent a message from Mrs History to say that they have uploaded follow-on activities to their website.  These provide some resources and activities on topics such as Ancient Egypt, Vikings, Dinosaurs and other Key Stage 1 & 2 history topics.  Please feel free to access these, download or pass on to other parents supporting learning at home and indeed share with your networks. 

http://www.mrshistory.org.uk/

9 tips to help your child manage their behaviour and emotions at home

Parents and carers: Supporting your child at home? If your kid finds it hard to handle their emotions, or their behaviour leaves your frustrated.....we're here to help!

Get your guide!

Educational psychologist telephone helpline for parents and carers

Please find attached a flyer for the support line being run by the Birmingham Educational Psychology Service, for all parents and carer’s across the city, offering them telephone consultations with psychologists during the school shut down period. This service is self-referral by parents and is available for any issue they wish to raise around their children and family situation at this time. Click the image to access the PDF, or if that doesn't load, [click here]

A Message from the Head Teacher

Dear Whitehouse Common Children

I do hope you are all well and enjoying your time at home. It has now been a week since all schools were closed. As you know we are still having a few children come to school, but not for classes, for childcare while their parents go to work. This is because there are some parents who must go to work, like nurses and doctors, and their children need to be cared for safely while they do this.

Firstly, can I say that we are all missing you very much! We miss your smiles, your good manners and your positive attitudes. You have all worked so hard this year and made so much progress; we are very proud of you. We know that if you had been able to take any end of year tests, for example SATs, that you would have demonstrated all your new knowledge and abilities to a very high standard. However, most importantly, each and every one of you knows how much you have personally achieved and this is what is most important.

Please make sure you help your families with jobs around the house and work as a team, like you do at school, to ensure all your days are as good as they can possibly be. There are lots of homework ideas on the website for you and I don’t need to ask you to read, do I? You know how much fun it is, as well as how important it is for your learning of language and ideas.

Your teachers will be phoning you about every two weeks while the school is closed. They are looking forward to asking how you are, listening to any news you may have and hearing how you are getting on with your homework. I will be asking them all about you.

All the staff at school are thinking of you and sending you their love and best wishes. The whole team is looking forward to seeing you soon.

Take care

Mrs Allen

Head Teacher