Newsletter
November Week 2
Friday 12th November
What a busy week!
We are so proud of the children and staff for all the hard work and resilience they have shown after the last two years and it's fantastic that we are now able to add more exciting opportunities and events to the school planner following the lift of COVID restrictions. After all the ups and downs, it's great to see the children participating in and enjoying all the activities that had to be put on hold for a while. They never fail to amaze us with their enthusiasm and achievements.
This week, Year 2 have participated in the Music Festival and visited Woodside Park Synagogue, the football team have played their first match of the term, KS2 have welcomed parents/carers to our Reading Impact Meetings, our Parent Champion meeting was held by Miss Papas and Mrs Segal and children have received their Flu nasal sprays.
Remembrance
Thursday's assembly celebrated Remembrance Day to remember all of the people that have fought and died for their country. We held a silence at 11 am to show our respect.
This Remembrance Sunday, a march will take place from the Royal British Legion, Brookhill Road to the war memorial in East Barnet Village. A wreath will be laid by Livingstone pupils on behalf of the school. Pupils attending should wear school uniform if possible.
Reading Impact
Thank you to all our KS2 parents/carers for joining us in the Reading Impact meetings this week; we had an amazing response and appreciate that you were able to make it.
The meetings demonstrated how we teach reading at Livingstone and showed how adults can help their children with reading at home. The session delved into retrieval, language and inference skills as well as an explanation of our use of Accelerated Reader.
Parent Champions
A massive thank you to everyone who attended our first Parent Champions Coffee morning on Tuesday morning. Livingstone, with the support of Coram Family and Childcare Charity, will soon start Parent Champions training in order to train parents - just like you - who will make a difference and reach families in our local community that would otherwise miss out on information about childcare, early learning and local services.
We will keep you updated about the Parent Champions actions and future training.
Christmas Dinner Day
Our special Christmas Dinner, made by Tracy and Faye, will be served on Wednesday 15th December.
If your child is on packed lunch and you would like them to have the Christmas Dinner, please book and pay £2.35 via School Money by selecting 'Dinners', week commencing 13 Dec 2021 and then select Wednesday 15th December.
If your child is already having school dinners, you do not need to do anything.
Attendance
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Tips for not being late to school
1.Make it a priority to get to bed on time. If you habitually run late for school, pay attention to whether there's anything that's keeping you up late at night. Things like playing video games, watching TV , but it's very important that your education comes first.
2. Prepare your uniform the night before to save yourself time in the morning. There’s nothing worse than getting ready for school and having no idea where all your uniform is. To avoid the chaos in the morning, take a few minutes before bed to put together your outfit for the next day so it’s ready when you wake up.
3. Set an alarm! If you are always late then it is time to get up a little earlier, 5 or 10 minutes will make so much difference in reducing the stress levels of everyone in the morning. Move your alarm clock away from your bed so you have to get up to turn it off.
4.Get your book bag and lunch ready so you can just grab it on your way out the door. Searching for reading books, diaries and PE kit before school can be hectic. By organizing everything in your backpack or reading bag the night before, you’ll have one less thing to worry about in the morning.
5. Plan on walking out the door a few minutes earlier than you need to. Whether you take the bus or get driven to school by your parents, having a few minutes of wriggle room will save you from being late if you’re running behind. Always have an alternative route or a plan B just in case there is heavy traffic or your bus is late.
This weeks attendance:
Reception 90%
Yr 1 96%
Yr 2 98%
Yr 3 96%
Yr 4 98%
Yr 5 90%
Yr 6 91%
*KF1, KF2 and Nightingales are included in their Mainstream Classes.
Well done to Years 1, 2 and 4 for being over 96%!
Times Tables Rock Stars
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This week the KS2 children watched our Livingstone Times Tables Rock Stars launch video. They found out about how they can earn extra golden time and win prizes by practising their times tables.
Year 3,4,5 and 6 are currently taking part in times tables BATTLE OF THE BANDS. Please encourage them to help out their teams and play as much TT Rock stars as they can at home. We will find out the winning classes on Tuesday 16th November. Game on!!
Nursery
Oscar has now settled so well in the Nursery! He has loved our Firework mini- topic this week - and here he is, making this super glittery firework picture. Well done, Oscar! Great work!
Drita is busy making chalk firework patterns. She went on to glue and glitter these lovely patterns. Super work, Drita! You always concentrate so hard!
Kingfisher Nursery
This week in Kingfisher Nursery we have been enjoying activities based on fireworks, Diwali and Remembrance day. The children have made beautiful Rangoli pictures, firework pictures and poppy suncatchers. Their fine motor skills are improving every day!
We have been reading 'Whatever Next' and we have acted out our own version of the story using props, we had a lovely time visiting the moon.
Reception
This week has been a busy week finishing off our learning about Divali with a firework theme. The children made their own salt- dough diva lamps which are so beautiful we have decided to display them! We have been constructing using a range of materials, creating poppy collages and even made our own edible sparklers! In Maths we have been comparing numbers below 5 using words 'more' and 'less' and also practicing counting skills to 20. The children are making fantastic progress with phonics and we are ready to move into smaller groups from next week. We have now learnt sounds 'h' 'r' 'v' and 'j' so please continue to recap them every day at home. Great work Reception class!
This week's achievementt awards go to Kehlani for making a great improvement in writing her name and Billy for try new activities and working hard in Maths.
Year 1
Year 1 has continued their excellent start to Autumn 2. We have finished our Colour Creation topic in Art, and the children have impressed us all with their Kandinsky inspired circles! We started our Maths topic on subtraction and the children have even started to solve word problems. We look forward to seeing you with your children at our Impact Meeting on Monday morning.
Achievement awards this week to go Eli and Tiannah for their excellent subtraction using practical resources and drawing their working out. Well done!
Year 2
This week has been a busy week for Year 2! We started off on Monday with our KS1 Music Festival where we hosted another school in our hall to sing the songs we had been learning together. The festival was based on the book 'Pokko and the Drum' by Matthew Forsythe. We had a wonderful time singing the four songs we had learnt and played the glockenspiels in one of them. Year 2 are fantastic singers and all the children really love music.
In the afternoons, we have started to learn about Judaism and on Tuesday afternoon we had a visitor to the class, an old teacher who used to work at Livingstone, Miss Lax came back and made Challah bread with us. We learnt that Challah is a bread eaten during Shabbat, a festival that Jewish people celebrate each week. On Thursday morning we then had a visit to the Jewish synagogue which was really interesting.
We have started to practice our Christmas show songs and children have copies of the words for the songs in their bags. Enjoy singing along with your children!
On Tuesday 16th November we have our Year 2 Parent Impact Meeting on Reading, all parents are welcome to come along to this to learn about how we teach reading in y2.
This week's achievement awards go to Stefi for his detailed recount about our trip to the Woodside Park Synagogue and Christina for her focused work in subtraction using practical methods and drawings.
Kingfisher 1
This week in maths KF1, children experimented with numicon and learnt number bonds to 10. The pupils enjoyed making prints with numicon and counting totals.
In English, we focused on the story 'We're going on a Bear Hunt'. We had lots fun going on our own bear hunt. All pupils participated in role play activities and enjoyed joining in our story time.
Our achievement award goes to Tobias this week for excellent adding with Numicon
Year 3
This week in Maths we have been solving word problems to understand our key words which let us know which operation we have to us (add or subtract.) We have also looked at inverse calculations to check answers.
In English, we have focused on conjunctions linked to our class book 'The Stone Age Boy.' We have worked hard to identify coordinating and subordinating conjunctions and use them in our sentences.
Our foundation subject for the next two weeks is Science. Our topic is Animals including Humans with a focus on diet and nutrition. We have been learning about the 5 food groups and the variety of nutrients we need for a healthy balanced diet.
With the Christmas show coming up, please practice with your child to learn their words :)
We will be handing out letters shortly related to costumes. Thank you for your help!
CGP Books
Maths- pages 26-27
English- pages 20-21
Lastly, thank you to everyone who came to the reading impact meeting. The children love reading with you!
Year 4
Thank you to all the adults who attended the parent IMAPCT meeting on Thursday. The children really enjoyed working with you. We hope you found it useful.
This week in maths, we continued to look at formal written methods to solve multi-step subtraction problems. The children impressed us all with their hard-working and positive attitude.
In English, we explored and practised a range of grammatical features for our emotive letter, such as fronted adverbials, show-not-tell sentences and subordinating conjunctions. The children have been fantastic and are excited to write their letters next week.
In science, we looked at identifying and understanding the key processes that occur during the water cycle.
Year 4 have been amazing this week, demonstrating a mature and positive attitude to their learning - well done!
DON'T FORGET to keep playing battle of the bands on TTRS! :)
CGP books:
Maths: pg 19
English: pg 22-23
This week's achievement awards go to Sienna-Rose and Fatemah for their excellent attitude towards their learning in English. Well done!
Year 5
This week, the children have been busying practising their painting skills for their final piece on Impressionism. They planned their final piece by sketching a river scene and used different tools to paint the finished artwork.
In Maths, they continued their work on statistics by reading data from tables and timetables. They worked incredibly hard and showed a good understanding of data.
I've been absolutely blown away by their English work this week, where they've been practising the grammar they'll need for their diary entries next week: semi-colons, relative clauses and dashes. All of the children wrote fantastic sentences. They also did a partner- write and planned their diary entries.
Finally, thank you to the parents who made it to the Reading IMPACT meeting on Tuesday - the children loved working with you.
Recommended CGP book pages: Maths pages 72-73, and English pages 13, 16 and 17
This week's awards go to Hattie for her excellent work on semi-colons and relative clauses in English, and to Teddy for choosing more difficult challenges in Maths - well done, you two!
Year 6
It has been another positive week in Year 6! We have begun our work on fractions and the children have enjoyed simplifying and finding equivalent fractions. We have been super impressed with their focus! In English, we have been learning about the passive voice and formal vocabulary for their upcoming non-chronological reports. We have finished our Science unit on Electricity - which the children enjoyed - and are now moving on to DT which includes computer coding as they make a nightlight operated through a day/night sensor!
Thank you to all the parents who came to our 'Reading Impact' session. It was lovely to see so many of you and I hope you found the session useful.
This week's achievement awards go to Charlie for always pushing himself and being a fantastic role model and Ged for his positive attitude this week and for reading in his spare time! Well done to both of you!
Kingfisher 2
Over this week in Maths we have continued working with money, using pounds and pence and adding more than two amounts together.
We have also been counting on and back to calculate difference, which we used to find out how much change is needed.
Still on the theme of fireworks, the children have been using different materials to make fireworks and written their own senses poems, which they have edited and copied up in best. The children had to ensure that they had used adjectives, similes and an example of onomatopoeia. Calvin even included alliteration ‘racing rockets’!
They did a really good job!
This week’s award goes to Nathan for his fantastic Impressionist artwork inspired by the Claude Monet painting ‘Japanese Bridge’.
Nathan used sponges and gauze to create the stipple effect and included elements of pointillism to great effect. Lovely work Nathan!
Nightingales
This week in English we have been looking at stories from a range of cultures - 'Baba Yaga' and 'The Happiest People of the Hills'. We have enjoyed acting out the tales and creating our own puppets for a puppet show.
In Maths, we have been working hard to use different methods to add and subtract. We have also looked at how they are related using the inverse.
The award from Nightingales this week goes to Josh for excellent independent Maths work and being an excellent Baba Yaga in our role play.
Livingstone vs Trent
Our first game of the season! On Tuesday, our team played against Trent Primary school. This was our first game in over a year and the children displayed true determination and played exceptionally well. Anyone watching the game will agree that they played as a team and everyone was impressed with their skills and team work. Despite the game ending 2-1 to Trent, Noah scored a fantastic goal and we are proud of how our team played.
Well done to Tyler, Freddie, Ged, Qamarzada, Arbel, Noah, Matteo, Charlie and Stephanos!
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Children In Need - Friday 19th November
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Remember to collect and bring in your loose change for Children in Need on Friday 19th November. Pupils can wear their Pudsey merchandise.
Thank You!
Thank you to the families and staff who have been kindly saving and bringing in their recyclable items to us for Reception's exploration of the art form Sculpture through Junk Modelling. They are having so much fun creating their ideas! We now have plenty and more to keep us going and will not need any more items for the time being. We will most definitely let you know when we start to run out!
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Art Club
It's been a while since we had an Art Club running at Livingstone and we are so pleased it's back on the timetable! Many of our pupils at Livingstone love to get creative and express themselves through Art in their topic lessons and on Creative Curriculum. The new after school club will give extra opportunities to explore new skills and techniques as well as create new masterpieces.
This half of the term, Art Club are focusing on the art medium Drawing and in last week's session the children were exploring 'Contour Drawing' using the still-life arrangements provided. They were only allowed to draw the contours (edges/outline) of the objects in their arrangements. Some of the children were very confident and chose to draw the trickier arrangement where the objects overlapped each other. They had to think very carefully about where it would be best for them to start, drawing from front to back or vice versa!
This week the children continued with still- life for their large scale ink drawings. They built on the knowledge of Contour Drawing from last week as well as focusing on adding detail to the objects. They were challenged to use shapes and lines to add interest to the background of their art work.
Next week we will be adding colour!
Year 2 Trip to the Synagogue
In Year 2 had, we had our first trip this term to the Woodside Park Synagogue. Our R.E. topic this week has been Judaism so the children have had the opportunity to visit the place of worship of Jewish people. Mr Segal, who was the person who welcomed us at the synagogue, gave us a tour of the beautiful interior. He also showed us the 'Ark' where the 'Torah' (the Jewish holy book) is kept and we had a chance to get a closer look at it, despite the fact that none of us were able to read it as it is written in Hebrew! We had a lot of questions but Mr Segal answered every single one of our questions about the synagogue, Shabbat and other Jewish festivals. A big thank you to Mr & Mrs Segal for their support in our R.E. topic!
Diary Dates
November 2021
Monday 15th:
Friendship Week
Year 1 Reading Impact Meeting 9.00 am
Year 5 and 6 Netball Match v Danegrove - Home 3.15pm
Tuesday 16th:
Year 2 Reading Impact Meeting 9.00 am
Thursday 18th:
Reception Reading Impact Meeting 9.00 am
Year 5 and 6 Girls Football Match v St. Andrews - Home 3.15 pm
Non-uniform Day - Donations for Kids Tombola
Friday 19th:
World Kindness Day
Children in Need Day
Tuesday 23rd:
Year 5 and 6 Boys Football Match v Foulds School - Home 3.15 pm
Friday 26th
Family Quiz Evening 6.30 pm
Non-uniform Day - Donations of Recycled Gifts
Monday 29th:
INSET Day - School closed to pupils
December 2021
Wednesday 1st:
Year 5 and 6 Girls Football Match v Trent School - Home 3.15 pm
Thursday 2nd:
Year 5 and 6 Netball Match v Churchill - Home 3.15 pm
Non-uniform Day - Cakes and Pre-loved Toys
Friday 3rd:
Christmas Fair and Santa Visit
No Yoga Club this week
Wednesday 8th:
Years 5 and 6 Boys Football Match v Northside - Home 3.15 pm
Friday 10th:
Activity Clubs finish for Autumn 2
Christmas Jumper Day with £1 donation to Save the Children (optional)
Christmas Show Dress Rehearsal
Monday 13th:
Activity Clubs for Spring 1 go online for booking 8.00 am
Christmas Show to parents/carers of Year 3 and KS1 - PM
Tuesday 14th:
Christmas Show to parents/carers of Year 3 and KS1 - AM
Wednesday 15th:
Christmas Dinner Day
Friday 17th:
School finishes for Autumn term at 2 pm - No Cabin Club
School Holiday:
Monday 20th December 2021 - Monday 3rd January 2022
Pupils return to school on Tuesday 4th January 2022 for start of the Spring Term
More dates will follow...