This week, the Storytellers have been exploring Diwali, the beautiful Festival of Light. The children learned that Diwali is a time of celebration for many people around the world and that light is an important symbol - it represents goodness, hope, and the triumph of light over darkness.

The children enjoyed making their own Diya lamps, carefully decorating them to shine brightly, just like the ones used in Diwali celebrations. On the light board, they created stunning Rangoli patterns, experimenting with colours, shapes, and symmetry to make vibrant designs that welcome light and happiness.

There was plenty of music and dancing, too, as we moved to traditional Indian rhythms and celebrated through movement and joy. The children also designed their own hand decorations, learning about the tradition of mehndi patterns and using their creativity to make unique designs.

Through these fun and meaningful activities, the Storytellers not only explored creativity and culture but also learned about kindness, celebration, and the importance of light in our lives. 

We have reached the end of this half term and have finished learning all about autumn and what happens in autumn.
The children have taken their craft activities home and were looking forward to sharing their artwork with family.
Today (Thursday) we carried out some halloween activities. The children decorated pumpkins and we had a spooky snack of ghost bananas and orange pumpkins. The chilsren were invited to come dressed up and they looked great!

The children enjoyed reading the story "Room on the Broom" and we talked about  what happened in the story with the children making comments about the book and talking about their favourite parts.

In maths we have enjoyed exploring the stories "The Three Billy Goat's Gruff" where the children had to make a bridge for them to cross and count how many sticks it took to build. "We also looked at "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", focusing on the numbers of items and objects within the story.

It is INSET day tomorrow and then half term so we hope you have a lovely week and we look forward to welcoming you all back from Monday 3rd November.

See you soon

Julie and Sarah

Thank you to everyone here today for being part in the music, the words, the space, the time to reflect on how lucky we are to be able to come together as a community. Thank you for your generous Liskeard food bank donations which will be collected from school along with just over £150 fundraised by Glee in the summer term. 

This week we have finished our learning around our autumn term 1 enquiry question, Who Am I?

We talked about our families, looked at all the pictures on our family wall and then drew our own families inside a lolly-pop stick house.  These look very cute alongside our portrait display wall.

The children have all been busy making some beautiful autumn leaf sun catchers for our windows, do look out for them as you walk by!

We had a lovely surprise invitation from Lantic class on Thursday, to join them in meeting PC Brailey-Evans and a police vehicle.  The children all had fun exploring the police van and then receiving a sticker.  

Next week we will be looking at the celebrations of Halloween and Diwalli, with some fun activities planned.

As a reminder, please do make sure your child has spare clothes each day in pre-school.  If your child has been sent home in spare pre-school clothes, then please do return them.  We are very low on spare trousers for both girls and boys.

Since we have started joining the main school for lunch time, there is the option of ordering your child a hot school lunch if they would prefer this over a packed lunch.  The cost of a school lunch is £2.70, this would need to be paid for in advance on parent pay.  If this is something you would like to arrange then please do go and speak to Mrs Thompson in the main school office.

A reminder that this Friday 24^th October is an Inset Day for the whole school, we return to pre-school after half term on Monday 3^rd November.

 
The Pre-School Team.

Place Value Yahtzee

Our first Maths topic of the year is always Place Value (the value of each digit in a number).  The children have spent several weeks learning and becoming more confident with the place value in numbers up to 10,000,000.

We have also learned about how to round numbers, how to split numbers up in different ways to make our calculations easier and also how to easily multiply (and divide) numbers by 10, 100, 1000.

As a fin way to review our understanding of Place Value - we played games of Place Value Yahtzee.  We really enjoyed the challenge of trying to complete each category.

Restart a heart

We recently joined forces with 'Restart a heart' for their live event.  During the event the children learned about resuscitation and also how to use a defibrillator:

D - DANGER (check for danger - don't put yourself in danger)
R - RESPONSE (Check if the casualty is responding)

A - AIRWAY (Check the casualty's airway)
B - BREATHING (Is the casualty breathing
C - CIRCULATION (Start CPR)

The children watched videos about when it is appropriate to use CPR and what to do if they are the first at the scene of a medical emergency.  They also learned how to perform CPR and practiced their technique on teddies and cushions.  Finally, we learned about how to use a defibrillator machine - and we were surprised that we have a machine in the school.

We hope that we never have to use these skills but it is always good to be prepared.

Hello Everyone,

Another busy week in Penhallow has included making bread, working as a team to build large structures during play, and some drama work during English lessons.

Reception have finished their English work, all about The Little Red Hen, and thoroughly enjoyed following instructions to make, bake and eat their own bread. It smelled delicious.

Year 1 and 2 have been learning all about letter writing, as well as writing from the perspective of a different character. We have read 'The Day the Crayons Quit' by Oliver Jeffers and there were some fantastic responses from the children about the different characters and how the story shows us how the characters feel.

In science this week, we learnt all about sorting and classifying different animals based on their characteristics. We played games and practically sorted toy animals, as well as using venn diagrams and classification keys to sort animals. 

We enjoyed being outside again this week. This time, during an RE lesson, where we found objects that were mentioned in the Christian story of creation, such as trees, flowers, and living creatures.

Have a lovely weekend,

from The Penhallow Team

TALLAND'S BLOG 17.10.25

Happy weekend everyone! Photo dump incoming...

Please don't forget to send your child in to school this Monday wearing clothes suitable for the woods (they probably will get mucky).

A huge well done to Flora this week for being chosen as our person of the week for her fabulous biome she created at home and brought in to share with the class... I loved the moss, the soil, the plants and the little Lego character!

We are organising a girls' football club for years 3, 4, 5 and 6 run by a football organisation. Please make sure you sign your child up as soon as possible if they are interested because if we don't have enough people, unfortunately the club will not run. 

We hope you have a lovely weekend!

Signing off Mr. Langley and Mr. Bishop.  

Cross Country Success Congratulations to all our runners who completed their first race last Friday at Great Trethew, some of them racing for the first time. We had an impressive turnout of 22 pupils, each running brilliantly and demonstrating fantastic team spirit by cheering each other on throughout the event. The next race is on 14th November. Please return any running vests to school as soon as possible so we can ensure we have enough for everyone on race day.

Clubs There will be no Alternative Sports Club on Tuesday 21st October because of staff training and no gardening or football club on Thursday 23rd October because of the school discos.

Girls' Football. We are planning to start a girls' football club for students in Years 3 to 6, held on Tuesdays after school, beginning after the half-term break. If your child is interested in joining, please email the school secretary as soon as possible. So far, we've only received four official sign-ups, which isn't enough to run the club despite 15 girls expressing interest. We'd love to make this club happen, but we need more confirmed participants to move forward.

Harvest Donations Reminder that we are collecting donations for the foodbank in Liskeard. If you would like to donate, please send your donation in with your child or bring it to reception where there is a collection box. There will also be a collection point in the nursery. We will be taking donations to the foodbank at half term.

Parent Consultations Parent consultations will be held after half term during the week commencing 10th November. We will send details out early next week.

Neighbourhood Policing Team During half term the local Neighbourhood Policing Team will be out and about in their community van visiting villages and neighbourhoods across the Looe sector. They will be in the school car park on 30th October from 1130-1230 to chat with about local concerns, give crime prevention advice and share community issues that matter to you. 

Have a good weekend.

Anthea Hillman

Another Busy Week in R/1!

What a wonderful and action-packed week of learning it's been in Reception and Year 1!

In Maths, Year 1 have been working hard to add doubles and explored adding three one digit numbers. Over in Literacy, the children have enjoyed innovating parts of our class story and are now busy rewriting their own versions.

Reception have been doing brilliantly with their phonics, learning new sounds and exploring rhyming words after reading Room on the Broom.

In Forest School, Reception had great fun designing and making their own bird houses. Meanwhile, Year 1 have been practicing their basketball skills, learning how to bounce the ball using their fingers.

Our Reception children have also been learning about the organs in the body, as well as finding the pulse and beat in music. They've been singing their hearts out too, practicing Harvest songs with Mrs Butlin.

In PSHE, we discussed the consequences of our behaviour, thinking carefully about the choices we make and how they affect ourselves and others.

Well done, R/1 - another fantastic week of learning and exploring together!

What a busy week we have had. Our Art is really coming together; we have completed our nebula and star clusters, our planet(s) and our foreground. Next week, we will put all elements together and then create a light and dark effect by using chalk and charcoal.

In Maths, we have been completing our first set of SATs papers and then going through them with our learning partners to help each other with our next steps. For English, we have been looking at the features of a non-chronological text, identifying the use of parenthesis in our sentences and uplevelling our writing using precise vocabulary which we learnt how to apply in our last piece of writing.

On Friday, we had Kim back in from Barnado's to complete our PSHE sessions on healthy relationships. The children were a credit to the school and we had some great discussions which gave everyone food for thought.

POLITE NOTICES
Remember that the Spooky Disco is on next Thursday - tickets to be purchased at Reception.

If any girls would like to sign up for our Girl's Football Club after school on a Tuesday, could you please let us know ASAP as a coach will be coming in to train them up!  

Congratulations to Thomas and Kora for being our People of the Week (demonstrating our school values) and to Frankie for achieving his 66 Club badge.

That's all from us so have a lovely weekend,

Miss Randle and Mrs Clary.

This week we practised using running stitch in DT, and we could not believe how quickly everyone managed to pick it up. We had to adopt our growth mindsets, but our determination shone through! Some of us may choose to use running stitch next week, when joining parts on to our sock puppets. In Science, we explored how different animals are best suited to the habitats they live in. We learnt about camels and the special features they have which help them to live in the desert. We also looked are polar bears. Can you recall any of the special features they have? During Music with Mrs Butlin, we practise using the chime bars and completing 4 beat patterns.

In Maths, we have made a fantastic start on our Addition and Subtraction unit, adding and subtracting 1s, 10s and 100s. We have been working on how to present our calculations neatly in our books and used pictorials to support our understanding. 

In English, we have been writing up our recounts, focusing on quality over quantity. With this in mind, we have diligently used our classroom resources to support our writing. Next week, we will finish editing and get these written up neatly. 

Congratulations to April and Jemima for being chosen as Landaviddy's People of the Week. And a big well done to Brody for achieving his 99 club badge. 

Animal Sock Puppets
As part of our enquiry 'Who rules the animal kingdom?', we have designed and planned to make our own animal sock puppets in DT. On Wednesday 22nd October, we will be finally making our designs. We have a selection of brand new socks available for the children to use in school, which were kindly donated to us. However, if your child would like to bring in their own sock from home to use when creating their sock puppet, they are welcome to do so. Of course, please do let me know if you have any questions.

We hope you have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you next week. 

Mrs Wilkie, Mrs Lister and Miss Colton