We have had a very busy first week back in 1C. We have begun our Arts Fortnight activities in preparation for our celebration on the afternoon of Friday 26th April. On Tuesday we went for a walk to the local playpark to look at human and physical features. The children were great at noticing road names as well as different types of plants and trees.

When we got back to school we began our work in the Art Studio. The children made maps of our journey to the park, created paintings of the park and began to draw spring flowers. All of the children have blown away Mrs Johnston with their creativity and we can’t wait to see what they produce next week!

Before the Easter holidays in Year 1 we had our Great Fire of London burning ceremony. The children had absolutely loved learning about the Great Fire of London across history, writing, art and D&T lessons.

As part of our D&T project this half term, the children designed, made and evaluated a Tudor house. The children thought carefully about why the houses in London in the 1600s burnt so easily. We talked about how it was because they were so close together and made of wood!

Before we burnt our houses the children sang “London’s Burning” which we have been practicing in music lessons. The children also lined up their houses and walked through the Tudor “street”. It was very windy which made it even more realistic as this made the fire spread even quicker!

I hope you enjoy the photos/videos from this day!

On Thursday it was World Poetry Day so this week we have learnt the poem ‘Handy Work’ by Julia Donaldson. This poem was really fun to learn and we loved adding actions to help us remember it. You can watch us performing it here:

We have also kept practising ‘London’s Burning’ for our music lessons this half term. This week we added more children to perform with Boomwhackers. This meant that the children had to stay in time with their partner as well as listening to the other children to know when to play their note. The children have worked really hard on this- we hope you enjoy it!

In D.T we are still working hard at finishing our Tudor Houses. This week we focused on painting them and adding detail. It took us a long time and we have to be tough tortoises but they look fantastic! The children have really enjoyed this project and their hard work has paid off.

In art we have been drawing fire and focusing on adding detail using different materials. The children have been experimenting with chalk, oil pastels and charcoal.

In science on Monday Mrs Whittaker took the children outside to plan what they were going to grow in the vegetable beds in summer term. They discussed different vegetables they knew and thought carefully about what they would like to plant. The children came up with ideas like carrots, marrows and radishes.

We have been working hard rehearsing our song, ‘London’s Burning’ this half term. We have been practicing singing this in a round and last week we added boomwhackers! The children worked really hard to follow the notes and make sure they banged their boom whacker at the right time.

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks in Year 1. The children loved dressing up last week for World Book Day!

This week we enjoyed a local visit to the mosque at the Lingfield Centre. This was part of our R.E teaching this half term as the children are learning about Islam. The children were fantastic and asked some great questions. It was also great to see lots of the children sharing what they knew about the religion with the rest of the class. A special thank you to Ailah’s Dad who took time out of his day to show us around!

We have also been working hard on our D.T projects. The children have been building Tudor houses as part of our Great Fire of London project. The first step was to make the structure from cardboard boxes and then add paper mache to strengthen it. The texture of the paper mache took some getting used to for some children but they did well to persevere. I can’t wait to see what they’ll look like when we get painting them next week!

This week we have got fully involved in our Great Fire of London topic. The children have had lots of time to explore the areas in the classroom around this topic and we have done some super learning.

In writing the children have been writing M sentences about our new book Dick Whittington. We spoke about feelings words such as petrified and delighted. We also acted out our story map- we will film and upload this to the blog next week!

In art we did collages of fire engines. The children did a continuous line drawing of a fire engine then created a collage using card and tissue paper. We looked carefully at line, shape and colour.

In D.T we designed Tudor houses and got ready to start building them next week. We thought about what materials we would need like carboard, masking tape, scissors and paint.

Here are some more pictures from our week!

It has been a busy first week back in Year 1. The children are loving our new topic all about the Great Fire of London. It has been great to see how enthusiastic the children are about their learning around this. This week we have started learning ‘London’s Burning’ as part of our music topic this half term. We have spent this week discussing pitch, with some children even starting to learn the round. We can’t wait to do some more work on this next week. Here is a video of our progress on the song so far!

In science, the children went on a walk around the school ground with Mrs Whitaker to look for signs of spring. They saw lots of different plants which commonly grow during spring including daffodils. The children then practiced painting daffodils based on what they had seen.

This afternoon the children made scones. We discussed how the Great Fire of London had started in the bakery on Pudding Lane and we imagined what it would have been like to work in a bakery. The children have loved pretending to work in a bakery in the home corner so they were really excited for this activity! The children each had a different job such as mixing and kneading the dough and putting the scones in the oven. We then tasted them before we went home!

On Thursday 1C went to Leeds City Museum. In History we have been learning about the what life was like when the King was a child. We have looked closely at what shops, clothes and toys were like. It was great to see some of these things in the museum and to learn more about them.

In writing we received a postcard from Paddington Bear telling us he had been to visit Leeds. When we went to the museum we looked at all the places Paddington had been. We were so excited to get on the bus and walk through the city centre to the museum.

We had a fantastic time. Thank you to all the parents that volunteered. I hope you enjoy the photos!

This week the children have been working hard on their writing. They have been looking at descriptive writing and have been collecting adjectives to describe hats. We read the King’s Hats together and then designed our own hats. The children came up with some excellent describing words, for example, stripy, fancy, beautiful, wide. We spent a lot of time thinking about our sentences and talking about them as a class which led to some super writing!

The children have been loving continuing our learning about continents and oceans in geography. The children learnt a new song to remember the 5 oceans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6BE4VcYngQ) and we revisited our 7 continents song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6DSMZ8b3LE). The children love these songs so if I’m sure they would love to practice them at home!

In history we have been looking at what King Charles’ life was like when he was a child. We looked at old clothes and today looked at old house hold appliances from the 1950s. The children were very interested and loved using these in the home corner during provision- especially the iron! They worked well as a group to describe the objects and discuss their similarities and differences.

It’s been a busy first week back but we have had lots of fun! On Monday, the children went on a winter walk with Mrs Whitaker as part of their Science lesson. They looked at what on the school grounds told them it was winter, for example, empty trees and icy water.

In Maths, we started our topic on place value and were working on understanding numbers to 20. The children have worked so hard on this this week and have enjoyed exploring the different ways we can make these numbers with the resources we have in class.

In R.E the children acted different parables through helicopter stories. One of the parables was Noah’s Ark.