This week in Science Year 1 have been busy learning about materials. Mrs Whitaker brought in a feely box for the children to see if they could describe the properties of a material. The children have also been working on sorting materials in provision.

In Art the children were revisiting sketching and drew themselves. We talked about the back and forth motion of sketching and how we needed to make sure we were noticing different parts of our body to draw. I was so impressed with the children’s careful drawings!

In Geography we were looking at our big question “What does it mean to be United?” As a class, we talked about how we might have felt united. The children gave examples such as in their family, gymnastics club and at their place of worship. The children then looked at maps and atlases to look at the United Kingdom and we talked about what countries it has.

It has been a cold and rainy week and it certainly feels like Autumn but the children have coped brilliantly.

In Art the children have been working on making 3D models. This week they made 3D models of birds. The children could choose from a range of materials such as cardboard, tin foil and tissue paper and experimented with moulding paper clips and pipe cleaners to make the birds feet.

In Writing the children have been working on innovating Handa’s Surprise to make it their own story. This week they innovated the story map and thought of their own characters, animals and fruit. The children’s stories were fantastic and they worked so hard on them. Some children even performed their new story map to the class!

This week has been a busy one for 1C- with parent consultations and everything else but we’ve got there! It was lovely to meet you all this week and get a chance to talk about how the children have settled in in Year 1 and also to give you a chance to look at the children’s hard work.

This week in Geography, we continued with our map work. We discussed the equator and how it is an invisible line that runs around the middle of the earth. We spoke about how countries near to it are hot and countries far away from it are cold. We then coloured in countries on our own maps to show this. The children have absolutely loved learning our 7 continents song- this is available on YouTube if they want to sing along at home!

We have also worked hard in Writing, continuing to practice our M sentences. This week, the children learnt about verbs and we acted some out, e.g. running, dancing, jumping, skipping. The children produced some fantastic sentences and worked really hard. We are still focusing on our handwriting and are practicing this every day.

This week, we had a visit from Sam’s Safari. The children were fantastic and really respectful around the animals. We saw animals such as an armadillo, chinchilla, snake, lizard and frog. It was great to learn about the different animals and where they lived in the world. I’m sure the children will find this really useful as they go forward with their learning this half term!

In art, we experimented making different textures by layering. We looked as some feathers together and practiced continuous line drawing.

In writing, we have continued to look at M sentences using colourful capital letters and full stops. We practiced saying sentences together as a group and then writing them down. The children wrote sentences about fruit tasting the week before and Handa’s Surprise.

This week, the children tasted different fruit from our book, ‘Handa’s Surprise’. They tasted bananas, oranges, apples, pineapples, passion fruit and mango. They all absolutely loved this activity and we also collected adjectives to describe the fruit such as sour, soft, sweet, juicy.

In writing, we introduced sentence writing and practiced writing M sentences. The children used colourful semantics to identify the who, what doing and what parts of a sentence. They all did amazingly with this and it was great to see them experiment in provision by writing silly sentences!

In maths, we introduced some tricky concepts such as finding one more, one less and equal to. The children were introduced to the symbols for these and we practiced using them with straws and cubes to represent the numbers. We were so impressed with how resilient the children were with this learning and they all tried really hard.

This week we have learnt more about our topic ‘Animal Kingdom’ and have explored this through our different lessons as well as in provision in the classroom.

In Writing, the children have been focusing on labelling and this week they completed their ‘hot task’ where they were asked to label the lion from our story ‘Lazy Lion’. The children have absolutely loved reading this story and so it was great to see how excited they were to do this activity!

In Science, the children focused on classifying animals into their groups and also looked at their characteristics. The children enjoyed discussing their ideas with each other and exploring why these animals were grouped together, for example, they have feathers and wings.

We also enjoyed some outdoor learning this week when we explored human and physical features in Geography. We went on a walk around the school grounds to look for these features. The children enjoyed looking around the pond and talking about whether this was a human or physical feature.

Once again, the children have thrown themselves into their provision challenges and have enjoyed activities such as creating a story map for ‘There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly’, painting sunset safari pictures and building a zoo!

This week, the children have thrown themselves into their learning and have enjoyed joining in with different activities in the classroom.

We filmed our first Talk 4 Writing story “There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly” and we were so impressed with how they all remembered the words and actions! The children were really excited for their grown ups at home to see it so I hope you enjoy watching it!

In Art, we have enjoyed looking at animal prints and creating their own using paint and oil pastels to create texture.

The children have been great at extending their learning by working independently on new challenges around the classroom. As our topic this half term is “Animal Kingdom”, a lot of the learning has been focused on this which we are loving!

We have been very grateful that this week has been a lot cooler and so we have enjoyed spending time outdoors. The children loved exploring the orchard and picking and tasting the apples.

Welcome back! We have loved getting to know the children this week and making sure they feel settled. The children have enjoyed exploring the new areas in the classroom and have done some fantastic work! We have introduced our topic ‘Animal Kingdom’ and the children have started to find out about different animals through our science, geography and art lessons. It has been great hearing about the different facts the children already know about animals and them sharing these with the class! In science, the children sorted animals into groups of their choice and also did this in our small worlds area. The children also created some amazing paintings of animal prints. Next week, we will be putting actions to our poem in writing, ‘There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly”. The children have already been great at remembering the words to the poem and singing along in class. We are looking forward to another fantastic week with the children and we hope you have a lovely weekend!