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.

This week school was hit with the norovirus which resulted in Year 1 and 2 closing on Thursday from lunchtime onwards.

There will be no blog photos from this week as there were lots of children off sick, even before Thursday doomsday!!

This week all of Year 1 visited Moor Allerton library. It was our turn to go on Wednesday and the children were all very excited to explore the different books in the library. We set off from school and walked down to the library with our partners. The children were so sensible and were even pointing out human and physical features on the way!

When we got to the library, we read a story all together and then had the chance to explore the books they had. It was great to see the children reading independently and with their friends, as they do in our own library at school!

Before we left we read Superworm (a favourite book in our class) and walked back to school in time for lunch. We had a great time!

This week, Year 1 worked really hard on writing instructions. Yesterday, as part of our writing, the children made soup. This involved doing lots of cutting, chopping, slicing, peeling and grating of vegetables.

The children practiced cutting potatoes, carrots, celery and onions (these made our eyes water a bit!) Ms Tarbin then took some children to the cafe and put on the soup to boil. We all really enjoyed this and it really helped the children when writing their instructions today!

Once the soup was cooked, the children had the chance to taste some if they wanted to. I was really impressed with how many children gave it a go even if they thought they wouldn’t like it!