Reading dog and Bug hotels

This week we had 'Daisy' the reading dog come into school to read with us as part of our eight week plan to improve reading across the school.  She enjoyed snuggling on the bean bag and listening to stories and then a cuddle afterwards.  We've held a book club and shared some of our favourite stories too.

  

We have also been making bug hotels as part of the challenge to add to our new reflective garden.  Well done girls these are amazing!

Enchanted woodland stories and shoe boxes

We have really enjoyed writing an Enchanted woodland story, thinking carefully about the characters, setting, a beginning,  middle and end.  Based on our ideas we went on to design a shoe box story world and thought about how to incorporate  - enchanted features, make it colourful and add a moving part.

It was a wonderful experience to invite in our grown ups and give them an exhibition of all of our hard work!  We were very proud Bumblebees. 
  

Authors and Popstars

This week we have been super star authors, writing our own stories set in an Enchanted Woodland! We have been using brilliant time adverbs and amazing adjectives to make our stories exciting.

In Maths we have been learning about doubling numbers, including working out how to double teen numbers. We have also started learning about subtraction. We used cubes to help us work out the answers but we had to remember to always start with the largest number first.

We were thrilled by how brilliant our spellings were this week. We were amazing at remembering how to write the tricky words that we can’t properly sound out.

We have sent home the next set of tricky words to practise at home, ready for next Friday 24^th November.

We have also been super busy becoming pop stars and recording a Christmas CD. We sang the songs that we have been practising in our class and assemblies, including a song in German!

If you would like to purchase a copy of the CD, they will be on sale at the Christmas Fayre, 1^st December, 5-7pm.

Our shoebox project has now finished the planning and preparation stage so we will be starting to use our shoeboxes next week. We have taken influence from our brilliant story writing to create a story shoebox with characters, backgrounds and lots of other decorations. Please bring your shoebox in next week, ready for us to start using them.

Have a lovely weekend – the year 1 team. 

Stories, Odds, Evens and O Tannenbaum.

Week Beginning 6^th November

This week at school we have enjoyed listening to the story of ‘The Bog Baby’ which we then made a story map of.  This story has inspired us to create our own stories using a story mountain format, we have planned the characters, setting, beginning, middle and end.  Next week we will begin using the shoe boxes to create our story world and write up our final version of the story.

In maths this week we have been learning about odd and even numbers and sorting numbers to 100 into this pattern.  We have continued this learning to then count in 2’s and fill in missing numbers on a number line.  We learnt that you can say number 1 quietly and then 2 loudly, 3 quietly and then 4 loudly to help with this.

Thank you for your support with the children’s spellings – these will be checked in a very informal way during our daily phonic session.  The children are used to having to think of ways to spell and write words during these sessions.  The next sets of spellings we have sent home you will see are all tricky words and this is the way that we will continue for now.

We’ve begun practising the songs for our Christmas performances and so far these are going very well!  What a choir of angels we already have – hope you will agree as you will probably hear them practising at home.

We have sent home the next home learning – the first piece needs to be handed in by Wednesday 22^nd November and we will return your child’s book by Friday 24^th November.  The second piece will then be due by Wednesday 6^th December.

Have a great Weekend – The Year 1 team.

 

Woodland WOW day Week

We have had a fantastic week starting our Enchanted Woodland topic. On Monday we made title pages for our topic books and learnt to measure using balance scales in maths. The children then used the cookery room to make fairy cupcakes by using two eggs and measured out ingredients by balancing the flour, sugar and butter with the eggs.

On Tuesday it was our Enchanted Woodland WOW day which was a huge success. The children had so much fun and thank you all for providing some excellent costumes. Activities included wand making, magic potions, lolly stick fairies, fairy doors, dream catchers, stick crowns and the children decorated their cupcakes. Thank you also to the parents who came to help, we really appreciated the extra adults to allow so many activities.

In Science we have been learning about plants and trees. The children have been on a tree hunt outside and used a spotter sheet to identify trees using their leaves. We also learnt how to classify deciduous and evergreen trees. The children enjoyed watching some videos of Andy Goldsworthy making some art using leaves.

We have given out a spellings book to all of the children with 5 spellings to learn. These will go home each week for the children to practise and we will do a short spelling test on a Friday. Please make sure they keep their spelling books in their book bags so that they have them at school to practise and for us to stick the new spellings in each Friday. Please see the letter inside the cover with all the information.

Reminder- Please can the children bring in a shoe box next week which we will be using for a DT project.

What an exciting week we have had!

On Monday a box appeared in our classroom, it looked like a pet carrier but…something had nibbled its way out and gone missing! A letter told us that it was a pet that had come from the pet shop but it was a mystery creature that no one had ever seen before.

In English we made and wrote leaflets to help Mr. Jones, the pet shop owner, know all about this mystery creature and how to look after it. We considered the types of food it might eat, things it might want to play with and even thought of possible names.

In Maths we learnt about 3D shapes and had a go at describing their properties. We then used the shapes to construct houses for our mystery creature to keep it safe while we are looking after it for Mr. Jones.

In Science we were investigating in the outside area to see if our mystery creature would survive in the wild. We soon discovered that it was too brightly coloured and would not be camouflaged.

We were also very lucky to have a special visit from Eva Markestein, Joseph’s mummy. She told us all about her job as a vet and working with small animals. We had a brilliant time listening to the information and even got the chance to dress up as a vet, use a stethoscope and practise bandaging on a toy dog.

After half term our P.E days are temporarily changing.

Ladybirds and Caterpillars will be having their P.E sessions on a Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning.

Bumblebees will be having their P.E sessions on a Monday afternoon and Thursday morning.

We are also going to start focussing on spellings. Each week your child will bring home a short list of spellings, please can you practise at home as we will be having mini spelling tests the following week. A letter will be in the front of the children’s spelling books with further information.

Please save your shoeboxes!

After half term we are starting a new exciting topic. We will be starting a D.T project and every child will need a shoebox. Please save your shoeboxes over the next couple of weeks and bring them in after half term.

On Tuesday 31^st we are having a WOW day to introduce our new topic officially. Our topic is Enchanted Woodlands so children are welcome to dress up as fairies, pixies, elves and other mystical woodland creatures. Further reminders will follow.

Thank you for coming to parents evening this week. We enjoyed sharing your children’s wonderful learning with you. 

Weekly News

We have had a great week in Year 1 learning about tigers as part of our ‘Paws, Claws and Whiskers Topic.’ We started the week by listening to ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea.’ The children helped to sequence the story on the carpet and then made their own zig zag books which include captions and sentences as well as excellent illustrations. They all worked really hard to colour them in too. Later in the week children worked in groups of 4 and helped retell the story by acting it out.

In Maths we have been learning one more and one less than a given number. First we practised counting forwards and backwards on a number line to help with fluency. Then they used number lines with missing numbers and later had a go at doing it in their heads.

In Geography we continued with the tiger theme learning where the big cats live and also labelled maps with the 7 continents. In Art the children drew and painted some lovely tiger faces.

We have also been busy with Daily Activities which the children do independently. This has included designing a tin of tiger food in case the tiger comes for tea again!

We have stuck the children’s passwords for Education city and Bug Club in their green reading record books on the inside of the back cover.

Please could your child have a spare pair of socks in their PE bag for changing into – especially girls wearing tights.

Could we encourage you to not allow the children to have lots of keyrings attached to their school bags as we are experiencing some difficulties with them getting broken and lost.  Thank you for your support with this.

We wish you all a lovely weekend,

From the Year 1 team

The Tiger who came to tea

Today we have listened to the story of 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea'.  We've had a go at making our own zigzag storybooks.  Some super writing and drawings today.

Welcome to our new Bumblebee blog...

Buzzing about our new blog 😊