Super maths stars!
Year 1 are maths superstars!
In September, we completed a maths challenge to see how many numbers the children could write up to 100. Today, we re-completed that challenge.
Every child in the class has made progress! Well done, Year 1.
Here are a few examples to show you the progress that they have made.
Help at home: keep practicing reading and writing numbers and log in to Numbots to practice their number fluency skills.
Topic – Geography
This half term our topic is Geography. We’re all excited to become Geographers. Geographers are a type of scientist who studies the Earth. Geographers study the land (the physical features of the Earth) and the people who live within it (the human features).
This week, we’ve started by looking at an aerial map of our school, naming the four countries that make up the UK and their capital cities and listing some human and physical features in our environment.
We have enjoyed watching a video to help us to remember the 4 countries that make up the UK and their capital cities. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
We have also start to look at our Geography vocabulary, which you can see below.
Challenge: Can your child name the 4 countries that make up the UK and name their capital city?
Merry Christmas
During your Christmas break we hope you can:
- Spend time with the people you care about.
- Do the things that you enjoy.
- Watch your favourite program.
- Make somebody laugh and smile.
- Do something nice for somebody else.
- Visit your favourite place.
- Play with your toys
and finally have a wonderful Christmas and see you all in 2023!
Christingle and Christmas Production
What a busy week we’ve had in Year 1 and 2. On Wednesday, we went to church to celebrate Christingle. The children did a fab job singing their song ‘In a Stable’ and holding their candle very carefully.
We’ve also performed our Christmas production three times to an audience. We are all so proud of how well they all did.
Science Investigators
This week in science, we were learning all about making a fair test. We learnt that for a test to be fair, we needed to only change one thing and everything else stayed the same.
In science, we have been learning about John Dunlop and how he invented the pneumatic tyre. So, we decided to test which ball was the bounciest. We rolled the ball down the ramp and decided the bounciest ball was the ball that bounce back off the wall the furthest. To our surprise, the sponge ball was the bounciest. Have a look at our science experiment below and our recording of it.
Christmas events
It’s a busy time of year with so many things happening. Here is a reminder of the Christmas events taking place over the next two weeks:
Wednesday 7th December, 2pm: Christingle Service at St James’ Church
Thursday 8th December, 2.15pm: Early Years and KS1 Christmas play
Friday 9th December, 9.30am: Early Years and KS1 Christmas play
Tuesday 13th December: Christmas dinner
Wednesday 14th December: Early Years and KS1 parties (non-uniform)
Thursday 15th December: Ks2 parties (non-uniform)
During our productions, we will be raising money for our new school charity voted for by the Junior Leadership Team. This year we will be supporting Cancer Research UK.
Zoom with the author and illustrator, Bethan Woolvin
This morning, we had a zoom with an author and illustrator Bethan Woolvin. Over the past few weeks, we have been enjoying lots of her stories. She read her story Little Red to us. After, she showed us her studio and shared lots of her artwork. We had the chance to become illustrators too. Bethan showed us how to draw Little Red from her book. Have a look at our amazing artowork below.
Living and Learning – I can talk about my feelings
This week, we have been talking about our mental health.
We looked at some pictures and shared our thoughts and ideas on how the character was feeling.
I think he is angry because he has his hands in a fist and has steam coming off his head.
I think he is surprised because he is bending back and has his mouth open like he is surprised.
I think he is scared because it looks like he is crying.
We used the sentence starters to think about a time we might have felt different ways.
I felt embarrassed when I tripped over outside.
I felt nervous when I first started school.
I felt excited when I could play on my iPad.
Topic
In our Topic learning today, we continued to compare optical art by our feature artist, Bridget Riley. We commented on how there are lots of patterns in her work – the arrangement of colours or shapes in a logical order. We compared Bridget Riley’s artwork using a Carroll diagram. We looked at lots of different features – shapes, colour, patterns, and if the picture appeared to be moving.
Topic and English
In Topic this half term, we are artists!
We are learning and experimenting with structure, inspired by one of our feature artists Bridget Riley. She specialised in optical art. We are creating our own optical art pieces!
The first step was to draw straight lines with a ruler. Some children had drawn many lines, some had not so many, some had thick lines, some had thin… there was certainly lots of experimenting happening! Then, we used the colour black to paint every other line. We talked about this being a pattern, one of our key words.
Linked to our Art topic, in our English lesson we read Katie and The Impressionist. After, we worked in small groups to re-tell and sequence the story. We shared our favourite part of the story with each other.
