Spring 1 - Long Ago.

We have a wonderful topic this term looking into history of everyday items long ago and some lovely traditional stories.  We have already read The Three Billy Goats Gruff and The Little Red Hen.  We have made story maps and the children have loved acting out the stories with masks and our small world resources, with some wonderful voices for the characters!  They have really focused on the repetitive language used.  We have also been very lucky to have real life author Steve Clifford come and tell us a story.  He made The Ugly Duckling come alive in our classroom and we all loved it.  Thank you Steve!

We have made bridges and boats for The Three Billy Goats Gruff and tested them for their strength and to see if they would sink or float.  We were able to think about which materials were good to use and which were not and why.

We've also made bread rolls for The Little Red Hen.  Children loved the smell of the yeast and seeing the bubbles it made when we added warm water.  They also enjoyed trying to stir the mixture as it started becoming dough, we have some strong children!  They had a go at kneading the dough and then rolled their own piece into a ball.  The best part of course, was eating them!  

A busy start to Spring 1.

Autumn 2 - What A Busy Term!

The children have really enjoyed making machines and robots for our topic Marvellous Machines.  They have used 2D shapes, real nuts and bolts, large construction and many other resources in the classroom. 

Colin the Cow travelled to India with Imogen’s daddy!  The children have loved following his adventures, we have seen some wonderful photos too.  Thank you to Imogen’s family.

In maths we have been exploring the composition of numbers up to 5.  Children have used their fingers, part-whole models, 5 frames, 10 frames and even each other to show different ways to make 5.

We also made the most of the really cold, freezing weather.  The children loved finding ice outside and seeing what it felt and looked like.  We also made our own ice balloons to see how long they took to melt.  That particular day we had beautiful sunshine in the afternoon, so it was not long!  We have also looked at how polar bears keep warm with our science experiment.  We put our hands in cold water and then we made a glove out of fat to create our own layer of blubber.  We then put our hands back in the water.  We concluded that the layer of fat helped keep our hands warm but we decided a pair of gloves was much better!

And of course, we have ended our term with a magnificent performance of Wriggly Nativity.  We teamed up with Rose class for three wonderful performances.  The children sang beautifully with plenty of laughs and a few tears along the way. 

Autumn 2 - Celebrations and Traditions.

We started off the term with many celebrations and enjoyed learning about the history behind them.  We started with Diwali, the Festival of Lights.  We made rangoli patterns and read the story of Rama and Sita with diva lamps.  We learned about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot and how to keep safe during firework displays.  We painted firework pictures using elastic bands!  We observed a two-minute silence at the war memorial in our village and heard The Last Post being played.  Ms Harrison borrowed her granddad's war medals which we passed round and carefully looked at.  We also held and looked at one of the hats he wore as a pilot in the air force.  It's been a busy term so far!

Autumn 1 - Let's Explore

We’ve had a very busy start to our new school year in Thistle Class!  So far, we’ve read the texts; The Bad-Tempered Ladybird, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Mr Gumpy’s Outing and Where’s My Teddy?  We’ve read them so many times that we can recite big chunks of them!

We’ve enjoyed exploring art using paint and forks, pencils, pastels and rolling conkers around in paint.  We’ve also explored sets in maths using our classroom resources to match, sort and compare objects using different attributes.

We have been working hard in phonics to learn new sounds.  We are also learning to blend sounds together to read short words like ‘mad, dig, hop, jam and sat’.  Alongside learning the sound for the grapheme shown, we’ve been learning how to correctly form letters too.

We’ve become scientists and discovered the effect of soap when put in water sprinkled with pepper.  Through watching this, we learned about germs and the importance of washing your hands with soap.

Our favourite part of this term so far has been going on a bear hunt!  We armed ourselves with a map, binoculars, torch, magnifying glass and explorer’s hat and off we went.  We eventually found one but it turned out to be our teacher in disguise!

Autumn 1 - A New Start.

Our new class name is Thistle Class.  We have been looking at the Scottish Thistle and drawing pictures of them using oil pastels and collage.  We have learned different facts about Scotland and where Scotland is on a map of the UK.  We have even had a go at Scottish Highland Dancing!

We have had fun exploring our new environment, learning new routines and expectations and getting to know each other.  A lovely start to school everybody, well done.