As part of our topic, we have been learning about each country in the UK. We made our own representation of the Union Jack flag, using resources of our choice.

This week, the children in STEM Club became engineers! They had a challenge to see how tall they could make a structure using only dried spaghetti and marshmallows. We had great fun working out how to make our structures stronger and decided that Mia’s structure was the best!

Before half term, we were exceptionally lucky to watch the Watoto Children’s Choir perform. We all had such an amazing time watching the talented children. Year One were so impressed and excited that they asked to try and learn some of the songs and dance moves when we returned to the classroom!

This week, we have been focusing on the British Royal Family. We watched the Queen’s coronation and compared it to Elsa’s from Frozen! We then thought about and used ICT resources to find the answers to our questions about the Royal Family. We have also been using atlases to map the 4 countries of the UK.

This afternoon we focused on India. We talked about the difference between English and Indian weddings, with one of our class telling us all about an Indian wedding they went to. We also looked at the Taj Mahal, the different religions in India, where India is in the world and how much bigger it is than England. We then worked in talk partners to draw the Indian flag and write 3 interesting facts we had learnt over the afternoon. We then had a go at making our very own vegetable samosas and also tried poppadoms!

Year One had a very big shock today when we returned from break time! Sunny the Meerkat was… GONE! We walked into the room to find chairs up-turned, paper and lunch bands thrown across the floor and huge footprints across the room! We then found a letter labelled ‘Year One’, this provided us with the evidence to confirm our suspicions; Sunny had been taken by a jackal!

We received a letter from ‘Mr Jackal’ explaining that he was taking Sunny back to the Kalahari desert. We are pretty sure Sunny didn’t want to go though, so we discussed the rights and wrongs about people making others do things they don’t want to. Mr Jackal’s letter explained that there was only one way to get Sunny back – we had to leave him biscuits and write a letter to him explaining why he should return Sunny!

We then found a map in the classroom, scratched off on the map was the UK. We then located the Kalahari desert in Africa to work out the route Mr Jackal would take to get back there with Sunny. We worked out he would pass through many different countries and made our own route using arrows. We then each took it in turns to located somewhere we had been on holiday, making great use of our map and reading skills.

Year One turned into real detectives and came up with some fantastic solutions! One of the class suggested setting a trap to capture him. Miss Carter has ensured that there are biscuits left for Mr Jackal over the weekend and Year One will begin their letter of reasoning on Monday, for the safe return of Sunny. Wish us luck!

ACKA

Today we all completed our ‘Week One Observations’. We all checked our seed and wrote about whether it had grown a lot, a little, or not at all. We then suggested reasons why it had or hadn’t and adjusted their positioning in the classroom to reflect our observations and ideas.

In Science today, we dissected a flower in our pairs. We discussed the structure of the flower, what it was called and where it can be found. We then peeled back various part of the flower, identifying the stem, petals, leaves and discussing pollen and the smell associated with different flowers. We all loved investigating!

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Here is a few photos from last week.

We helped Sunny the Meerkat correct his letter to his family, working in pairs to identify and correct the mistakes before changing the letter as a whole class.

As part of our topic ‘The UK and Far Away’ we have been learning about famous landmarks in London. Firstly, we drew a picture of the London Eye and discuss what resources we could use to make our very own version. We then each had a go at making one! It proved very tricky and took a lot of perseverance and concentration, but we all gave it our best effort. We used paper plates, cocktail sticks to attach the two sides together and then added seats!

You will also see some of our Science photos. We worked in pairs to ‘use observations and ideas to suggest answers to questions about planting a seed’. We talked and wrote about what a seed needs to grow, where we would put it in the classroom and why. Watch this space to keep up with our observations of how they grow! We have also being talking about the season which comes after Winter… Spring. We discussed what happens to the plants, trees and wildlife and made a Spring tree.

We had a special delivery in Year One… a HUGE letter! We discussed all of the things an envelope needed to have on it and how we knew it was for us. When we opened the envelope, we had a big surprise! Inside it was a letter from Sunny the Meerkat, all the way from the Kalahari desert! He had also sent us a brand new book called ‘Meerkat Mail’ which is our new Talk for Writing text.

Here are a few snapshots of our first week back!

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What a busy week we have had! The Snowman, Christmas Dinner, Christingle and the Elf Run.

Have a fantastic Christmas… see you all next year!!

Firstly, I would like to say a huge congratulations to all of Year One! You have made me so proud over the last two weeks with the effort that each and every one of you have put into your learning and the ‘Wriggly Nativity’ :).

Here are a few photographs from some of our lessons and our  reward for being acting and singing superstars – SNOW!

On Friday afternoon, we put all of our learning together and worked in small groups to compete in a class quiz! Each team came up with their own name and took it in turns to be the scribe. They received points for the correct answers and also their ability to work as part of a team. The questions related to our recent maths, phonics and English lessons, as well as spelling high frequency words and numbers in words. The children then swapped boards and marked a different team’s answers to make it fair. The results were tallied up, we counted them in 5s and it was a very close competition! The winning team with 24 points was… the NYC team!

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend, hopefully with some snow!! Just a quick note as well, I appear to be missing a few data collection permission forms. If you can’t see your child on the blog and are unsure if you have given permission for them to feature, please call in at the office or see me.