Year 1
Dinosaur Planet
We started Year 1 with a big "ROAR!" as our classroom became 'Dinosaur Planet'. In our first week back some of the dinosaurs from our classroom were getting up to lots of mischief outside, climbing trees and playing on the trim trail! We wrote sentences about what the dinosaurs had been doing and used capital letters and full stops to make our sentences super.
We have also been busy creating dinosaur skeleton art. It was a bit fiddly using the masking tape to mark out where the dinosaurs' skeleton would be but we persevered. We have also been getting very messy creating models of the world now and the world when dinosaurs lived. Everyone in Year 1 helped to put the models together and wouldn't you agree they look great?
To celebrate all the hard work that everyone in Year 1 had done during the first half term Miss Wilson decided to throw a Dinosaur Party! We played some party games, danced, made some dinosaur balloons and made and ate dinosaur nest cakes (Yum!). We also opened our classroom as a dinosaur museum so that the children could show their parents around and talk about some of the things they have learned this half term.
We are now really looking forward to our next topic and visiting 'The Enchanted Forest'.
Bright Lights, Big City
We have packed lots into this short half term, learning lots of new facts about London! In the first week we received a very exciting invite from the Queen. She was really happy that we were going to be learning about her family and London that she decided we should have a tea party! Along with the invitation the Queen sent us a parcel of Royal golden cups and plates as well as lots of tasty food. Afterwards we had a Royal Ball- Miss Wilson and Mrs Cleland found it hard to choose the best dancing couple as we were all so great!
We haven't just been partying in Year 1 this term. As well as learning about some of London's most famous buildings and writing our own fact sheets, we have also used maps to locate the Queen's treasure, use the computers to search for images of people from the Royal Family to make a Royal Family tree, talked about what London was like during 1666 when the Great Fire happened and thought about why the fire might have spread so quickly. This sparked lots of conversation about what we would do today in an emergency and thankfully lots of children in Year 1 knew exactly who to phone. After realising that the Great Fire started in a bakery, it was only right that we bake our own bread. We talked about all the ingredients that are needed to make bread and after a whole day of waiting we got to conduct a taste test which confirmed that our bread tasted just as delicious as we had imagined! We have also enjoyed making use of our London role play area, hosting Royal Garden parties and using the phone in our telephone box for important calls to the Queen.
We have really enjoyed this topic and are looking forward to fitting in even more for our new topic next term.
Paws, Claws and Whiskers
We really enjoyed the start to our topic this half term- a visit from Sam's Safari and lots of different animals that we had never seen before! We learned lots of new words and facts and loved meeting the animals, which included Holiday the armadillo who had a particular liking for digestive biscuits!
We have thought about ways that animals are similar and different and realised that animals can be grouped according to their similarities. We have been using words such as 'mammal' and 'reptile' when classifying animals. Sometimes it's hard to decide which group an animal belongs to but we have learnt some rules which help us. For example, did you know that all insects have 6 legs and all mammals have fur or hair?
We have also been using our artistic skills to create some Andy Warhol inspired prints. We carefully copied our chosen animal print onto a foam block to create our own unique printing tool and then used different coloured inks to create our amazing final pieces which are now on display in school.
Most recently we have been learning about how herbivores, carnivores and omnivores are different and we have sculpted our own herbivore and carnivore dinosaur teeth to show how different shaped teeth could be used to eat different types of food. While outside we have been creating huge bowls of omnivore soup. Inside something strange has been happening- our 'toy' dinosaurs have been taking over! They have made themselves very at home, enjoying a dinosaur party where they had eaten Miss Wilson's cake, taking a nap after reading our dinosaur story books and having a paint ball fight!
We've had a great fun packed half term and learnt lots of new facts and vocabulary.
A great big dinosaur ROAR from all in Year 1 and watch this space to find out about our next exciting topic.
Moon Zoom
We kicked off our 'Moon Zoom' topic at the end of last term during art week. We had to design and make costumes for a parade at the end of the final week and we chose to turn ourselves into aliens, astronauts and rockets! We each had to think very carefully about the colours we would use on our costumes and how we could make them easy to wear.
If you were lucky enough to see the whole school parade, you may have spotted some of us in our costumes. If you couldn't make it, here are some pictures of our super creations!
When we returned to school after the half term, we had to use our detective skills as Miss Wilson and Mrs Cleland had spotted some blue, glittery, sticky footprints outside! We used the cameras to take pictures of the foot prints as evidence. After this, we came up with some questions we could ask other members of staff to try and find out if they had spotted anything unusual. After reading a story about Beegu the baby alien we decided it must have been Beegu who came to visit our school and left those strange footprints everywhere!
Lots of us wanted to find out more about the planets in our solar system and to help us with this we created models of each of the planets. Making the planets was a very messy job but they look super hanging up in our classroom.
In the weeks ahead we will be using information texts to help us find out even more about Space as well as learning about some famous astronauts and having lots of fun creating our own moon buggies.
Superheroes
In Year 1 for this half term we have been learning all about superheroes and real life heroes! We have talked about what a hero is and realised that heroes don't have to have special powers because we think doctors, firefighters, police officers and other people who help us are heroes too.
As well as writing our own 'Superhero' and 'Hero' fact sheets, we have been enjoying lots of time in the role play area, zooming to missions in our super-fast superhero car! We also learnt about a real life hero from a long time ago. She was a nurse called Florence Nightingale and some people call her 'The Lady of the Lamp'- if you want to know why, someone from Year 1 will definitely be able to tell you. Throughout the school year we are going to think about the different seasons and we have already painted some lovely 'Season Window' paintings which you can spot near our outdoor area.
We are really enjoying our topic and looking forward to tasting super healthy foods and having a superhero picnic in the weeks to follow.
