Year 1 w/b 26th February 2024
Date: 1st Mar 2024 @ 6:14pm
It has been wonderful to welcome back Year 1 to the second half of the spring term and we trust you have all enjoyed a lovely half term.
Our week started with a puzzle- footprints leading to forest school! Why were the footprints there? Who had left them and what did they mean? After further investigation the children decided the footprints may have been those of a panther, lion or tiger – the large cat family. Reading more about large cats and looking at their footprints on the internet confirmed our suspicions that we had a tiger in our school grounds. Some of the children suggested that it was possibly a tiger cubs from Chester Zoo. We speedily wrote them an email but thankfully they replied to let us know they are safe at the zoo, they did however say they had looked at the cameras and one had sneaked out in the night so maybe it had paid us a visit! This discovery encouraged us to read more about tigers and think about books we knew with tigers in them including the ‘Tiger that came to tea’ and ‘There’s a tiger in our garden’. ‘There’s a tiger in the garden’ is our key text for this half term and we have been discussing the book to get to know the story. We have also been working on our accurate sentence writing skills using prepositions to describe the position of characters such as Nora, the tiger and the grumpy polar bear.
In phonics we have focused on ck (tick, tock clock!) and kn (Knock knock, who’s there?) so spelling homework next week with reflect this focus. Our Helping at Home homework for this half term will focus on reading longer words with speed and accuracy. This was sent on Dojo yesterday.
In Maths this week, we have continued our learning of counting in 10’s to 50. The children have been practicing counting forwards and backwards in 10’s and counting object by making groups of 10. We have also been counting 10s and ones in practical ways to make numbers between 10 and 50. We have used tens frames and base 10 to support this concept.
This week in Collective Worship we looked at Ephesians 4.1-6 “There is one body and one spirit… one God and Father of all, who is above all and in all.’ We thought about items which would not work without one of their parts like a pen without ink or a phone without a battery. We then thought about how we are connected as a school and how we work better together. In class we thought about how we are all connected in school then wrote on jigsaw pieces to show how we join together.
In Art, we discovered the three primary colours (red, blue and yellow). We looked at what primary colours can be mixed to make secondary colours. We used water and different food colouring to investigate what would happen when we mixed yellow and red, blue and yellow and red and blue together. We had lots of fun mixing paint to make our primary and secondary colour wheels. We are looking forward to creating our own jungle themed background using lots of colours we have discovered to help us do this.
In Science we completed our unit of work on materials by investigating the best material to make a bed for Hermelin. The bed had to be both soft and smooth for ultimate comfort. Children made predications then sorted the materials into a Venn diagram. This showed that those materials in the central, overlapping section would be both soft and smooth and therefore would be great material choices to make a bed from. Our next science topic will be animals, linking to our English work on tigers and other animals.
On Thursday we walked to church with Year 2 to take part in our half termly church service with Rev. Sandi. We listened to the story of the good Samaritan and thought of ways we could help others in our own lives. We also shared our fantastic singing; Rev. Sani was very impressed! We look forward to seeing you again next Friday for our Reception and Key Stage One Mothering Sunday service. More details can be found on the newsletter and email that has been sent out.
As this was our first week back in school, we also enjoyed our half termly meet up with our Year 4 reading buddies. It is such a wonderful opportunity for children from other year groups to come together and read for pleasure. As you can see from the photos below, Year 4 were very supportive and enjoyed listening to their buddies in Year 1 read their books before sharing their reading books. We can’t wait for an extra reading buddy session next week where we will be sharing our favourite books from home.
We hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend, and we shall look forward to seeing you all next week.
Mrs Pulle, Mrs Lindersen and the Year One team
