Welcome to Year 1
Adults in Year One : Mrs Sunderland
Mrs Harris
Miss Colquhoun
Below is our planning for the new academic year :
Here are the rules the children all created for our class this year.
We had an exciting impromptu opportunity this week to look closer at a visiting Fire Engine!
The children were very excited to climb inside for a look and loved listening to the very loud sirens!!
Our first topic is BRAINWAVES
We have enjoyed learning about our brains and how important they are! We began by looking at a jelly brain, and touching it!
We talked about all the things that our brain enables us to do, such as writing, dreaming, riding our bikes and feeling emotions. We then considered how to keep our brains healthy and what we needed to do to be good learners.
We have had a few challenges during this topic, including trying to complete a jigsaw without the pictures or any help! We also had an Obstacle Course Challenge, where we learned that practicing tricky tasks helps us to improve our skills!
Our next topic is A DAY IN THE LIFE
For our Entry Point, we had lots of fun, as we all chose a prop
& pretended to be an adult doing an important job!
We had Police Officers, Nurses, Mummies, Footballers, Bakers and lots more!
We have had some visitors into class over the past few weeks, two of our parents kindly came into class to explain their job roles and then Mr O'Donovan, who is a Dentist, also came into talk to us about his role. He showed us some of the tools he uses, how a filling is done and how he gives injections!
We talked about how important it is to look after our teeth.
This week we have all had the opportunity to share our favourite hobby with our class. Children brought in props to support their 5 minute presentation and answered questions from their friends.
We talked about the knowledge and skills we gained from doing our favourite pastimes.
This week we have been doing lots of work on the story of The Little Red Hen. We linked this focus to Mental Health Awareness Day by performing the story in groups, and then talking about how the characters felt during stages of the story. We discussed what we, as friends, could have done to help those who felt sad, unhappy or angry.
Our Exit Point was lots of fun! We worked in groups to create little 'shows' based upon the amenities we had created for our class village, earlier in the topic. The children chose a Doctor's Surgery, A Train Station, McDonalds, the Swimming Baths and a Bank, which was unfortunately being robbed,so the Police were also involved!
Once the children has chosen the setting of their performance, they then chose roles and begun to develop their productions!
They all worked very hard and it was a pleasure to watch!
Our new topic is FREEZE IT!
In our Entry Point we all considered how molecules move within the three states of matter: Solid/liquid/gas. In PE we pretended to be water in it's three states, and moved as the molecules do! In solids, molecules are compact and tight with little movement, whilst in liquid, they can moves slightly more freely, but follow other molecules. Gas molecules are free to move wherever they choose!
For Our Knowledge Harvest we all investigated ice. We asked ourselves the following questions: What does ice feel like?
What does ice look like? What can we do with ice?
We became Scientists today and investigated the following question : At what temperature does water freeze?
We poured water into ice-trays then measured the temperature at various time intervals in different locations, such as the classroom. outside and then in the freezer! We looked closely at the scale on the thermometers, learned about Degrees Celsius and finally, recorded our findings.
In Art, we experimented with paint (a liquid) and made patterns using our breath (wind)!
We blew using straws and watched how liquid moved when wind was applied!
Our next Science experiment looked at the temperatures needed to freeze other liquids. We used orange juice, milk, salt water and olive oil, and then repeated our previous 'freezing water' experiment procedures. The olive oil still had not frozen at -5'C, it had just become 'gloopy'!
Our 'Freeze It!' Exit Point had two parts:
Part One involved everyone choosing which liquid they wanted to freeze,then pouring it carefully
into molds, to make ice-lollies!
Part Two was definitely the best part, when we enjoyed eating our ice-lollies!
We have had a fantastic Christmas Party this afternoon! We played Musical Statues, Corners & Musical Bumps before tucking into
crisps, chocolate biscuits & juice. Then we had a very special visitor! Ho ho ho!
Our topic for this half-term is called ALL DRESSED UP.
For our Entry Point we all brought our favourite teddy bear in to visit our classroom.
We then all designed an outfit for them.
Some teddies have clothes for going to parties whilst others are playing football!
One teddy even has an outfit for scuba-diving!
We have been reading, writing and completing challenges all about the traditional tale, 'The Elves & the Shoemaker' this week as part of our 'All Dressed Up!' topic.
We have also been working in groups to re-create the story. The children enjoyed negotiating roles, finding props & performing for the rest of the class.
We have enjoyed doing lots of science experiments throughout this topic.
We looked closely at fabrics, discussed similarities and differences, matched them to adjectives such as smooth or thick,
and then grouped them together based on these.
We have also investigated which of our range of fabrics was waterproof. We discussed how some fabrics absorb liquid whilst others do not.
Our most recent experiment was to consider which of our fabrics would be the best insulator. We wrapped three containers with cotton, faux fur and wool, then added hot water. We recorded the temperatures of the water over a period of time.
Many of us successfully predicted that wool would be the best for this purpose!
For our Exit Point we all designed and then created our own hats. This was a tricky task, however the children worked really hard and had lots of fun trying to measure each other's heads and figuring out how to connect certain materials.
It was interesting was that a certain popular film generated a lot of interest in top hats, or 'Greatest Showman hats', as they are called by our class!
Our amazing hats!
Our new topic is OUR WORLD.
For our Entry Point we had a Treasure Hunt! We had to work in teams to locate the treasure, using abstract photos of locations in our playground as clues.
The treasure was letters which we then had to re-arrange to make the words 'Our World'.
The purpose of this was to challenge the children to look at our immediate environment more closely and really notice what is around them every day!
We have enjoyed using a new resource at school this week, our Scrap Shed! This shed is full of loose parts which can be used to enhance children's imaginations. It also encourages teamwork, co-operation, sharing and communication, whilst allowing children to explore and learn through play.
For our Art Task today we looked closely at the work of Andy Goldsworthy, who creates amazing artwork using natural resources.
We visited our Wildlife Garden to find resources for our own creations.
Last week we went for a walk around our school setting to really appreciate the beauty of nature, and in particular, trees.
We walked around our school grounds and looked closely at how trees vary in shape, size and colour. We talked about how we couldn't see a tree that looked like a brown rectangle with a green cloud on top anywhere! We also talked about deciduous and evergreen trees and all spotted ones we thought belonged to these groups.
We then came back into class and painted some amazing trees. We used our brushes to dab paint to create texture, we thought about how branches grow from the trunk and also how the leaves are all different colours depending upon their age.
Home Schooling : week commencing 23rd March 2020
Thank you to everyone who is able to continue to help their children to complete the work set.
I will continue to update our class page regularly to display this for everyone to see.
As all the children in Year One already know, Mrs Sunderland loves rainbows! Our classroom is full of them!
So when we learned of the scheme started in Europe by the children who are in isolation to paint rainbows and display them for everyone to see, we were obviously very keen to get involved. Some of us had the opportunity to draw some at school, some of us have had lots of fun creating them at home, either on our own or as a team ,with brothers and sisters!
We hope these make you smile!
Our topic for the next half term is From A to B.
We will be learning about all the different modes of transport and the history of some of these. We will also be designing our own!
Here is some of our fantastic Knowledge Harvest work,
where we showed all the different forms of transport we already knew:
As part of our PSHE we have been looking at keeping safe, particularly near roads!
Here are a few of the posters the children have created to teach everyone else about Road Safety.
This week we have been looking at some pieces of artwork that depicted boats. We looked at Renoir's Boating on the Sein, Turner's Moonlight and Monet's Red Boats & The Boat at Giverny. We considered how the artist made the water look like it was moving. We then created our own masterpieces!
We have been looking at the science involved in making paper aeroplanes fly!
We designed, created and then performed experiments to see what happened when we adjusted the thrust, lift, weight and drag conditions.
We also had lots of fun working as a team to create the following film....
watch how our class aeroplane got From A to B !!!
For our Exit Point, the children had to design and create a mode of transport that could move and also carry a passenger.
The children had some amazing ideas!
Please watch our Exhibition film below to see not just what they made, but how they made it & whether it was a successful design!
Our final topic this year is The Circus is coming to Town.
For our Entry Point, we all watched a short film about Cirque Du Soleil. The children were asked to describe what they saw,
or how they felt whilst watching it, with three words. Here are some of their ideas:
Excited Fascinating Amazing Wow! Scary Brave Fun Entertaining Smiley Happy Good
We have drawn some Circus pictures
For our Entry Point we watched Cirque Du Soleil.
I asked the children to think about what facial expressions they displayed whilst watching the Circus.
(Some parents kindly took photos of the children during this activity, to help the children afterward.)
We talked about how different parts of our face alter to display different emotions.
Below are some super self-portraits that the children have created.
Can you guess who they are and the emotion they are showing?
This week we have been looking at clowns.
We learned that there are three types of clown: the white-face clown, the Auguste clown & the Hobo clown.
The white-face clown is the oldest form of clown.
The Auguste clown wears a red nose and baggy clothes.
The Hobo clown usually has a sad face and scruffy clothes.
The children painted or drew a clown. Can you guess what type of clown they chose?
What a year!
Here's a little video of all of the children's achievements in Year One 2019-2020.