Turtle mania!

Wow! What a busy week for everyone across the school! This week we have been celebrating Arts Week by getting creative, imaginative and being very resourceful to make lots of turtle related masterpieces! We started the week off by watching a video about a turtle and coming up with some super adjectives to describe their looks and movement. We then turned these words into a poem and presented them very neatly! You could have heard a pin drop in the classroom whilst everyone was busy thinking carefully about their letter formation and making sure the tall letters were taller than the rest and that every letter was sitting on the line! This week we have been developing our printing skills by drawing our own turtle design onto a foam tile and then using rollers and printing ink to create some repeated print designs. This was very tricky but they turned out really well. We also got given a lump of clay and had to create a turtle - which turned out to be a lot harder than expected! It was tricky to get the shape of the body and the shell but with some perseverance and with some advice from our friends we managed to create some great turtles and then we added detail into the clay too. We worked independently at making some turtles using paper bowls, tissue paper and card. We had to find a way of attaching the fins and the head and draw them ourselves remembering to leave a tab to help us attach it all together. We worked together to make two fantastic papermache turtles which everyone was very proud of, and these will make an appearance on display on the hall wall soon! I hope you have all had a rendition of the song we have learnt this week at home too. It's definitely one that gets stuck in your head! 

Enjoy looking at the pictures below, we will bring lots of this along to our assembly on the 19th, so you will be able to share your learning with your family then too. 

Finally, a big thank you/sorry to the washing fairies at home for the amount of blue, green and generally sticky children that were sent home this week... if it's any consolation, we are still picking papermache out of our hair too. Joy! 

  

Arts Week

I hope you have all had a very fun half term! It's gone very quickly, but next week is one of my favourite weeks of the year - International Arts Week! This year, the theme for the whole school is based around the Carnival of the Animals. 

In year one we are going to be focussing on turtles, which happens to be in my top 3 favourite animals! We will be spending the week finding out about turtles and creating some turtle-inspired artwork music and dance!

Where does our food come from?

Where does our food come from?

Phonics Workshop

Thank you to everyone who came along to our Phonics Workshop after school today! It was lovely to see everybody busy playing games with mums, dads, grannies and grandads! I hope you picked up some ideas to try out at home - I'm looking forward to hearing all about it! If you weren't able to make it tonight we'll be sending out phonics packs tomorrow afternoon with all the information from the workshop. If you would like anything else then please do ask! See you tomorrow!

It's a hoot in Year One!

What a lovely week we have had in Year One! The weather has been wonderful and we are enjoying our new topic 'How does your garden grow?' As well as looking at things that grow in our garden, this week we have been finding out about butterflies. We were lucky enough to have a lady called Megan come into school to talk to us all about caterpillars, butterflies and moths. We went on a butterfly walk but unfortunately we didn't see any. To try and attract more butterflies to our garden Megan gave us some plants which the butterflies particularly like! We will be planting these into the ground next week! Did you know there are 59 species of Butterflies in Britain, and 2500 species of Moths!

We worked hard to create these beautiful clay tiles too. Inspired by the butterflies, we rolled out and pressed a clay tile and then stuck different seeds and beans into the clay to create a butterfly. It was a bit tricky as some of the seeds were so tiny, but with a lot of patience everybody made a super butterfly design! In English this week we have been using the iPads and QR codes to find out information about butterflies. We used this information to make notes and then created some lovely butterfly fact books. During our play and learning time, we independently designed a front cover on card with some markers and then painted them symmetrically.

You will have noticed how well our vegetable patch is coming along! The onions on the left hand side seem to be growing taller and taller each day! This week we have also been finding out about evergreen trees and deciduous trees. We have looked at the similarities and differences and have made these lovely posters to remind us of the difference. 

If you have been wondering why we have lots of plastic bags hanging up in the window then take a look at this picture! We wondered what plants looked like below the ground so we set up an experiment to help us picture it! we planted some seeds in a clear bag and used staples to keep them in place. We put in a piece of kitchen roll to help soak up the water which we poured in the bottom. It's only taken 12 days for these seeds to grow this much! It's been a great experiment to see how the roots of the plant form!

Today we had some slightly more unusual visitors into Year One; a tawny owl called Bramble, an eagle owl called Bisto and a barn owl called Whisper! We enjoyed listening to Jason talk about the owls and watching them get used to our classroom. We impressed him with our knowledge about owls from when we wrote our fact books before Easter! Here are some of the facts we learnt today...

• Barn Owls aren't waterproof! They are the only bird on the planet that is not waterproof which is why they have to live inside a barn!
• Barn Owls have 22,000 feathers. The only bird to have more feathers than them is the Swan who has, on average, 26216 feathers! 
• If you hear an owl call 'twit-twoo' then you are actually hearing a conversation between 2 owls, one calling 'twit' and the other 'twoo'!
• Owls only have 4 toes!
• Owls have fantastic hearing! They can hear heartbeats of small animals up to 30 feet away! They also have asymmetrical ears, which means one is a lot higher than the other. They also have one ear bigger than the other which helps them to locate the different sounds!
• It is a bit of a myth that all owls hunt at night, because actually only around 30 species of owls do! You can tell when an owl hunts by looking at their eyes. Owls with dark eyes hunt in the night, owls with orange eyes hunt at sunset and sunrise, and owls with yellow eyes hunt during the day. 

We were all allowed to give whisper a little stroke on the head at the end - she was so soft! 

I have certainly learnt a lot this week...have a nice weekend everybody! 

Spring Changes

Click on the link below to watch a video about the changes through the seasons.

Spring Changes

Home and Away...

This is our African safari scene that we made outside. 

Busy finding out where these fruits and vegetables come from. 

These are our African mud huts. These can be found in some of the rural villages in Africa. 

This is a page out of one of our counting books. 

This is a page out of our non-fiction books about Owls. 

This is a page out of one of our counting books. 

This is a page out of our non-fiction books about Owls. 

This is a page out of our non-fiction books about Owls. 

This is our African Pattern. Can you spot your piece of the pattern? 

Comic Relief...

We had a fantastic morning on Friday taking part in Red Nose Day. Everyone looked fantastic in their Superhero or Spy outfits! We enjoyed buddying up with a friend from Reception in the morning to complete a set of Superhero challenges. Following the success of our 'tick lists' on World Book Day we had a special Red Nose Day challenge card to complete. There was lots to do and there was a real buzz in the room! I think the most sensible, hardworking superheroes in world arrived at school on Friday - well done Year One (and Reception!)

World Book Day 2015

World Book Day 2015

We had a lovely time in Year One today. We read lots of Elmer books and had a whole day of Elmer based activities! We each had our own 'job list' and we had to try and complete all the jobs before the end of the day. Everyone worked through their list with no fuss, which was excellent! We also had a visit from Year Six who shared stories they had written with us, and read our favourite books with us too! A thoroughly enjoyable day for all, which was finished nicely with a hot chocolate, marshmallows and our beautifully decorated cakes whilst relaxing in the sun with our favourite books! 

Milk Bottle Plea!

Please could you bring in empty 4 pint milk bottles (with lids) for Thursday please!