1 Red have hit the ground running this week by coming back to school energised and ready to learn. Our new theme is ‘Never Eat Shredded Wheat’ and within this theme we are looking at map reading and using a compass to find directions. In Maths we have been looking at making larger numbers by thinking how many 10’s are in the number and how many ones. In our English we are looking at questioning words and how we use them and what replies they generate. We have had a brilliant first week back.
This week we have been learning about how it would feel to live in an igloo. We thought about the life of an Inuit and what they ate, where they lived and what they wore. We even tried some Inuit throat singing! We decided that we are very lucky to live in this country and eat the food we eat, we really don’t fancy walrus nuggets!
We took part in a design and technology lesson and used our theme of ‘Come Fly With Me- Arctic’ as inspiration. We decided to create an Arctic scene and then create a slider to show the sun rising and setting. We carefully snipped two slits in our card then inserted our sliding piece. We then created our scene and made our sun rise and set. We had lots of fun learning this new skill.
This week we have been learning about what the Inuit people eat and how their clothes are made. We looked at the materials they use in their every day life and created our own Inuit collage using the material that we thought was best suited for that weather.
Throughout this theme of ‘Come Fly With Me: Arctic’ we have been looking at the different animals and how they survive in a harsh environment. We discovered that many Arctic animals have blubber to keep them warm. We decided that we wanted to see what difference blubber makes to an animal. We became scientists and we placed our hands in icy water. We then placed our hands in blubber (zip pocket with butter in) and put them back in the water. We concluded that the blubber stops the animal feeling cold. It was great fun!
KS1 took part in celebrating the festival of ‘Diwali’ carried out by Kz Entertainment (a London based drama and dance group). Diwali is the five-day Festival of Lights,celebrated by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the world. Diwali, which for some also coincides with harvest and New Year celebrations, is a festival of new beginnings and the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness.Children will listen to Diwali stories, learn some Bollywood dances and then take part in the tradition Dhandiya dances (stick dancing) which is a dance celebrated at this festival. As you can see the children had a great time!
As part of our ‘Happily Ever After’ theme we decided that our favourite story character would benefit from a pot to keep their favourite item safe eg. Cinderella could keep her jewelery in or Granny could keep her biscuits in it to hide them from The Big Bad Wolf. We used clay and made a thumb pot. We looked at how to pinch, mould and manipulate our clay to make our desired shape. We then used a range of tools to ‘score’ our clay to make it patterned.
This week in our Maths lessons we have been looking at the part – whole model and how we can use it to complete our addition work. We have looked at all the commutative ways we can make the number and how we can show our answers using the model. We are absolutely amazing, even starting to use 3 and 4 parts to our model.
Throughout our theme ‘Happily Ever After’ we have been looking at fairytales. This week we have been reading and completing work around the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We decided that cookies are a great treat and that we would like to make them (to make sure they were good enough for Granny obviously). We looked at a recipe and thought about what ingredients we would need. We then used the correct equipment to weigh out the ingredients and mix the batter. Our Teacher put them in the oven and took them out when it was time then we took them home to eat, before The Big Bad Wolf could smell them!
The children have settled into Year 1 wonderfully! We have already started our Learning Means The World Theme ‘ Happily Ever After’ in which we are researching fairy tales and their settings and characters. In our Maths we have been counting forwards and backwards and saying 1 more and 1 less than a given number. We are already learning so much and can’t wait to see what else we can do.
