Houses and Homes - Castles

Today the FS2 started looking at castles as their weekly topic focus. They arrived at school to a castle role play! Throughout the day the children made swords and crowns to use in the castle. We had a selection of queens, princesses, kings, princes and knights (photos to follow). FS2 talked about the Queen, who she was and where she lives. They also thought about how they should behave if they went to the Queens palace or castle.

Year 1 have been looking at unusual homes and today we looked at canal barges and narrow boats. The children were fascinated at the idea of a horse pulling the barge along the tow path. They were even more impressed with how the men got the boats through a tunnel with no engine or horse!

REMINDER: Healthy Tuck Shop tomorrow at playtime. Bring your 30p.

REMINDER: Cake sale on Friday. Class 1 are to bake. Please bring in your cakes on Friday morning and leave them in the staffroom. All children will need 25p to have a cake at playtime.

Iona's window

Above are some of the children's latest creations using purple mash. All of the children have been creating houses using different tools including a brick and tile brush for decoration. Today the children created windows.

DO YOU HAVE? If you have any fossils please send them in for the children to look at.

Reminder: Mrs Southall will be in tomorrow morning. Year 1 maths and spelling homework will need to be handed in in the morning.

Noah's Ark

This week the year 1 children have been reading 'Noah's Ark' and thinking about animal homes. Yesterday they made symmetrical watercolour paintings of animals that went into the ark. The children folded a piece of paper in half. On one side they drew their chosen animal, painted it, then folded it in half to create another image. The children then added detail to their animal using oil pastels one they had dried.

FS2 have been looking at a dinosaur museum and made their own dinosaur called Rexy. They gave instructions as to how they wanted him to be drawn and then decorated him.

Monday 24th January

Amber created this lovely picture using different shapes.

A group of boys made a garage for all the emergency vehicles!

FS2 are continuing to look at dinosaurs in their literacy and maths. Today they watched a clip of a little boy who went to visit a dinosaur museum. Their challenge was to remember the name of at least one dinosaur from the clip. FS2 had a go at matching dinosaurs to their name using the initial sound. In maths FS2 were taking away dinosaurs using their fingers through reading a dinosaur poem.

Year 1 are looking at a story called 'Bold the Bad' this week. It is all about a naughty cat. Today the children worked in talk partners to read the poem, practise and then recite it to the rest of the class. Their speaking skills were fantastic.

This afternoon, Year 1 looked at the story of 'Noah' and the temporary home he made for all the animals. They then went on to make symmetrical paintings of different animals. By painting one, folding it over and opening it again they had 2 animals.

FS2 have been talking about rules in the construction corner:

• No more than one model each kept on the display.
• We don't take parts off these models to use on our own.
• All models must be labelled and named.

Making clay houses

Otto's House

Archie's House

As promised some pictures of the clay houses that year 1 made yesterday. They are now drying in the classroom and we need to decide whether or not to paint them.

FS2 had a go at writing number sentences today such as 4 +4 = 8. They enjoyed the challenge of having to work out how many legs there would be in total on 2 dinosaurs.

FS2 also played a memory game where they had to work out which of 'Harry's' dinosaurs had got lost. They were very good and even noticed if two had gone and named which dinosaur was missing.

Year 1 made their own versions of 'Handa's Suprise' but made the setting the UK. We talked about fruit that would grow in this country and the types of animals that might take the fruit.

This afternoon year 1 had ICT. They continued the topic of homes using 'Purple Mash' to create a home and some even managed to 'paint' the view from a window in their house. Have a look in their folder on the purple mash website to see their work that they should have saved!

NOTE: Mrs Southall will be teaching all day in Class 1 tomorrow.

ICT Work

A Pizza

Well done to Isaac for creating this lovely meal at home using the Purple Mash website. Remember to save all your work in your 'online' folder.

Year 1 made clay houses today. They thought about tile and brick patterns.Photo's coming soon!

We will be looking for parents to come and help us with the allotment each week on a Wednesday afternoon between 1:30 and 3:15. Please check your diaries for after the Easter break. A letter asking for help will be sent out just before half term.

So if you are green fingered and would like to help then keep some Wednesdays free!

Purple Mash

Purple Mash is now up and running. The children have been sent home today with a letter explaining more and their access cards.

To sign in go to www.purplemash.com

Then click on 'Login' with a picture of a key.

In the boxes that appear type in the username and password as shown on your access card. This is something that the children have been taught to do independently at school.

Please encourage them to save lovely work as I would love to see what you have made. This can be done by clicking on the 'old fashioned' disk. Please make sure you save it online so I can see it!

To get you started try 'games' and then the apptivity '2start English'

There are some fantastic resources on there. So have a look around and enjoy!

Monday 17th January

Practising writing whilst playing 'teachers'.

Another busy week begins in Class 1.

FS2 have continued their 'Dinosaur' theme in Literacy and Maths this week by looking at 'Harry and his bucketful of dinosaurs'. The children thought about how they could describe their toy to someone if it was lost. FS2 also had a go at 'estimating' the number of dinosaurs in the bucket and them counted them. We have been doing lots of work on recognising numbers and writing them.

Year 1 are looking at stories with patterned language this week and have been looking at 'Handa's Surprise' . Today we talked about the African setting and the different animals that you would find there.

This afternoon FS2 explored a new game and learnt how to play it. It is a bit like 'Buckaroo' but a racing car that you have to put together.

Year 1 continued talking about homes and drew pictures of their homes. We talked about different features such as chimneys, windows, doors etc. The children also learnt about detached, semi-detached, and terraced homes.

LOOK OUT FOR 'Purple Mash' information tomorrow. The children are very excited about it, especially the year 1's!

Our pet dinosaur

Drawing dinosaurs that were 25 cubes long.

Counting out the cubes with a partner.

This is the length of our new pet!

Yesterday the children carried out an investigation. This was to find out if we could keep a pet d

Diplodocus in the playground. He would be 25 metres long. The children decided that we would need to measure with a metre stick to find out. We discovered that the playground was too small. The Village Green, however, had ample room to accommodate him. The children each measured a metre and used their feet as a metre marker.

After our investigation on the Village Green the children had to count out 25 cubes in the classroom and draw a dinosaur that long. The children drew some fantastic dinosaurs. Keep a eye out for them on the wall in our classroom.

The investigation was fantastic because it encouraged the use of a variety of skills including problem solving, measuring and counting.

In the afternoon, year 1 explored our new school website subscription to 'Purple Mash'. Each child has their own login and password. We hope this is something that they will be able to use both at school and at home. Keep an eye out for more information coming soon!

Today the children thoroughly enjoyed their new year lunch. There was plenty of food to go around, including pizza, sandwiches, mini sausage rolls, carrot sticks, celery sticks, crisps, cheese, pineapple and fruit platters. The children has a lovely time and we hope to do it again.

Investigating and Exploring

All the children arrived in their PE kit this morning so thank you very much. It meant that we had a much longer session at the village hall which the children really enjoyed. PE kits will be sent home on Tuesday as a prompt and reminder about the following morning. We have decided to keep them in school as sometimes little accidents can occur and we often change the children into their PE kits if needed.

FS2 talked about dinosaurs today and named those that they knew. The children then went on to make playdough 'food' for their dinosaur toys.

This afternoon we continued our topic based upon 'Houses and Homes'. The children were given batteries, bulbs and wires to explore and investigate. They had great fun trying to work out what things were for and how to make them work. Once they succeeded in making the bulb light up we then had to turn out the lights to see the full effect!

We then talked about electricity in the home, the dangers and the importance of safety.

Healthy Schools

The picture above shows the egg that we currently have in our classroom. What do you think might be inside?

Today the FS2 children curled up and pretended they were in an egg. We thought of words to describe what it might be like inside an egg including uncomfortable, cosy, squashed.

A picture of one of us pretending to be inside the egg.

Year 1's this week are looking at ordinal numbers in maths. Today we wore ordinal number stickers and made a queue in the correct order. The children also played a game 'Guess the position.'

As part of our 'Healthy Schools' award every child in the school has taken part in a run this week to determine their fitness levels. This afternoon the children rated how fit they thought they were before running around the pleasure ground. The idea of this is that the children can identify their fitness levels and we can improve this as a school. We will then do the run at Easter and in the summer to determine if we have improved our fitness through extra exercise in school.

REMINDER: Please wear PE kits to school tomorrow.

Houses and Homes

FS2 this week in literacy and numeracy are looking at dinosaurs and dinosaur eggs. We have a rather large egg in the classroom and the children have been thinking about what might be inside including suggestions it may be a dragon egg, lizard egg or duck egg.

They have also been comparing different sized eggs.

Year 1 this week are looking at diaries and today began by reading 'Diary of a Wombat'. The children wrote a thinking bubble as to what Wombat might be dreaming about.

Year 1 began their new topic today 'Houses and Homes'. This afternoon they read the story 'The House on the Hill'. The children talked about different physical landscapes where people have their homes including hills, flat land and valleys. They thought of advantages for each landscape.

Many thanks for encouraging your child with their 'Helping Hands' task this weekend. They enjoyed telling each other about the job that they had done to earn their 25p for Kasper.

REMINDER: All children in Class 1 have permission to have an extra snack from their lunch box. Please ensure there is a suitable snack available such as fruit or veg. Children are not allowed 'packaged' food at snack time.

Scrambled Snake!

Even the baby Gruffalo's enjoyed the scrambled snake!

Year 1 wrote their recounts today about their Christmas Day. They all had plenty to write about and enjoyed drawing illustrations to go with their writing.

FS2 have nearly completed all their single sounds and will very soon be moving onto double sounds such as 'sh' like shop, 'ch' like chip, and 'th' like thank.

This afternoon we had music time. The children have taken lots of interest in instruments and have made their own during activity time. We have had rain sticks, shakers and even a violin.

FS2 have continued to look at 'The Gruffalo' and

today made scrambled snake (otherwise known as scrambled egg!).

Reminder: Please check your child's book bag for a letter about PE kits. We will send home all PE kits on a Tuesday. This will help you to remember that your child will need to wear their PE kit to school on the following morning.

REMINDER: Year 1 homework is due in tomorrow. This includes both word books and new maths homework books.

Happy New Year!

Welcome back and I hope you all had a lovely Winter break. Apologies for the minimal blog over the last term. With OFSTED, Christmas preparation and an 'alternative' jam packed timetable it was proving rather difficult for us to keep track of the blog. New year and a new regular blog!

Firstly, at the end of last term, you will have received the latest OFSTED report in response to a visit we received back in November. As you will have noticed, the Early Years received the judgement of 'Good'. This was an excellent improvement upon the previous inspection which was judged as 'Satisfactory'. This reflects the hard work and structure that has been put in place over the last two years. As you can appreciate we, as an Early Years team in Class 1, have a big challenge that faces us due to the demanding Early Years Cur

riculum requirements and what is actually possible in a small school with a mixed class. However, we have worked hard to overcome these constraints, to provide a learning environment that is more than effective in providing for the children in both the Foundation Stage and Year 1.

This term our topic will be 'Houses and Homes'.

Today we began the new term by recapping the class rules. Each child (and adult!) drew a hand to show that they will try hard to remember all the rules to make our classroom a happy place.

Foundation stage began their focus 'The Gruffalo' for the week. The read the story together and tomorrow will be making scrambled eggs similar to 'scrambled snake' in the story! They will also be making Gruffalo masks and retelling the story.

Year 1 began looking at Wallace and Gromit's 'A Grand Day Out'. We talked about trips they had been on in the holiday and 'A Grand Christmas'. Children began planning their recounts about Christmas day.

This afternoon we had some music time and some of the children made some excellent instruments that we will be using tomorrow in music time.