Year 1 and 2 - Black History Month

  

Dear Year 1 and 2 Parents, 

As part of our celebrations for Black History Month, our Year 1 classes will be creating a vibrant, collaborative art display. To bring this project to life, we are learning about the importance of sustainability by turning everyday items into beautiful artwork!

We would love your help in collecting and bringing in clean, dry recycled materials that the children can use for their creations.

Materials We Are Looking For:

• Cardboard: Cereal boxes
• Plastic items: Clean plastic bottle tops, milk bottle lids, and small plastic tubs.
• Paper goods: Colourful magazines, newspapers, or leftover wrapping paper.
• Textiles: Scraps of fabric/ ribbons.

Please send any collected items into school with your child by Thursday 16th October. This will give us plenty of time to organise the materials and let the children get beautifully messy creating their masterpieces!

Kind regards,

Miss Hamilton

Year 1: What We Are Learning!

 

Year 1: What We Are Learning 

In year 1 this week, we have been learning about …

This week in Maths, Year 1 have been learning all about 'one less'.

We have been exploring how finding 'one less' means taking one item away, which makes the total number smaller. To help build a strong visual understanding, the children have been using lots of hands-on resources, including ten frames, counters, cubes, and number lines.

Try this at home!

You can easily practice this concept during everyday routines with a simple count-and-remove activity:

• Snack Time 'One Less': Count out a small group of items (e.g., 5 grapes or 6 crackers). Ask your child, "How many do we have?" Once they count them, have them eat or remove just one. Ask, "What is one less than 5?" Encourage them to notice that taking one away makes the number smaller.

• Bonus Challenge: Use a line of toys or cutlery to practice counting backwards by one!

Literacy

This week in Literacy, Year 1 children have been writing sentences dictated by their class teachers and editing their sentences by checking for capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. They also wrote a sentence in the role of Beegu, linking their writing to our class novel.

These skills link to the National Curriculum expectations for Year 1. By the end of Year 1, children are expected to:

• Orally compose: Say a sentence aloud before writing it down.

• Finger spaces: Leave clear spaces between words.

• Basic punctuation: Begin using capital letters and full stops.

• Capital letters: Use capital letters for names of people, places, days of the week and the pronoun “I”.

In school, to help your child spell words phonetically correctly, we use a sound mat
(see below) . A sound mat helps children to identify the sounds they can hear in a word and select the corresponding letters or graphemes when writing.

Supporting Writing at home

When supporting your child at home, encourage them to say the word slowly, listen carefully for each sound and use their sound mat to help them identify the sounds they need. It is important to encourage children to have a go independently before providing the spelling for them.

This week in RE, we became Nature Detectives! Our job was not to collect things but to slow down, look carefully and notice the wonderful world around us. Using magnifying glasses, the children explored the outdoors and spotted lots of natural wonders including flowers, trees, interesting bark and clouds. We talked about what we could see, what we found interesting or beautiful, and how being in nature made us feel. We also explored the idea that created things have creators. The children thought about different objects and discussed what their creators might be like, for example, whether they might be kind, clever or creative. It was a lovely opportunity for the children to appreciate the beauty and wonder of the natural world and to think about the idea of a Creator.

Well done Year 1 for an amazing week - keep up all your brilliant work! 

Year 1: What We Are Learning!

 

Year 1: What We Are Learning 

This week in Geography, the children have been exploring our local area of Harold Hill!

We looked at bird's-eye view maps to locate our school and other familiar landmarks nearby. The children then put their map-reading skills into practice by labeling a bird's-eye view map of the school grounds.

Activity to try at home: To build on what we've learned, you could try creating a "bird's-eye view" map of a room in your house or your garden together. Draw the outline of the space and ask your child to draw and label where key objects (like the sofa, bed, or table) sit as if they were looking down from the ceiling! Alternatively, next time you are out for a walk in Harold Hill, see if your child can spot key landmarks and describe where they are in relation to school.

Year 1 explored how chalk and oil pastels can create wonderfully expressive marks, building on their growing confidence as imaginative young artists. Pupils experimented with spirals, sweeping arm movements and careful hand control. 

This week in Science the year 1 children have been describing the properties of different materials. They have been learning that materials can be hard or soft, shiny or dull, rough or smooth, flexible or rigid, waterproof or absorbent. They have observed and compared different materials and describe what they are like.  

Activity to try at home -     Materials hunt 

Children could choose different objects and describe their properties using words such as hard, soft, shiny, dull, rough, smooth, flexible, and waterproof. Parents could ask questions such as, “What is it made from?” “How does it feel?” “Is it hard or soft?” and “Why do you think this material was chosen for this object?” 

Next week, we will be learning about transparent and opaque materials. At home, you could introduce these new words to your child and see if they can find objects around the house that are transparent (see-through) or opaque (not see-through). Encourage your child to describe the materials they find and explain what they notice about them. 

Well done Year 1 for an amazing week - keep up all your brilliant work! 

Year 2: What We Have Been Learning

 Year 2: What We Have Been Learning

Literacy

In Literacy this week, we have been continuing learning about The Adventures of the Egg Box Dragon.This week, the children moved from exploring the dragon’s appearance and mischief to describing his special searching skills. They practised using expanded noun phrases, action verbs and clear sentence structure to build a vivid character description. They are now ready to begin drafting their full Egg Box Dragon description next week.

Art

This week in Art,  the children took their learning outdoors and became true collectors. With clipboards, bags and plenty of excitement, they explored the school grounds to find objects such as leaves, twigs, stones, and other natural treasures.

They experimented with arranging their finds into patterns, shapes and mini artworks.

Science

Our mini-scientists kicked off an exciting new science unit all about materials.

We began by answering a big question: "What is a material?"

The children learned that a material is simply what an object is made from. We explored everyday items and identified common materials like wood, metal, plastic, glass, and rock. We also introduced some fantastic new vocabulary words, including property, transparent (things we can see through, like glass), and opaque (things we cannot see through, like brick or We examined various items to see how different materials are used for different jobs. The children practiced identifying objects made from glass, brick, and rock, discussing why a window needs to be transparent while a wall needs to be strong and opaque!  The children then went on a material hunt, searching every corner of the classroom to find and classify objects made of wood, metal, plastic, and glass.

Forest School - Week 2

Pine class spent the afternoon noticing the details at forest school. We played you’re only safe if … and had to listen carefully to the instructions. There included standing on a tyre, balancing a brown leaf on our head and finding a stick the same length as our hand

Then we gathered together in a circle and looked closely at the ground in front of us. The children noticed the dissent colours of the grass, areas of ground that were bald or had shells on them. Everyone had the opportunity to fill an empty matchbox with mini treasures from forest school. The children found acorns, acorn cups, galls, feathers and many more items. There was also time to choose from playing on the swing, listening carefully to sounds and continuing to make elder crafts. It was a packed afternoon.

Year 3- What we are learning

 

WC: 14.09.26

In RE, we have been exploring the word ‘creation’ and thinking about what it means to create something. This is helping us begin to explore what different religions believe about how we should treat and care for our wonderful world. The children enjoyed making their own creations and reflecting on how the experience made them feel. Lots of children said they felt proud, creative and happy with what they had made! Next week we are going to compare the creation stories from the Christian and Jewish faiths.

 

In Maths, we have been developing our understanding of three-digit numbers by exploring hundreds, tens and ones. The children have been partitioning numbers into their different place value parts and writing number sentences to show their understanding. They have worked hard to explain how the digits in a number represent different amounts. Next week, we are going to explore flexible partitioning. 

 

In Literacy, we have started writing a shared piece of writing together. We have been learning how to use expanded noun phrases to add detail and description to our writing. We have also begun exploring inverted commas and using direct speech to bring our writing to life. We then used a green pen to fix our marvellous mistakes! Next week, children will begin to create their own story episodes, with increased independence.

In Science, we planted our own seeds as part of an experiment. We are investigating what happens when we change one variable, while keeping the other conditions the same. The children made predictions and are excited to observe their seeds over the coming weeks to see what happens!

Well done, Year 3, for another brilliant week of learning! 

Forest School Week 1

Pine class had lovely weather for forest school this afternoon. We began by reminding ourselves about keeping safe at forest school. The children knew to stay within the boundary markers, stay out of the fire square and never put things into their mouths.

We had fun playing the boundary game, spent some time exploring and made our forest school necklaces. Each child chose their forest school name, added this to their necklace and decorated it.

Then we learnt about the elder tree. We learnt that usually its leaves are in groups of 5 and it has a soft pith in the middle. Elder can be very useful for crafts and the children learnt how to make elder beads but removing the pith with a tent peg. It is important to always point the peg down towards the ground. The children used their elder beads to make bracelets and caterpillars.

We ended forest school with a drink and a biscuit which was most needed in the heat

Please send your children’s wellies, waterproof and change of clothes into school as soon as possible.