Year 1

Spring Term

This half term Bird World visited Year 1.  We found out more about birds, reptiles and mammals and loved meeting the different animals.  In particular we found out more about the owl, tortoise, chinchilla and guinea pig that  visited our classes. 

 Whilst you are at home can you research these 4 different animals, for example what do they eat, which part of the world do they live in?

Thinking about the groups birds, reptiles and mammals can you draw other animals that belong to these groups?  If you have pets at home which groups do they belong to, how do you know?  Are there other groups of animals we have not mentioned?

We made amazing 'pop up' toys in our DT lessons.  Some of our ideas included space themes, under the sea themes or animal themes.  Whilst you are at home can you make a  different moving toy or picture? 

 

Once Upon a Time

In Early Years, we have been really enjoying traditional fairy tales. Our role play areas currently are Granny's Cottage from Little Red Riding Hood, a shoe shop from The Elves and the Shoemaker and a Fairy Tale Castle.

We all had great fun making gingerbread men and hope they tasted as good as they looked!

We will be finishing this topic with a Fairy Tale Ball on Friday 3rd April. Please come dressed as a character from a fairy tale. We are very excited about it!

Year 2 - Splish, Splash, Splosh!

This term started with a very exciting visit from Captain Rockycliffe! We learnt all about pirates, real ones and fictional ones. We had great fun acting out the story of the Pirate Cruncher and had some amazing ideas about the sorts of adventures pirates have.

We also got to design and make our very own pirate ship. Then we tested it to see if it was waterproof or not!

We are now moving on to our topic "Be the Best",  where we will be thinking about superheroes.

We will be pretending to be superheroes and come up with different powers we would love to have.

Out of This World!

Out of This World!

At the beginning of the Spring term our kitchen garden was turned into a spaceship landing site! 

 We arrived at school to find pieces of the spaceship hidden in the vegetable patch BUT where had the alien gone?

The Year 1 classes thought of different questions to ask the alien including 'Where were you trying to fly to?', 'Do you go to school?' and 'What planet are you from?'.

We wanted to find out more about the planets in our solar system and had fun exploring the Science Centre in Winchester.  We particularly enjoyed designing and testing our rockets to see which rocket would travel the furthest.  We thought of different names for our rockets including Zoomblaster, Flying Fire, Mars Blaster and Bobby and Alex!  In the planetarium we learnt more information about planets and constellations and spent some time in the afternoon investigating the Explorer Zone.

In our DT lessons we researched space buggies and practised joining materials in different ways before we designed and made our own amazing space buggies!

 

 

 

Welcome back!

Welcome back! 

Our topic this term is 'Under the sea'. Over the last two weeks we have looked at the books 'The Rainbow Fish' and 'Sharing a Shell'; we have been talking about what we can do to be a good friend. Lots of the children have been using these friendship skills inside and outside of the classroom! 

In time for the start of a new term, our role plays have been changed ready for the children to explore. We now have a 'pirate ship', 'under the sea' and a 'seaside' themed role play. We will be changing around the role play areas every two weeks so that every class will have an opportunity to access all of the exciting resources bought for us by the PTA!

The children have been given a Phase 2 keyword sheet. As we have now finished the phase 2 sounds, please practice these words with your children at home until they recognise them as sight words.  

Fire Fire Fire!

Fire, Fire, Fire!

 

We have really enjoyed this half term finding out about the Great Fire of London. We were amazing at remembering facts. At the beginning of the topic, these are some of the questions we wanted to investigate. Find the answers at the bottom of the page!

Where did the fire start?

Why did the fire spread?

How long did the fire last?

How do we know about the fire?

In our art lessons we explored colour. We found out more about primary colours and used these to make our own secondary colours. We looked at work by Piet Mondrian and even created some of our own. Using colours inspired by the Great Fire of London we made a woven pattern. 

 

  In English we have enjoyed reading Wow! Said the Owl which inspired us to write our own stories about an owl’s journey discovering colours around the world.

 This has linked with our Geography and Science topics as we have found out about different animals including birds and have created maps from an aerial (bird’s eye) view.

We hope you enjoyed watching our Christmas show as much as we enjoyed performing it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Year 1 Team.

 

Here are the answers we found out:

Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane.

For many reasons including; the materials the houses were made of, houses were close together and it was very dry and windy at that time.

From Sunday the 2^nd September 1666 – Thursday 6^th September 1666

From eye witness sources such as Samuel Pepys.

 

 

Year 2 A Growing Adventure

A Growing Adventure

We have had another busy half term learning about dragons, looking at how plants grow, raising money for children in need and even learning how to wash a woolly mammoth!

In October we had news that a dragon called the Hampshire Ridgeback Dragon had been spotted flying over Aldershot! We learnt all about this dragon and this inspired us to write reports about our own dragons.

We also had lots of fun raising money for Children in Need and had to investigate where Pudsey had disappeared to. We made wanted posters and helped Pudsey prepare for his Children in Need party with some exciting maths problems to solve!

As the weather got colder, we had a think about how that can affect plants. We explored the school grounds to see if we could spot different types of plants and flowers and used these to create some amazing sketches and collages.  

We have also had great fun reading and exploring the books 'How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth' and 'Clockwork Dragon'.

Now it's almost Christmas we're very busy doing lots of festive things. The Christmas plays were amazing and we all did such a great job learning all the lines, songs and dances.

We're so excited for Christmas but can't wait to find out what next term has in store for us!