Welcome back Y1!

Welcome back Y1 and happy new year to you all!

It has been lovely to welcome you back on Wednesday and it was so exciting to listen to all of your Christmas stories. You have all been so busy!

When you arrived in the classroom on Wednesday there was a buzzing atmosphere as you discovered all of the clues that I left around the classroom which revealed our topic at the end. We found out that it was going to be the zoo! You were all very excited and couldn’t wait to start learning about all of the animals that live in the zoo.

In English, we started the week by thinking about what we already know about the zoo. You all gave your fantastic ideas and I soon realised you know so much already. You then had to think about what you would like to know about the zoo. Your curiosity shone through as you came up with amazing questions and I can’t wait to give you the answers to all of them. We also started our new talk for writing topic by writing a short finding tale. You had a picture of a door and you had to write a story about finding an animal on the other side. Many of you found pandas, leopards, sharks, giraffes and even a family of foxes. This piece of writing was completely independent so that I could see what areas of learning we need to focus on in our topic. I’m so excited for you to learn our finding tale story next week!

We have been recapping on some of our sounds that we had learnt last term to see how many different sounds we could remember. Well Y1, you can definitely remember a lot!

In maths this week, you finished your topic on shapes off. You learnt all about 3D shapes and how 3D shapes have faces that are made up of 2D shapes. You were soon able to describe that a cone had 1 circular face and a pyramid had 4 triangle faces and 1 square face. You picked this up so quickly and you have just amazed me with how much you know. We then finished our topic off by building up on our knowledge by creating patterns with 2D and 3D shapes. This is something you really enjoyed doing and you were soon creating your own patterns for me and Mrs VR to guess.

Most of our afternoon work has been focused on big art which has helped to completely immerse you into our topic of the zoo. On Wednesday, we read one of our top 5 books which was called ‘class two at the zoo’. We thought very carefully about the trip to the zoo and how the children were being eaten by the anaconda. We changed the names in the book and pretended that all of you were getting eaten, we found this very funny. At the end of the story, we soon realised that the animals from the book had jumped out of the book and had come to visit us in Y1. However, when the animals jumped out of the book they lost all their colour. It was now our job to add the colour onto all of the animals. On Wednesday, you drew the animals and carefully used oil pastels to add the colour onto the animals. You thought carefully about the patterns that each of the animals had. On Thursday, you then used your designs to add the colour onto the animals using oil pastels, tissue paper and paint. They look amazing! On Friday, you learnt about the artist Henri Rousseau and how he focused most of his paintings on the jungles. In each of his paintings the animals are hidden behind leaves. We decided then to create a 3D display in the style of Henri Rousseau by hiding all of our animals behind leaves. You drew out the leaves using oil pastels and then used brusho to paint the leaves whilst using the technique of wax resist.This is going to look amazing when we put it together!!

Our HeartSmart lesson this week saw us complete our reflection for the unit ‘Don’t Forget To Let Love In.’ We spoke about all we have learnt and how far we have all come. Remembering how special and loved we are is really important when letting love in. We are looking forward to our next unit – Too Much Selfie Isn’t Healthy.Bible reference: ‘The second command is: Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’ Mark 12:31

Animals in action! We became animals in our PE lesson this week! We moved and sounded like animals; whilst having to dance and freeze like them too. We had so much fun showing off our skills. Next, we each chose an animal to showcase its movements and sounds. To end our lesson, we went on a bear hunt during a yoga session.

It has been a delight to welcome you all back in the classroom but I am looking forward to our first full week back next week.

See you on Monday,

Miss Haynes