Summer 1

This half term has flown by in Squirrels Class.  The Year 1's have really enjoyed travelling back in time to learn about schools in Victorian times.  We found out all about the classrooms, lessons and the teachers.  Most of us decided that we would prefer to go to school today!  Whilst learning about Victorian times we have all learnt about Beatrix Potter.  We have looked closely at the illustrations in her books and tried to recreate her work using water colours.  We also used collage to decorate Peter Rabbit.  We loved writing our own versions of the Peter Rabbit story and designing new mischievous characters.  In the construction area, we made Mr McGregor’s Garden and labelled the different vegetables growing there.  Some of us also drew maps of the garden.  In Maths, the Year R’s have been looking at now, then and next sentences to help solve addition and subtraction problems we have also been learning about doubles.  The Year 1 children have been looking at making equal groups and learning about halves and quarters.  We also had some very exciting new additions to the school-some ducklings!  We loved finding out more about them and looking closely at how they changed.

Spring Term

It has been so lovely to see all the Squirrels back in school!  We are very proud of all the children and their hard work both in school and at home.  They all have been amazing at settling back into school life.

In Year R we have been working really hard on our phonics and we are much more confident with using our sounds and reading our ‘tricky’ words.  We have loved exploring the books of Julia Donaldson.   From making stick men to very smart giants we have had lots of creative fun.  We also travelled the world with the snail and the whale, writing postcards about our different adventures.  In Year 1 we focused on Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and enjoyed writing a sequel to his story.  He had many more exciting adventures!

In Maths, the Year R children have been working hard on numbers to 10.  We have written them, ordered them, counted how many altogether and looked at pairs of numbers that make 10.  The Year 1 children have continued to develop their place value skills and using their number bond knowledge to add and subtract.  We also enjoyed developing our measuring skills, learning to measure with rulers and finding out more about capacity.

In topic, we really enjoyed finding out why the park is important to our village.  We drew maps of the park and looked at the different features.  We also thought about who likes to use the park and what they like to do there.  We used our information to make a bar chart.

Our Science work has been all about animals.  We sorted them into their different groups and thought about what they like to eat.  We also went on welly walks around the school grounds to see what animals we could spot!

We have of course continued to enjoy our discovery time.  We have really loved playing in our role play area which is a school. There are lots of budding teachers in Squirrels class!

Well done again Squirrels on a great term!

Autumn Two

What a busy half term we have had in Squirrels class!  The children thoroughly deserve a well earned break.  Our topic  has been all about the first Moon landing.  We loved finding out about Neil Armstrong,  Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin’ s mission to the Moon and what they did when they got there.  Our space role play area also gave us lots of opportunities to carry out missions to into Space!

In English, we read ‘Whatever Next’ and wrote a diary about Little Bear’s adventure to the moon.  We also enjoyed thinking about where we would go in a magical cardboard box!  .  We loved finding out facts about the Moon which we used to write our own fact files.  

In Science, we have investigated materials and their properties for example which materials are waterproof.  We also had to sort the materials into different groups.

In Art, we looked carefully at the different shades and colours of the Moon.   Using colour mixing, we printed and painted our own moon pictures.  We then used them to create a moon collage and handprint aliens!

We have been working on our football skills in PE learning how to dribble and control the ball.

Finally, we have worked hard to put together our class Nativity.  We loved how hard the children worked to learn the songs and their lines.  We are very grateful for the support from parents organising their costumes and helping them to learn their lines.  Although it offered some challenges along the way, it was a lot of fun to put together and the children should be very proud of their performances.  The children have been amazing this half term and we hope you all have a great Christmas!

We have had a very busy but fun start to the year.  It has been great fun getting to know all the new members of the class and making new friends.  The Year 1 children have been very supportive helping the Year R children pick up new routines and we are very proud of all the children for settling in so well.  They should be very proud of themselves and we are very grateful to all the parents for their support.

We started this term with the Topic 'All about Me'.  Over the summer holidays we collected items to help describe ourselves and what we enjoy.  We took it in turns to share our items.  It was great to find out more about each other.

English

In English, we have really enjoyed looking at Traditional Tales.  We started with 'The Elves and the Shoe Maker'.  We thoroughly enjoyed writing shopping lists for the new shoes we wanted to create.

Maths

In Maths, we have concentrated on Place Value and Addition and Subtraction.  We have compared numbers using the more than and less than symbols and used these to write our own number sentences.  We have explored part whole models to help us solve addition questions.  Having a good understanding of number bonds to 10 has really helped us with this.  In Year R, the children have been developing their mathematical language. We sorted objects into different categories, compared sizes, explored pattern and used language such as tall, short, longest to describe the homes we built for different animals.

Topic

Our Geography based topic started with a message from Jack and The Beanstalk.  He wanted to know if South Wonston was a good place to live.  Through the topic we learnt to draw maps using a key,  give directions and collected data using tallys, presenting our information in a pictogram.

Science

We have started our longitudinal study!  We chose a pear tree that is growing on the school field.  We are going to study how the tree changes over the year.  When we looked at the tree we realised that it was the start of Autumn as there were leaves changing colour and falling to the ground.  This led to us looking more closely at the changing seasons and how they affects us.

Finally, we wanted to show some of the portraits we have done.  We thought carefully about what they should include and used everyday objects that we found in the classroom to create our pictures.  We also have tried to sketch a self portrait.