Class 1

Welcome to Class 1: our bright, spacious classroom that looks out onto the school field and our forest school, and home this year to our Nursery and Reception class.

The teachers are Mrs Bishop, Mrs Steele and Mrs Raynes and we have support from our wonderful teaching assistants Mrs Gowing, Ms Brown and Mrs Norman.

The classroom has lots of exciting areas of learning to explore.

Food Glorious Food

Our big questions: How do I keep myself healthy? How can we care for a plant?

RE Syllabus: SALVATION: Why do Christians put a cross in an Easter garden?

Through this topic we will be exploring the effect physical exercise has on our bodies, the importance of healthy food choices and the importance of good basic hygiene. We will design, make and evaluate a delicious healthy snack. We will learn the parts of a plant and what a plant needs to survive.

Our key questions: Where does food come from? How does a plant grow? What happens to a bulb or seed?

Things to watch:

All plant topics https: www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zpxnyrd

Click HERE to see how broad beans are planted

Click HERE for easy to grow vegetables

What's your superpower?

Our big question: Do all superheroes wear a cape?

Over the next few weeks, we will be immersing ourselves in our topic, What’s your superpower? Superheroes aren’t just strong or have special physical powers – they all have one thing in common – they help others, selflessly. They are compassionate. Our Key questions: What makes a superhero? Who are your real life superheroes e.g. mum, dad, doctor, vet? What words could you use to describe a superhero?

We will be:

Learning about the people who help us in an emergency.

Pretending to be different people who help us.

Learning what to do if there is an emergency.

Listen to the story Emergency

Storytime for kids Emergency! By Margaret Mayo and Alex Ayliffe

Who lives in a house like this?

Our big question: Are all homes the same?

The topic for the first part of this half term, is ‘Who lives in a house like this? We will use our knowledge of how to join different materials together, to design and construct houses from junk modelling then have fun exploring ‘forces’ by being the big, bad wolf and trying to blow them down.

We will look at different houses from around the world, discuss which materials they are made from and explore similarities and differences between life in this country and life in Kenya.

All About Me

To start the Autumn term, we have the topic of “All About Me”. We will be learning our new class routines, rules and expectations.

Our work will focus on the themes of ourselves, our family and our friends. It is a great opening topic for the year as the children have a sense of ownership and knowledge of these areas and so feel confident to access the learning. Our main aim over the first few days is to begin to get to know the children (e.g., likes and dislikes, interests etc.), encourage the children to try a variety of new activities, use a variety of resources and explore their new environment. During the first few days, we will have ‘play to learn’ time to encourage the children to explore their new setting, new resources, new people and begin communicating with and forming friends.

We are very lucky to have a range of learning environments available to us, including our indoors, outdoors and Forest School. Each week the activities and learning opportunities will change according to what we are learning about.

In Class 1, the children have the opportunity to learn through a variety of fun, adult directed and child-initiated activities.

Our key questions:

Sporting Champions

On your marks, get set, go!

Did you know? The 5 rings of the Olympic flag represent Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas, linked together in friendship.

Our Big question: Why is healthy eating important?

Our Key Questions: We will discuss the importance of how we behave when taking part in games and activities. Does it matter if we lose? How can we be good sportspeople?

We have started our topic by welcoming our visitor, Nurse Rachel, who came into school to talk to us about keeping healthy.

Amazing Animals

We have started our topic by making some of our own amazing animals! We made junk model animals by exploring how to join different materials. We practised our scissor cutting skills and then choose whether to use glue or tape to join the materials.

Amazing Animals

Our question - Can we have a pet penguin?

To learn more about our Amazing Animals please click on the following link from National Geographic to discover interesting facts about animals from all over the world.

Amazing Animals (nationalgeographic.com)

We found a spaceship!

We found a photo of a spaceship that had landed on our school field. We wanted to find out where it had come from so we learnt all about the planets in our solar system.

Space Explorers!

Come on a journey with us through space to discover everything our universe has to offer.

Let's go and explore the moons, planets and stars in the night sky and find out what makes each of them unique.

Under the Sea

Grab your passports and board the plane as we jet off to have some fun in the sun in South America, a continent that has the world’s largest river by volume, the River Amazon; the longest mountain range, the Andes, to name a few.

Not only will we listen to music and watch the dancing from the annual carnival, but we will look at the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, and make comparisons to our own woodland.

Put on your snorkels and flippers as we explore our new topic of ‘Under the Sea’.

We will be finding out about different sea creatures, different underwater habitats and exploring lots of books.

We have already enjoyed exploring our new Aquarium role play, selling tickets to customers, giving tours and even pretending to be mermaids in the aquarium.

Smart Trees

Class 1 had a brilliant time on Tuesday at Smart Trees.

We had fun taking part in a trail around the Christmas trees, hunting for letters to spell out a word. We took turns to follow the map and stamp the letters.

We saw Santa's reindeer and enjoyed walking through the winter wonderland, with lots of decorated trees. We then saw Santa and he gave us all a gift.

We also had a go at decorating our own tree and drew Christmas pictures with chalks.

It was a very muddy but fun day!

Teddy's Journey Continues...

Teddy returned to our class this week from his trip to London. He had a suitcase full of souvenirs from London. We were so happy to see him!

He wanted to go on another holiday to somewhere warmer. We discussed where Teddy could go and how he was going to get there. We decided to send him on a holiday to Spain. We talked about how he was going to get to Spain and whether he could get a train. We decided to send him on a plane. But the children thought we best book him a taxi to get to the airport.

Teddy has arrived safely in Spain and has sent us these pictures.

Enterprise Week

Class 1 have been busy this week making Christmas decorations to sell at the Enterprise fair. We made our own salt dough and then used it to make handprint decorations, which we decorated to look like Santa.

On Friday, we set up our own shop to sell our decorations. We made a shop sign and a price label. We then took it in turns to be the shop keeper and sold our decorations to our parents.

Our new topic is 'Journeys'

We found a Teddy in our classroom. He had an empty suitcase and a train ticket to London. So we thought about what he would need, helped him pack and took him to our train station waiting room to wait for his train.

Later on in the week we had an email from Teddy telling us all about his trip to London. He sent us these photos too!

We hope he comes back soon!

Fine motor skills are activties, which develop children’s fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, using the small muscles in our hands and wrists. We rely on these skills to do key tasks in school, at work, and in everyday life. Fine motor skills involve a coordinated effort between the brain and muscles. They’re built on the gross motor skills that let us make bigger movements, like running or jumping. Here are some examples of when we use fine motor skills:

Holding a pen or pencil
Drawing pictures and writing neatly
Using a keyboard
Using scissors, rulers, and other tools
Daily tasks like getting dressed and brushing their teeth.

Maths Challenge Morning

We had fun developing our mathematical ideas to solve practical problems.

After listening to the story Cinderella, Mrs Bishop emptied her bag of shoes but they had got mixed up so we had to be shoe detectives and help Mrs Bishop match the shoes.

We recognised similarities and differences and sorted the shoes justifying our choices.

Everything has gone green!

We had fun experiencing and using primary colours to make different shades of green. This activity was so much fun and we developed so many different skills. We used scientific thinking to observe, predict and compare, and experimented with cause and effect. ‘What will happen if we mix certain primary colours together?’ ‘How much yellow do you need to add to make green?’ ‘Can I make the exact same colour twice?’

We used problem solving skills, mathematical concepts such as more and less, and devised ways to measure how much paint they were adding. We used a multitude of fine motor skills like squeezing, pouring and mixing, and worked on controlling those skills. We even used lots of descriptive language and creative thinking skills to come up with names for their colours. ‘Shrek green’ and ‘deep sea green’ were among my favourites!

What do you think?

Autumn 1: Our School

We start the Autumn term with our new topic ‘Our School’. This topic is a lively and fun topic to teach children simple fieldwork and observational skills as they study the geography of our school, the grounds and the key human and physical features of the surrounding environment, as well as supporting the children starting school: developing routines, sharing experiences, and building friendships. Our main aim over the first few days is to begin to get to know the children (e.g., likes and dislikes, interests etc.), encourage the children to try a variety of new activities, use a variety of resources and explore their new environment.

During the first few days, we will have ‘play to learn’ time to encourage the children to explore their new setting, new resources, new people and begin communicating with and forming friends.

In Class 1, your child will have the opportunity to learn through a variety of fun, adult directed and child-initiated activities.