Autumn Term
Pet Posters
After reading 'Rabbit and Bear' by Julian Gough, we designed posters which could be used to advertise the sale of a rabbit. We learned that posters are used to communicate a message and that they should be informative and eye-catching. Do you think a rabbit makes a great pet? Do you have a pet rabbit at home? Does your pet rabbit have the same bad habit as Rabbit in the storybook? Ask your child what Rabbit's bad habit is... but be prepared for them to fall around giggling when they tell you!
Find your Inamojo
We have enjoyed feeling calm and mindful during our 'Inamojo' sessions with Lucy. This week we listened to a story about Namiko and the Storm Wave. Namiko the Moon Fin, goes on a journey of self-discovery after her emotional outbursts get the better of her and she causes deep-sea destruction not only to her home but also to her people. This is a story of how emotions can affect others and us. We learned a breathing technique called 'Wave Breath' to help us to collect our thoughts and be in the present moment.
Anti-Bullying Week
Hannah from Big Foot Productions came into school to teach us why "It's good to be me". We learned that we have many super powers like 'kindness', 'bravery', 'talking' and 'calm thinking' which can help us all to celebrate who we are and why we are all special and unique. It is good to be me!
What falls but never hits the ground?
The temperature!
This week we have been learning about the weather and extending our knowledge of seasonal changes that take place across autumn and winter. We know that the temperature falls in the autumn and it starts to feel cooler. We have many more cloudy days and less sunshine in the autumn time. The leaves fall from the trees and some animals start to collect and store food ready for the winter months. The days are shorter and the nights are longer during these seasons. We are busy collecting data to show daily weather conditions across a period of three weeks. We will analyse this data at the end of this half term to see how the weather in Newcastle has changed as we move through the colder seasons.
'Lest We Forget'
We learned that the red poppy has become a symbol of war remembrance the world over. People in many countries wear the poppy to remember those who died in war or those who are still serving in the armed forces. We made poppies this week and displayed them in our classroom to show our support for the Armed Forces community.
Find your 'Inamojo'
We are calm, we are mindful.
Today we journeyed deep into a magical land where we met a dragon and a witch. They helped us to not only feel what we were feeling but notice what we were feeling. We recognise that our feelings come and go like waves. We learned a self-awareness exercise called 'The Dragon's Sneeze', we learned to meditate and we now know some breathing techniques.
Hieroglyphic History
Have we always had mobile phones? At first, we thought 'of course we have!' but when we started looking at a timeline we realised there's a LOT of history and mobile phones haven't actually been around for that long. We looked at cave paintings and examined pictures of Ancient Egyptians, looking for clues as to how they might have communicated with each other. We noticed that instead of letters they used symbols which are known as hieroglyphics. Then we had a go at writing our names using hieroglyphics. Some were very tricky to draw but we had lots of fun trying!
Animal Art
We've had great fun this week making our own animal prints. We each chose an animal and then studied it's fur or skin. What colours could we see? How could we make those colours? To make sure our prints looked realistic, we recapped our primary colours then had a go at mixing them together to discover all of the secondary colours. With all of these new colours at our disposal, we painted our animal prints. Have a look at our fantastic results below!
What might the owl see or hear in the autumn time?
The wise owl sees and hears everything that happens across the seasons, throughout the year. What might he see in the autumn time? What might he hear in the autumn time? Find out what we thought he would see and hear in our work below.
Autumn Leaves
We have thoroughly enjoyed learning all about the four seasons this week when reading 'Seasons Come, Seasons Go: Tree by Britta Teckentrup. We just loved the illustrations in the book so we decided to create our very own autumn trees which are proudly displayed on our classroom wall. We used printing techniques with broccoli and poster paint to create the shape of the leaves. We mixed orange, bronze, red and yellow paint to show how leaves change colour in the autumn. Who would have thought that broccoli would be great to print with? We had lots of fun!
Maths, maths, maths!
Is a banana whole if the skin has been peeled off? Is an apple whole if a bite has been taken out of it? These are some of the questions we have been pondering in Maths this week whilst looking at partitioning. After working with objects, we moved onto numbers. We had fun using part whole models to partition numbers and learned stem sentences such as, '3 is a part, 2 is a part, 5 is the whole!'. Next week, we will move onto addition and use our new skills to make our own number sentences. Watch this space!
Yummy Fruit!
As part of 'Healthy Eating Week', we had lots of fun learning about the importance of eating a variety of fruits everyday. We know that fruit is full of goodness which we need to help us to stay healthy. The best part of our lesson was eating our very own fruit salad, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Our favourite fruits were mangoes, raspberries and blackcurrants. They were so juicy and sweet! We painted our favourite fruits for a display in our classroom.
What a wonderful world we live in!
We have been studying our amazing planet and learning new facts about our world. We know that most of Earth's surface is covered in water and that the oceans and the expanses of land can be seen from space. We also know that the world has seven continents and we have been learning to recall their names and to locate them on maps of the world. We live in the UK which is in Europe!
We love working with numbers!
We have been counting forwards and backwards within 10, counting groups of objects or pictures accurately, comparing groups of objects or pictures using mathematical language like 'more', 'less', 'smallest' and 'greatest'. We have also used mathematical symbols like < > = to compare amounts with growing confidence. One of our favourite tasks was to order a set of numbers from smallest to greatest using equipment like Numicon and the number line to help us to place each number correctly. We are enjoying consolidating our knowledge of numbers to 10 and showing off our mathematical skills.
Welcome to Year 1
The children have made a great start to Year 1! They are settled into their new classroom and they are adapting well to new routines. They are all enthusiastic and ready to learn and it has been wonderful to see their smiling faces each day in our classroom. This half term our topic is 'What a Wonderful World'. We will be learning all about the world we live in through our Geography unit and we will also be learning about animals and humans as part of our Science unit of work. Last week in our English lessons, we read a non-fiction text all about farm animals and we completed a writing task about our favourite farm animal. Over the next few weeks we will be reading lots of exciting stories involving animals like 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' by Judith Kerr. In maths, we are consolidating our knowledge of numbers to 10 through counting forwards and backwards, adding and subtracting and through reading and writing numerals in figures and in words. We can't wait to get moving on our learning journey! Watch this space!