How lucky are we in year 1

History

Wednesday we were visited by a real Iron Age Druid! 

We made dragon eyes by weaving wool around 2 sticks and then whispered wishes into them.

He showed us how to make Celtic paintings with swirly patterns on them.

English

Julia Donaldson played a massive role in our week for learning about one poet. I would like to thank everyone who brought in books for the day as it meant each child was able to have a read of a variety of her books with different levels of difficulty. The thing that impressed me the most about the day was how well everyone worked in pairs, reading and sharing their ideas about rhyming words and the events in the stories. It was really heart warming to watch.

Finally we picked our favourite Julia Donaldson book as a class and learnt parts of it off by heart.

Part 1 - Fox

Part 2 - Owl

Part 3 - Snake

Part 4 - It's a Gruffalo!!!

Alfie noticed this morning that there was a whole new creature in our little classroom pond. However when we discussed it with the whole class we decided that some "metamorphosis" had happened over the weekend. Our Damselfly nymph has grown into a Damselfly.

We've been throwing some shapes in the classroom

Year One have been learning about 3D shapes in maths this week.

First we found the different faces of 3D shapes. Messy business, but nobody complained about that.

Then we built 3D shapes by making vertices of play dough and edges of wooden sticks. This was very challenging but we persevered and succeeded.

Also we are very lucky to have some new members of the class. I'm not talking about Kayden and Bailey. Check it out!

Next week we're going to investigate what mini beasts we can find in there. I'll keep you posted with what we find.

UPDATE:

I was having technical difficulties uploading these videos, but I have managed to add in our stories about not letting the pigeon do things. Here are some of the pupil's stories. Look out for how expressive they are starting to become.

Don't let the Pigeon go swimming

Don't let the Pigeon throw a party

Don't let the Pigeon go to school

All in the name of fun learning!

Apologies if you dropped off your child this morning as a brunette and I returned them back to you as a brunette. I assure you it was all in the name of fun learning!

Today we were learning about the Stone Age as part of our history topic about St Albans.

We looked at cave paintings from though sands of years ago. The children we fascinated by the hands that have left their stamp in time. Which has inspired a lot of the painting from today. 

Archie painted a sabre tooth tiger that his tribe had hunted, making sure to include its super sharp teeth. Sophie left her hand print so that in thousands of years time she will still be remembered. 

We also made some natural paints using mud, charcoal, leaves and petals to get different colours. Firstly we cut up the leaves to break it into smaller pieces using a cutting stone. Secondly we grinded the leaves up to let the green out used a rough stone. Then we mushed it up in some water. Finally used a stick to write our names.

Mud

Petals

Leaves

Charcoal 

Back after Easter

It's about time we started to look at the wonderful projects that have been brought in. 

We have this fantastic strong structure, the Tower Bridge of London. With working draw bridge. We discussed the method and materials used which was fascinating. 

Then we looked at this lovely collage of materials to make on of the three little pigs.

Estelle demonstrated her sink or float experiment with the help of others in the class to make predictions. 

Then we built up a tower of books using tubes of paper. We were astounded by how strong they were.

Of course we built it until it fell down, but from the facial expressions you can tell they enjoyed it.

Today was three little pigs day, we huffed and we puff and we blew so many houses down. The common result was that Lego brick houses are super sturdy and we would all like to live in one.

Thank you for playing body part snap, it came in handy for labelling the parts of Archie's body.

Apologies if you have had a harder time getting the children to bed this week as we have started reading the story 'Don't let the pigeon stay up late!' by Mo Willems. Which covers a fantastic variety of excuses to stay up later. But you can always use the same answer they gave the pigeon... NO! 

Then we moved on to slipping into our bossy boots for telling each other off. Things like 

Reuben STOP bungee jumping off the bed! 

Griff DON'T PICK YOUR NOSE because it's disgusting! 

NO you CAN'T have another sweet because your teeth will rot! 

SLOW DOWN Alfie, or you will crash! 

We performed these using our bossy voices making sure we shouted for the capital letters and using expression.

SCIENCE WEEK

I've just noticed I have some awesome pictures from science week on the iPad. Let's see what class 1 got up to.

Our science week topic was sound. So to start off the idea that sound is vibrations we observed how gloop reacts to being placed on a speaker. It wiggled and jumped about making the strangest shapes.

And quite a mess of the carpet...

To test how vibrations and sound travel through solids we make string telephones.

Anna explains in her instructions for make making string telephones as,

1. First poke a hole into the bottom of both plastic cups.

2. Next attach the 2 cups by threading string.

3. Then tie a knot.

4. Hold the string tight a say "hello".

Then we headed outside to test the string phones to play a game of Chinese whispers. 

 

We had a visit from Sandringham school to show us some air propelled race cars they had designed and carved from foam. This really gave the children a scientific buzz!

We also went on a Spring walk to find the signs that Spring was on its way.