Gymnastic fantastic!

Year 1 had a fantastic time this afternoon completing their gymnastics circuit with Danny Lawrence.  We did spotty dogs, mountain climbers, press-ups and star jumps, see if you can spot the different exercises in the pictures below.

The children really enjoyed the exercises, and even tried to carry on back in the classroom - I'm very jealous of their energy levels!!  Afterwards, we enjoyed an assembly where Danny showed us some of the gymnastics skills he has learned over the years.  Don't forget to return any sponsorship money to school by the deadline on the form.

One of your 5-a-day...

This week we have completed a mini art project in preparation for the Harvest Flower Festival at St Leonard's.  Our artwork this year had to be based on a song, year 1 chose the vegetable song we've been learning with Ms Kelly in music.  Our artwork was completed over two sessions: first we completed careful observational drawings of the vegetables in the song, using pencils.  Next, we used the vegetables as tools and explored ways of painting, printing, stamping and rolling them to decorate our borders.  The pictures show us hard at work exploring the different shapes and patterns we could make, but you'll have to have a look at St Leonard's to see the finished pieces!

Tree-rrific!

The children have been working hard in science learning about the difference between evergreen and deciduous trees.  We have carried out a survey of some of the trees in our school grounds, and learnt how to record our findings in a tally chart.  Today, we started to think about the different parts of a tree, and what job each part does.  We explored the year one garden and identified 5 out of 6 things we were looking for...the only thing we couldn't find was any blossom.  Perhaps you could ask the children why we couldn't find it - they gave me a great explanation!

Identifying roots.

Finding leaves.

Locating the trunk.

Spotting branches.

Finding fruit.

Anna's example of her tree drawing with labels (check out the cursive letters we know too!)

Message from Mrs Ledger

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to clarify a few organisational and classroom matters:

PE: PE takes place on Tuesday's and Fridays.  One of these sessions will be outdoors unless it is raining heavily, and we will still go outdoors in cold or muddy weather.  A number of the children have plimsolls as their outdoor PE shoes; although great for summer games, plimsolls do not really provide enough grip or support for winter games on the grass.  We got caught in the rain today so all PE kíts went home as they were wet! If they could come back next week with trainers instead of plimsolls I would really appreciate it.  Also, please provide FULL PE kit.  A number of the children this week did not have a separate t-shirt or warm jumper to change into and we're having to do PE in uniform.

Homework: homework books need to be returned on a Thursday every week irrespective of whether the children (or you) have recorded any work in them.  Feedback from parents was that you would like to see how your child gets on in their spelling test - spellings are completed in the back of the homework book on a Thursday afternoon, so that you can see their scores when books come home on a Monday.  Also, it allows me enough time over the weekend to organise homework ready to be given out on Mondays - sending homework and spellings home on bits of paper usually means they get lost on the way!

Apologies for the one-size-fits-all moan but it is difficult for me to catch parents on the playground as the children line up to leave and go to clubs.  If you have any questions about PE kíts or homework please let me know.

On a brighter note reading books have all been coming in daily from most children and the whole class are continuing to work their socks off - they seem to have grown into very able year 1's remarkably quickly! Also, a few parents have asked about the homework project.  The children are welcome to present this as they wish - notebooks, small folders/A4 wallets etc are all absolutely fine!

Thank you for your continued support from home,

Mrs Ledger

Settling in...

Welcome to the year 1 blog!  Mrs Ledger and the children will use the blog to let you know about some of the things we are doing in class.

The children have settled into year 1 brilliantly.  It's quite a jump up from Early Years but they are coping fantastically with all their new books and lessons.  Some of the children have naturally had a few worries about the new classroom, getting to grips with the new timetable and the transition from less 'play' to more work. In PSCHE we read Anthony Browne's Silly Bilły - a lovely story about a little boy who makes a worry doll to help him share his worries.  The children all made beautiful worry dolls, just in case they had a worry they wanted to share.

The children can leave their worry dolls in school, or they are welcome to take them home.  In the story Billy puts his under his pillow and the doll takes all his worries away while he sleeps!

Mrs Ledger is also pleased to announce our new teaching assistant Miss Lia joined us today.  Miss Lia will be working with year 1 every morning.