Last week of the year! Hasn't it been a great year?

Firstly Mrs Baker and I would like so say a massive thank you for all your support this year to help the children reach their potentials. It would have been a real struggle without all those arguments you had about spellings and sneaking a cheeky reading session on the car journey to school. The impact it had has made a huge difference and Miss Carr should consider herself lucky to have you all next year.

Also thank you for all your kind words in person and in cards, and for the generous presents. I'm thinking about getting some fine motor toys and baskets for the reading area. So the money is going back into the children I teach.

Last week we were lucky to have a performer visit us. We had a Disney sing along. who taught us how to sign to Love is an open door. Then we sang it as a duet. and swapped over.


On Wednesday we all walked in a bit groggy (Miss Morris included as she had a quivering scared dog sharing the bed with her). So to ensure that we had a good night sleep that night we composed a rain song and dance to scare away the thunderstorms.  

The children will explain how we built up the rain sounds and had crashes of thunder and lightening. Otherwise it looks like complete madness.

As teacher, it is a part of my lifestyle and filmed the Tuesday night's thunderstorm so I could show the class. Here is the video I showed the children of the night before's thunderstorm.

Yesterday we had a bit of a party to celebrate the end of the year. 
We played a game of grab the bean bag. Chinese whispers to which Kenny replied "but I don't know any Chinese." Once reassured the game kicked off with the word Pikachu, which turned into ssss ssss sssss around about Lacey and James.
Then we played pass the parcel, with dares on each layer. Lacey performed a beautiful forward roll. Phoenix did a great impression of a cat, and Donny-Lee howled like a husky. We unwrapped all the way to the center when it landed on James.

  

DAB!!!

 Class dab!

 Winner! 

 Finally we tucked into some biscuits and juice and had a boogie on the carpet/dance floor.  

It's been a wonderful year! I've had a great time getting to know all of the children and finding out what interests them. They've all grown, academically but also personality wise, It's been a pleasure to have them and I will sure enjoy my break duty as I'll get to see them all again. 

Have a fun Summer!

So it has been a while since the last entry. Why not see what we have been up to?

English

To give us a better idea of what castles, turrets and dungeons look like, we went for a virtual walk around a castle using Epic Citadel.

"The tents have bright coloured stripes."

 "The moat must be very stinky and pongy, Do you know what they put in there?" 

" My footsteps echo in this big hall."

"I made it to this creepy statue that looks like he's begging for food."

"The walls tower above you and make you feel tiny."

They also acted out their versions of Rumpelstiltskin, where I saw some good use of props and stepping into character.

 

"This is some straw that ol' Rumpy can turn into gold."

"Your daughter does sound very clever, bring her to my castle. Then she can marry my son!"

"Here have my shiny necklace."

"TA DA, I'm here!"

"Have my shiny ring."

 

"Now this time, there are TWO bales of straw!"

I'm the king

"I'm the princess now I married the Prince."

 DT
With Mrs Pearcy we've been learning how to sew. We started with straight lines, sewing in and out of the polystyrene plate.  

We now know how to do a running stitch, half stitch and some people even moved onto cross stitches. All so that we could make some bookmarks.  

  

😏 Ella has got this sewing thing sussed.

Sewing ☑ 

Now onto finger knitting.

Maths

We then used our new found skill of sewing to put the hands on a clock to show different times. O'clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to.

We also know time is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. Luckily it only took seconds to complete these activities, so their partners were on hand to time how long it took.

Such as:

How long does it take you to do 20 star jumps? 

How long does it take you to thread 10 beads onto a string?

How long does it take you to put your shoes back on?

How quickly can you write your name? 

How long does it take you to skip 4 tiddly winks into the circle? 

How long does it take you to say the alphabet?

A nice active lesson for an own clothes day.

In maths this week we are making our own maths board games. So we started off by completing some market research to gain some ideas for our own.

We found they all used a dice. You needed to be good at counting and adding. But we're very smart and can do better than just counting and adding, we're going to include cards that have more complex number and maths problems on them such as:

• telling the time
• fractions
• number sequences (counting in 2s, 5s, 10s, 100s)
• multiplying and dividing
• comparing numbers
• colour patterns

We made them today, will test and improve them tomorrow. Finalise the design and laminate Then put them to the test with the Year 2s.

Science

Miss Morris and Freddie had a ditsy moment. We got ready to go out into the blazing summer heat, got all the gear on; coat, scarf, wellies, jumper and waterproof dungerees. But we were laughed at. Apparently that is not the way to dress for summer. Luckily Year One were on hand to help us out.

We learnt about all the things we need to do to stay safe in the sun. Things such as wearing sun cream, from the aroma that travels in with the children each morning we can tick that off. We must drink lots of water, otherwise we will become "dehydrated", "because we sweat when it's too hot". We need to remember to bring our summer hats in "to keep the sun off our faces." Not only do sunglasses make you look cool, "they protect your eyes from the sun rays." But the best thing to do is to try to stay in the shade.

Sports day
First we did a few sessions getting ready for sports day, honing in our skills of skipping (where the unique style was developed), throwing, jumping and balancing.

Then the big day arrived.

It was a lovely day to celebrate the end of the year. I was so proud of how well the children worked as a team; helping and cheering each other on, tried their hardest; with smiles on their faces, and have a nice fun day.

Oh and there was the parents races. I was happy to see a good attendance of Year One parents.

Gardening
We got to dig up our potatoes and they turned out really well. 

After discussing all of the way potatoes can be used in meals we came to this conclusion.
Potatoes are DE-LIC-IOUS!  
Thank Mr and Mrs Boxer (and all other parents who have been looking after the potatoes).