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.

Watch out David Attenborough!!! Class 1 are after your job

English

Recently we've been researching about nocturnal animals. With the intention to become nature documentary presenters to share all the non-fictional information we know. 

Not only did class 1 present the nature show, they filmed it and found suitable videos for the backing. David's whole crew had better watch out!!!

Maths

We've had tons of fun in maths, measuring the mass/weight of objects in a variety ways.

Using a homemade scale to compare weights

 

 

 

"My shark weighs more than the seal"

 

 

 

Ben told me his potato was the heaviest!

 

 

 

 

If I put a potato in the red bucket, what will happen?

 

Using non-standard units of measurement such as marbles to measure how heavy fruit and veg is.

 
 

 



Then we moved onto standard gram weights.


 


"Oh now it's too heavy, I'm going to switch this 20g for a 10g instead. So the apple weights 30g"

 Next stop length.

 

PE

In PE we were interpreting the music into movement. For songs such as Flight of the Bumblebee in contrast to The Nutcracker. The Archie found the first piece as 'fast and busy'. Some did 'very quick feet' like Matei, whereas Ella 'buzzed about like a bee'. This was very different to the graceful movements of Oliver and Chloe to The Nutcracker. Then Reuben noticed 'it changed to marching, so I did a soldier move'.

It was very interesting what imagery the music conjured in their minds. Such as the fire alarm, a stampede or princesses and princes, soldiers marching on the moon, a magical kiss changing a frog back into a man.

Art Gallery

Finally the paintings are back and don't they look MARVELLOUS!!!

Sharing Assembly

As you know we had our sharing assembly. It went so well and I'm extremely pleased with everyone! I wanted to say thank you for putting in the hard work at home to perfect their lines.