What is a castle? Why were some castles built on hills?
Who built the first castles in Britain and why?
These are just some of the Understanding the World, History and Geography questions we will be finding out the answers to in our new project 'Through the Keyhole.'
Who was Paul Klee? What are the primary and secondary colours?
How can I create a tint picture in the style of 'Separation in the Evening'?
We will be exploring art work by Paul Klee including his 'Separation in the Evening', 'Castle in the Sun' and what he meant by 'A dot is a line that went for a walk.' We will use his inspiration to influence our own creative work.
What do we have to do before we start preparing food and cooking?
Where does our food come from? How do we try to keep ourselves healthy?
This term, we will be considering the different ways to keep ourselves healthy. We will also be developing our cooking skills by making Coronation Chicken Pies.
Our trip to Great Wood Farm, Boothby Pagnell
We had an amazing day at Great Wood Farm exploring the forest with our friends and grown ups. Base Camp had been enhanced with a castle theme and allowed the children to link their learning in the classroom to outside too. First, we enjoyed spending some uninterrupted time in Base Camp climbing trees, making bows and arrows with sticks, balancing and relaxing in the hammock and creating delicious meals in the Mud Kitchen. We had some 'interesting' concoctions of mud and fresh herbs followed by flavoursome cocktails! Many of us were determined to tackle the challenges of climbing trees especially when three friends all wanted to climb the tree and stand together in a rather small gap!
After lunch we helped to build a campfire and then listened carefully to the camp fire rules. In small groups we made a jam sandwich each before cooking them on the campfire - wow amazing jam-like doughnuts tossed in sugar were sensational! I wonder which adult went back for seconds??
Before returning to the coach, we each carefully poured a cup of cold water over the campfire and shared our favourite part of the day. Thank you Great Wood Farm for a truly memorable experience.
Food glorious food!
The children were keen to join in with the cooking activity to make a Tomato and Vegetable sauce which we would then taste with pasta.
Cooking activities are such an important part of learning.
Whilst the children are busy cooking,
they are also reading, measuring, developing their maths, following directions, working collaboratively, developing their listening skills and problem solving skills too.
In Water Vole class, our project is
We will focus on developing our Geography skills through learning about
'Our local area' and then moving on to a contrasting country such as 'Kenya.'
Happy Easter
We have been developing our observation skills and looking very carefully at a beautiful bunch of flowers. Then we painted a picture of those flowers for our Easter cards.
World Book Day 2019
On Thursday, the children in Water Vole class transformed into amazing book characters including Mary Poppins, Gangster Granny, fairies, a mermaid and Horrid Henry. Whilst Mrs McCormack came as Jazzberry the Red Crayon from The Day the Crayons Came Home and Mrs Long came as Granny and the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood.
We loved sharing our favourite books with our friends. Some of us snuggled up on the carpet area, some chose to sit at the table looking at their books whilst some sat on the carpet looking at the pictures and reading the words.
Which bear belongs to Ella?
In Science, the Y1 children have been developing their Maths skills by measuring the paw prints to find which belonged to the missing teddy bear. After measuring each paw print using a ruler, we identified the paw print that measured 10cm.
We developed our sense of smell with 5 different smells, trying to identify which was the peppermint. We smelt the contents of 5 different cups and almost identified perfume, vinegar, peppermint, vanilla extract and the last cup did not contain anything. Well done to those of you who said "But there's not a smell in that cup."
Our class text has been 'A Dot in the Snow'. We have thoroughly enjoyed reading the book together and sharing a book with our partner. We have learnt many new words including dived, nudged and dream. We giggled when we nudged noses with a friend to see just how close Miki and the Dot were together in the story.
We have been learning about the 4 letter families:
Long ladders One armed robots Curly caterpillar Zigzag monster
How many letters are in your name?
Which letter families do those letters belong to?
Thank you for contributing so generously to our Water Vole Bake Sale. We were very lucky with the weather and had many delicious treats for sale. Lots of pink, glitter, unicorns and rainbows plus yummy chocolate too.
We have been learning about the different types of houses including detached, semi detached, cottage, flat, bungalow and terraced. We painted houses ready for our Creative display.
This week, we have been discussing our local area, using Google Earth and Google Maps to gather information about the area.
In English, we have enjoyed listening to and joining in with the predictable phrases in the traditional story, Jack and the Beanstalk. We have been expanding our vocabulary discussing the words 'giant' and 'axe' as well as many more. In Friday's TRY assembly, we shared the word 'axe' with the other classes and discussed its meaning. Did you know there is also an axe in the traditional story 'Little Red Riding Hood.' But which characters uses the axe?
Next week in Maths, we will be using a new book but you will have to come back to see which book that might be.
Through this book, we will develop our understanding of larger numbers as well as learn the names of the months of the year.
Which month is your birthday in? How many months are in a year?
Which is your favourite month and why?
We will also continue to develop the skill of 'Show me 5.'
How many different ways are there to show me 5?
We have been caring for pets in our Vet's Surgery ensuring they are well looked after and we find out what is the matter with them quickly.
We have been artists finding out about L. S Lowry and appreciating his art work through close observation. Having discussed what we could see within the picture, the similarities and differences, we then created our own Lancashire Fair and Industrial Landscape.
What would our world be like if we took away all the colour?
How would we feel if planet Earth was all black and white?
We will be exploring art work by Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Piet Mondarin
using their inspiration to influence our own creative work.
This term, we will taste a wide variety of fruit and vegetables.
We will then design and make our own fruit salad.
Our Christmas Pudding Treats for our grown ups
We worked together to change the biscuits into very small pieces using a rolling pin.
We then added the melted butter and chocolate carefully stirring the mixture together.
We moulded the mixture into small sphere Christmas puddings and then drizzled icing over the top finished with a piece of cherry.
Our hospital role play has been a hive of activity with many children pretending to be Ben, Ray and Lily from our WW1 stories. They have demonstrated their caring and nurturing skills towards the patients and we are sure we have some medical professionals of the future.
We have been practising our blending and segmenting of real and nonsense words
using the Word Duplo.
In Maths we have been exploring 2D and 3D shapes. Some of us made shape pictures and named the shapes. We also talked about the number of sides and corners. Making playdough shape cookies was popular adding button accessories and counting how many biscuits we had made. The nurses and doctors in our role lay hospital even made 2D shapes with bandages. I wonder how we can change the 3 sides triangle to a 4 sided shape?
We did it by adding one more foot to change the shape of the bandages from a 3 sided shape to a 4 sided shape. Well done nurses!
We developed many skills when making fruit salad. First we described each fruit's appearance and named the fruits too. We were keen to try each fruit in turn adding further adjectives to our discussion. We then developed our knife skills carefully preparing the fruits - washing, cutting in 1/4s and 1/2s and deseeding the melon. Then we made individual fruit salad pots and thoroughly enjoyed our snack later in the afternoon.
Words of the week
In Water Vole class, we enjoy learning new vocabulary and also then try to incorporate those new words in our everyday language both at home and at school.
To help us learn new vocabulary, we send our WOW words of the week home to
share with our grown ups.
'Where the poppies now grow.'
Our words of the week are:
soldier remember
To help our grown ups, we give examples of those two words linked to our learning.
Ben and Ray were both soldiers in the First World War.
We remember the soldiers who dies in the wars and their families too.
I remember when I visited church and we saw the poppies in church.
We also include questions such as :
What is a poppy? What is a soldier?
What happened to Ben and Ray in the story?
Can they use the word remember correctly in a sentence?
Thank you to the grown ups who have written the conversations they have had with their child(ren). Every child who returns their WOW homework to school signed by their grown up is given a TRY ticket.
Bikeability Balance
Our Reception children were very excited to discover they were taking part in Bikeability Balance activities throughout the week.
Day 1
Today they have been learning how to put on their helmet. They have also learnt the parts of a balance bike including the seat, wheels and handlebars. Throughout the morning, they learnt how to get on and off their bike safely. "Push - push - weeeeeee" helped the children learn the glide movement whilst on their bike.
Day 2
The children practised their new skills and learnt how to steer around people and share the outdoor space. A game called 'pirates' incorporated all of the skills learnt so far and the children continued to have lots of fun too.
Day 3
Tomorrow, the children will learn to weave in and out, whilst continuing to practise steering and sharing the space with the other children in their group. A game called 'Castes' will be enjoyed by all.
Day 4
On Thursday, the children will use their bikes to navigate around a circuit. They will also receive a certificate to celebrate their achievements.
Where the poppies now grow? and Peace Lily.
We are really enjoying the two books about best friends Ben, Ray and Lily. We have learnt many new words including trenches, battlefield, peace, brook and departed. The Reception children have drawn some fantastic pictures of Ben, Ray and Lily playing together before Ben and Ray join the army. Today the Year 1 children have written letters to Ben and Ray from their friend Lily.
We listened to some thought provoking music and watched some photos of soldiers leaving their families to go to war. Later on we were delighted to see photos of the soldiers reunited with their families.
Here are some of our poppy creations as part of our Home Learning projects.
How many jelly beans?
How many jelly beans are enough? How many are too many? Aiden and Emma can't decide. Is 10 enough? How about 1,000? That's a lot of jelly beans. But eaten over a whole year, it's only two or three a day.
We have been very busy exploring small numbers, big numbers and massive numbers! We started counting 10 bright, colourful jelly beans and then each page revealed more sweet jelly beans. The final page was gripping as we revealed
ONE MILLION JELLY BEANS!
Look what we received in the post this week!
In May, we made very special congratulations Wedding cards and sent our good luck messages to Prince Harry and Meghan. Our cards were bright and colourful with our neatest handwriting inside.
Earlier on this week, we received some very exciting post from Kensington Palace. A thank you letter from The Duke and Duchess of Sussex as well as individual replies for each child.
The children will be given their special envelopes on Monday to take home.
Well done to everyone in Water Vole class for a great first week back to school. We have certainly been busy making new friends and trying our best with our learning.
Our new Science lab has been very popular this week, the children have enjoyed exploring the coloured rice, carefully adding it into the cylinders and funnels whilst wearing goggles and of course lab coats. Our new reading wigwam has been enjoyed too, whilst some children have been making delicious playdough cupcakes for their friends and grown ups. Our Y1 children have risen to their new challenges and have been very busy working independently.
This week in Literacy we have been reading the story 'Almost Anything', an enchanting story about George the rabbit who doesn't think he can do anything. All of his friends can read and paint pictures. They can also swing, skate and play chess. One day, George is given a magic hat which makes him believe in himself. Suddenly George the rabbit can skip, paint and read just like his friends.
Well done to one of our Y1 boys who linked this story to our school rules especially the idea of always TRYing our best. He shared his ideas of us all needing to try our best with our learning. We talked about the meaning of the word 'persevere'.
Our new topic is
Our trip to Great Wood Farm
We had an amazing day at Great Wood Farm which started hunting for fairy and goblin breathe. After walking through the long, wavy grass we then began exploring base camp. We loved climbing trees, working together to carry massive logs and branches as well as showing our domesticated skills in the mud kitchen. We made our own camp fire, cooked popcorn and enjoyed tasting it too.
Maisie was our chief den builder and together with Lois they decided to test the dens to see if they were waterproof. After lots of giggles and containers of water, we concluded that the den with the tarpaulin was the most waterproof.
Our trip was a truly memorable experience where we all demonstrated our ability to TRY. We gave things a go, worked together, persevered and most importantly had lots of fun.
Good luck Meghan Markle and Prince Harry on your special day, Saturday 19th May. We celebrated the Royal Wedding by having our own red, white and blue afternoon tea party. Together we made a selection of sandwiches and mini scones with strawberry jam.
We also sent Congratulations cards to Meghan and Prince Harry.
We loved making our delicious fruit pots and as you can see we carefully cut the soft fruits into 1/4s and 1/2s. Before we added the fruits into our pots, we tried a selection including peach, pineapple, strawberries, melon, kiwi, watermelon and blueberries.
Our new book was called 'Where the forest meets the sea' which was a thought provoking book about how we should care for the environment . It encouraged us to think about how important the world is and our role caring for the animals, plants and each other. The last few images looked to the future - but will the future be a happy and healthy one?
We made special Happy 92nd birthday cards for Her Majesty the Queen.
Well done Water Vole and Dormice children, you were sensational in your class assembly on Friday. A lovely journey through your school year so far. You made us proud of each and every one of you. Well done for all speaking so clearly using the microphone.
This term, we will be exploring a variety of traditional tales and create visual maps of journeys.
These visual maps will then help us to retell those stories with increasing detail.
We will compare contrasting settings and develop our geographical language such as near, far, next to, beside, to describe the positions of objects and places in relation to others.
Our new topic is
We thoroughly enjoyed Wheeler the Guide dog and Ian visiting our school to help us better understand how Guide Dogs play a crucial role in supporting partially sighted people in the community. Ian explained to us how he safely makes a cup of coffee and how he travels safely in and around Grantham.
We used our observation skills to make predictions about this person. Many of us researched this famous person and shared our home learning with our class the following day.
We discovered that:
* James Cook was born in Yorkshire in 1728.
* His father and mother were called James and Grace Cook.
* When James was 16 he moved to the fishing village of Staithes.
* James joined the Royal Navy and studied navigation and astronomy.
One day he hoped he would command his own ship.
* James was very talented at mapmaking and his first voyage in command of his own ship, called the Endeavour took place in 1768. They came across a new country and they called it New South Wales, Australia.
This term we will play and work with our friends, we will enjoy learning together and try our best. Most importantly we will try to care for each member of our new Water Vole class.
We will remember to tell the truth, show respect and be ready
whilst also remembering to do these things safely.
Our new topic 'Amazing, famous people' will provide us with many opportunities to learn about people who help us at home, at school and in our community. We will be inviting many people to share their expertise with us and we will talk about our aspirations for the future.
What would you like to be when you are older?
We will also find out about some amazing, famous people from now and then.
Watch this space to find out more as our new topic unfolds throughout the term.
Our Winter Walk around the village
Winter coats on and zipped up, warm fluffy gloves and scarf on and finally wellie boots just in case. We were all very excited to be going on a winter walk around the village raising money for
Cancer Research UK.
We know that walking is healthy and we should have half an hour of moderate to vigorous exercise a day. We enjoy running around the playground at school but this morning we were going for a winter walk around Billingborough.
During our walk, we chatted with our friends about the local area including the fire station, Springwells and St Andrew's Church. We also noticed the deciduous and evergreen trees around and about too. We enjoyed out winter walk so much that when we returned to school,
we asked if we could go on an Easter walk too.
In maths, we have been practising our skills in addition and subtraction.
We have been using dominoes to generate addition number sentences and enjoyed posting the envelopes in the post boxes. We have loved using Mathletics this week too.
We have been counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and linking this with finding 5 lots of 10, 8 lots of 2 and 6 lots of 5. Playing multiplication games helped us become quicker with finding the answers.
“I’ve lost my mum!”
“Hush, little monkey, don’t you cry,
I’ll help you find her,” said Butterfly.
But somehow Butterfly keeps getting it wrong.
Will Monkey ever find his mum?
We listened to the blurb of our new class book, but what was the title of the book? Where is the setting of the book? Apart from the monkey and butterfly, what other characters are in the book? We worked in small groups to discuss and predict the book, its characters and the setting. We then shared our drawings and thoughts with the class.
We all decided that the book was based in a jungle and predicted there might be elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, snakes, birds and many other animals. We established that the monkey had lost his Mummy and that perhaps the butterfly would help to reunite them.
But what is the title of our new book?
We were keen to discover the book title and to meet the jungle animals.
We enjoyed painting jungle animals ready for our Monkey Puzzle display. We carefully painted elephants, snakes, monkeys and many more animals. Some of us went outside on the school field to collect some evergreen leaves to include on our jungle display.
Next week, we are going to focus on the characters in the story and using a variety of adjectives to describe those characters. How could you describe how the snake moves? What sound does a frog make? Does a parrot have fur, feathers or scales?
Our new topic is
What’s inside the box?
This term we will play and work with our new friends, we will enjoy learning together and try our best. Most importantly we will try to care for each member of our new Water Vole class.
Our Class Teacher is Mrs McCormack and Mrs Stamp also works within our class too. Together the grown ups will support us and help to make our learning fun.
Our home learning projects
There were many home learning opportunities to choose from including ideas linked to
:
English Science and topic Maths The Arts and Healthy Choices
Well done to everyone who completed their home learning projects and took part in our Show and Tell sessions throughout the last week of term.
Thank you to grown ups who have supported the children with their projects. We look forward to our next Show and Tell in February.
During our Show and Tell, the children talked confidently about their Home Learning projects. They then asked 3 children to either share a compliment or to ask a question to discover more about the painting, drawing, photographs, story, model or maths.
Something very exciting is happening this week.
For the last month, we have been very busy practising our Christmas production
‘Wriggly Nativity'.
Our beautiful singing has been heard coming from the classroom and the school hall, and we have been busy learning our lines too.
Watch this space for photos of the dress rehearsal and our two performances on
Thursday 14th December.
Well done, the Wriggly Nativity performances were sensational and you have all made so many growns up happy and extremely proud. Your costumes were fantastic, the songs were clearly enjoyed by all and the speaking parts were said confidently and clearly.
Maths is everywhere!
We have been exploring fractions by making ham, cheese and tuna sandwiches and cutting them in 1/2 and 1/4. We have been finding 1 more and 1 less than numbers up to 100.
We have explored finding 1/2s and 1/4s of groups of objects as well as working in teams to order numbers as quickly and accurately as we can. We have developed out confidence writing numbers to 20 and larger numbers to 100. Writing numbers outside using chalk and chunky paintbrushes with water have been very popular with these keen mathematicians!
We have been practising adding using objects, our fingers, a number line and a 100 square. Some of us have been busy with our maths home learning projects by measuring the length of objects and setting up role play shops. We explored repeated addition and finding 'lots of' by working out simple problems. How many hands does 1 child have? How many elbows do 2 children have? How many knees do 3 children have?
Our home learning projects
There were many home learning opportunities to choose from including ideas linked to
:
English Science and topic Maths The Arts and Healthy Choices
Well done to everyone who completed their home learning projects and took part in our Show and Tell sessions throughout the last week of term. Thank you to grown ups who have supported the children with their projects. We look forward to our next Show and Tell in December.
Some children decided to use their toys to set up a role play shop acting out different scenarios including a satisfied customer and a customer with a complaint. There were many shopping lists written, labels made and totals found using real coins too.
We had two beautifully designed and created model gardens using recyclable materials.
These gardens included various types of trees, flowers, fruits and vegetables as well as a garden swing, pond various minibeasts and small animals.
Another popular activity was to design and make a sock puppet. We saw lots of fantastic creations and the puppets were brought to life in our show and tell sessions.
We had a sock puppet that made a squeaking sound as well as many puppets who were obviously well loved friends.
Our first Billingborough Bake Sale
The day was finally here!
Many excitied Water Vole children arrived at school clutching onto their plates and tins of cakes, muffins, biscuits and cookies in preparation for our first Billingborough Bake Sale.
The Bake Sale was a great success and a massive thank you to our families for making, decorating, donating so many treats for our Bake Sale.
Another big thank you to all the parents, friends and children who supported the Bake Sale after school.
No Pens Day Wednesday
No Pens Wednesday has encouraged us to put down our pencils, pens and felt tip pens and enjoy a variety of speaking and listening activities throughout the day.
We will work in small groups of three to answer specific questions such as
How many animals can you name?
How many fruits can you name?
These questions will encourage discussion and develop the ability to
listen to each others' ideas and views.
We will play a game in the hall to make preferences and share our thoughts and
opinions about favourite toys, colours, food and activities.
Toys from the past
A massive thank you to Water Vole parents and grandparents for sharing your special toys with us. We have thoroughly enjoyed looking at the toys and comparing the toys to modern, current toys that we are used to playing with. Thank you also for the written memories that have been shared with us. We have discussed the materials used and were fascinated by Esmeralda the teddy.
Dodgeball Tournament
Congratulations to the Y1 children who took part in the Dodgeball Tournament on Friday afternoon. They played enthusiastically and confidently whilst looking super smart in our new Sports Team kit.
Well done to both teams from Water Vole and
Roe Deer classes you made us very proud.
Our favourite toys
This week we have been talking about our favourite toys. We brought photos to school and then carefully painted pictures of the toys. We experimented with colour mixing and shared the paints and water pots with our friends.
We have also developed our scissors skills by carefully cutting the pictures of fruit to create a fruit basket.
This week we have enjoyed the book Naughty Bus. We passed the small purple present around the class making predictions about what might be inside the box, possibly socks, racing cars or buses. We carefully opened the parcel and discovered a small red double decker bus.
Later on in the week, the Y1 children took part in some role play activities imagining that they were queuing for the bus and had been queuing for many minutes possibly hours. Some children suggested that the characters may be feeling bored or may need the toilet as they had been waiting for such as long time. Some of the characters had achy and tired legs from standing at the bus stop for so many hours. Our role play is also a red double decker bus, so far we have travelled to Sleaford, London and Skegness.
We also painted self portraits which will be included on our Naughty Bus display to show 24 children waiting patiently for the Naughty Bus. The question is will the bus turn up and when?
The Summer Reading Challenge 2017
How many of the reading bingo challenges can you complete during the summer holiday?
Remember to read books independently, share books with a grown up, brother or sister, a grandparent or friend.
Remember to bring your completed Reading Bingo cards to school in September to receive your house points and certificates.
We will be exploring toys from now and then, whilst finding out about the toys our parents and grandparents enjoyed playing with. We will invite our favourite teddy bears to a teddy bears' picnic.
Which letters can you see in the title of the book?
Predict what the book might be about.
Why do you think the story is based in a shop?
How many letters do you think may be in the title?
I think....... will happen because.......
Who might the author be and the illustrator?
Can you become fabulous Book Detectives making predictions about the titles, settings and the characters of the books, or will the hidden book covers reveal non fiction books about toys from the olden days?
Remember to check the Detectives display as windows are secretly opened every day.
Unfortunately not the ones with chocolate chips.
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