This week Year 1 had their Easter evening, where we came back to school with our adults to join in with some wonderful Easter activities. We had so much fun spending time with our adults and doing things like colouring, painting, Easter basket making and even making crispy cakes… which was one of our favourites!!
In PSHE, class 4 have been talking about road safety. We talked about why it is important to be safe near roads and how we can do this. We learnt that when we come to a road, to cross safely we need to;
✋ Stop
Look
Listen
Think
And even had a go at doing this with a road in our classroom!!
This week we have been learning all about spring and growth! We observed the weather outside and looked at photos of us from winter. What has changed? We then planted sunflower seeds and wrote some fantastic instructions on planting a seed.
“It wouldn’t grow in spring because it’s icy and not loads of sunshine.” Leo
“We have to remember to water it because it won’t survive or grow all beautiful” Holly
“When it was winter I wore a hat to keep my head warm but I don’t now because it’s hot.” George
This week, we continued our work on Wriggly Squiggly! We focused on punctuation and practised our use of capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. We also learnt some new vocabulary such as ‘abseiled’! We added the ‘ed’ suffix to verbs from the book in preparation for our retell of the story. Take a look at our brilliant retells of Wriggly Squiggly below!
In Science, we have been looking at the five senses. We talked about what they were, how we use them and which parts of the body are needed for each one. We used our senses to explore the season of Spring, describing what we could see, hear, taste, smell and feel. We then carried out an experiment, using our senses to describe 6 different mystery items, including:
Chocolate
☕️ Coffee beans
Washing up liquid
Yoghurt
Water
Lemon juice
We described their smell, what they looked like and how they felt before guessing what we thought it might be. Of course we identified the chocolate straight away! But some others like the coffee had us stumped!
The children visited Durham Cathedral this week. They enjoyed walking around looking at all of different features of the Cathedral including the font, lectern, pulpit, stained glass windows and the high altar. They listened intently to Joseph and Kim, our tour guides, who told us all about the history of St Cuthbert and St Bede who are both buried at the Cathedral.
The children then took part in a workshop called ‘Expression of Beliefs’ where they got to hold and discuss a range of special artefacts from the Cathedral including candles, Bibles, communion bread, a chalice and a cross. The children said that Durham Cathedral was a very beautiful and interesting place.
Back at school the children wrote some fantastic recounts of the trip, including lots of lovely facts about the Cathedral.
NEWCASTLE UNITED – CARABAO CUP WINNERS!
We thought it was really important to celebrate within class, a really special time in history that occurred on Sunday… Newcastle United winning a major trophy for the first time in 70 years!
We watched highlights from the football match, spoke about our favourite players, any other teams we supported and discussed what their win signifies… That through resilience and perseverance, you can achieve anything! Newcastle United didn’t give up – it may have took them 70 years but their fans continued to believe in them despite their losses and they finally did it! ⚽️
Class 5 completed facts, coloured in Newcastle United badges, some children had favourite players and got their photos took alongside them and we also designed our own football kits! ☺️
This afternoon, we’ve had Natalie from the Healthy Minds Team in to teach Year 1 how to change their negative red thoughts, into positive green ones! ☺️
We found out about a boy called Adam today who had recently moved to a new school. He had lots of unhelpful thoughts such as ‘Why did things have to change?’ and ‘I really miss my old friends and teacher’. We helped him feel better by changing his thoughts, such as ‘My teacher will look after me!’ and ‘I’ll make new friends and I can still see my old ones on play dates!”.
We also learnt a new breathing technique – hot chocolate breathing!
This year our theme for World Book Day was ‘careers’. We spent lots of time this week looking at different jobs we could do – some we didn’t even know existed! We looked at what skills we need for different jobs and talked about the importance of choosing a job which involves something we are interested in. On Thursday, we came to school dressed as what we would like to be when we grow up. We had some wonderful costumes including;
Paleontologist
✂️ Hairdresser
Police officer
Fireman
Cheerleader
Science teacher
and so much more!
This week Class 4 celebrated pancake day. We read the story ‘The Runaway Pancake’ – which reminded us of another story we know very well! We talked about why we celebrate pancake day and looked at how people celebrate it around the world. After all that talk of pancakes, our tummies were rumbling so it was only right that we got to taste some ourselves! We designed our “perfect pancake” before creating our own using different toppings. They were absolutely delicious!
