Class 1

Miss Firth, Mrs Leiper and the children of Class 1 welcome you to our class page.

We are proud to show you our learning journey which showcases the ways in which we learn, through carefully planned play opportunities based on a range of themes and also the ongoing interests of the children. Come and take a look!

This week we are learning all about African life. We made African Jewelry, learnt about a variety of musical instruments, painted beautiful sunset safari pictures and learnt about a variety of animals. 

We have been thinking about what it might be like to live in Australia this week and how it compares to our study of the Arctic and Antarctica from Spring Term 1! We learnt about some of the many places to visit in Australia, the climate, animals and aboriginal art. 

Our caterpillars have completed their final stage of their lifecycle and have now emerged as beautiful butterflies. We went outdoors to release them! 

Our text this week was the well known story of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. The children retold the story in their own words and we created a large story map to help us. Our caterpillars have arrived and we will enjoy observing and noticing changes over the coming weeks. 

We have been lucky this week with the beautiful weather! Perfect for learning about minibeasts and hunting high and low around our school grounds for them. We studied the artist Henri Matisse and created snail collages based on his work and the text 'Snail Trail'.

We have enjoyed planting this week and learning about the parts of a plant. We created collages based on Vincent Van Gogh Sunflowers.

To finish our learning on 'Spring time on the Farm' we went on a trip to Matlock Farm Park. We had a wonderful day learning more about the different animals there. A fantastic day had by all! 

We have had a lovely week learning all about the meaning of Easter. We read and retold the Easter story from the Bible and looked at many symbols that represent Easter such as; the crucifix, chocolate eggs, rabbits, chicks and hot cross buns. 

We have been thinking about how we can keep ourselves healthy. The children suggested many ways such as eating a balanced diet, washing hands, brushing teeth twice a day, having a bath, exercising often and  having plenty of sleep. 

We have seen many signs of Spring on our Spring walk! As part of our topic Spring time on the Farm we have been reading and reciting Traditional Tales, The Enormous Turnip, The Three Billy Goats Gruff and The Three Little Pigs. 

We enjoyed finding out about farms and where our food comes from. We learnt all about animals and their babies and visited a local farm where we saw and bottle fed lots of baby lambs. 

We love making our own stories up in our small world area! Look at our creations. 

In Class 1 this week we read the story of 'Mr Wolf's Pancakes' then we read and used a simple recipe to make our own pancakes! They were delicious! 

Love is in the air! From secret phonics, love potions and heart crafts to chocolate box playdough, class 1 have had a great Valentines week. 

As part of our Journey's topic we have been learning about transport. We took the opportunity to see what types of transport we could see in our local area. 

The children in Class 1 have enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year and the Chinese culture. They have compared similarities and differences to their own New Year celebration. We began by using Google Earth and atlases to locate China and coloured the Chinese flag. We then went on to make lanterns and paint blossom followed by tasting Chinese food and learning about the dragon dance. What fun we all had! 

This week we have been taking part in the Big Garden Bird Watch. We started by making bird feeders to attract the birds and we also made binoculars. Then we observed and recording our findings using a tally chart. We enjoyed a variety of bird crafts including observational drawings! We also made some information posters about our three favourite British birds. 

After a very snowy start to the New Year we started off thinking about how the seasons and weather had changed. We talked about the clothing we needed to wear to keep warm and then explored the snow and ice outside talking about how it felt to touch! We then started to think about the animals in our local environment and we talked about those that would still be hibernating and what might be happening to those that don't. This led us to think about the birds and migration! We made bird feeders to help the birds which stay in the UK. We made some beautiful Winter art work using blue water colour paint where the children mixed their colours using white to lighten the tone. 

We then began to learn about arctic environments and the animals that live there. We considered how they might survive in such cold places! Our learning will continue in the coming weeks.

The children wrote letters to Santa this week and posted them in the local post box! 

The children had a lovely week finding out about Space. We investigated why it might be dark in space and the children decided it was because Space is so big! The children enjoyed dressing up as astronauts, space subitising and painting planets. 

This week we read the story of 'Owl babies' and re-told the story using Pie Corbett's 'Talk for Writing'. We learnt that owls are 'nocturnal' and we researched other creatures that also like the dark. We painted pictures of them and made silhouette puppets for our light box along with using clay to make hedgehogs! 

Finally we had a special visitor from Becky at 'Animal Encounters' who kindly showed us Hattie the hedgehog and some other nocturnal friends of hers.

We have been learning about the famous artist Jackson Pollock and we thought his paintings looked like fireworks! We decided to make our own. 

This week the children learnt that fireworks are used in many festivals and celebrations around the world such as Diwali. We read the text 'Depal's Diwali' and talked about how the Hindu and Sikh faith along with others prepare for their festival and why they celebrate. We observed artefacts, made Diya lamp suncatchers and clay models. In our maths, creative and loose parts areas the children enjoyed making their own beautiful  Rangoli patterns. Later we made special Indian Diwali sweets called Coconut Ladoo. We then studied India in more detail and located it on a map. We found many similarities and differences between our cultures such as the weather and the clothes that we wear. Our role play area was transformed into an Indian Market which we had great fun playing in. 

We started our new topic 'Light and Dark' with a BANG! We have been finding out about Bonfire Night and the historical story of Guy Fawkes. The children enjoyed making firework paintings, and counting marsh mallows into hot chocolate cups and even writing cvc words in hot chocolate powder. There was lots of discussion around our curiosity cube table as the children observed sparklers, toffee apples and photographs. The children made a 'guy' for the fire at forest school and lit sparklers remembering our bonfire night safety rules discussed in class. Some of the children created fantastic models of The Houses of Parliament  in our indoor and outdoor building areas and used some loose parts in their block play. 

The children love mark making and practicing the formation of known sounds from phonics. They choose to do this at the writing table, outside and even lying on their tummies on the classroom floor. We often have crafts that link to our new sounds too to help to embed the learning. 

The children were excited to see the arrival of our new curiosity cube today! Inside were some items linked to Autumn which the children we encouraged to discuss with one another incorporating any new vocabulary learnt in our Autumn topic. They then drew pictures of what they could see and used some initial sounds to begin to write! 

We have been finding out all about Autumn this week. We enjoyed looking out for signs of Autumn at our forest school session and collecting colourful leaves to bring back to class to make our very own 'Leaf man' character. Exploring pumpkins and their life cycle, along with strengthening our fingers using hammers and tees and harvesting the sunflower seeds was an exciting part of the week. We created some fantastic art work of Autumn using a range of media such as finger painting Autumn trees, textured tissue paper acorns, oil pastel pumpkins and watercolour paintings of Autumn objects.  

We even used leaves in our maths work this week to sort and order them by size! 

This week we read and learnt the story of The Little Red hen using 'Talk for Writing' actions and a story map. We discussed what the bread must have smelt like in the story and then we made some of our own (Autumn hedgehogs!) We discussed the texture of the dough at different stages and looked at how it changes. We enjoyed experiencing other sensory play this week such as some very slimy spaghetti, beautiful smelling playdough with added herbs and even spice painting! 

We have been reading  'The colour Monster' and exploring our feelings. We talked about things that make us feel different emotions and why. Then we made our own colour monsters and mood monsters to show a variety of these feelings. Some children even wrote some initial sounds of feelings for their mood monster. The transient art area was popular where faces were made using many loose parts. We enjoyed listening to music and thinking about how it made us feel and we made our own music in the outdoor area. 

In our maths this week we have been reading 'The Button Box' and sorting our own buttons in a variety of ways. 

This week we have used maps to look closely at where we live. We have been thinking about our local community and the different places and shops within it and we found these on Google maps. Then we thought about the people who could help us within our community and we had a visit from a firefighter who told us all about his role and how he helps people. PCSO Bradley also talked to us all about Road Safety and Stranger Danger.