Class 1

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

Here you will find our class information and photographs of how we learn through carefully planned play. Come and take a look at our exciting learning journey! 

As part of our learning on Growing, Lifecycles and Minibeasts, we read the story of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. 🐛🦋 We have enjoyed lots of different activities this week in our provision helping us to learn about the butterfly life cycle. 

We have now received our brand new i-pads. We learnt how to login and logout safely then we created our very own avatars to look like ourselves. After that we used the paint programme to create pictures of flowers for our Spring topic and we explored mini mash. 

We have been learning about the importance of keeping healthy in PSHE. We talked about eating a balanced diet and exercising. We carried out a science experiment to learn how important washing our hands is, and we found out that soap helps to wash the germs away. In PE we observed our heart rates before and after exercise and we had fun with a balloon manipulating it around our bodies and throwing and catching ,which we then swapped to a ball the following lesson. We also found out about how important sleep is for our health.

We just love reading in Class 1!

We have noticed signs of Spring around our school. After a Spring walk we learnt about the parts of a plant and painted pictures of daffodils and other flowering plants. We found out that Spring is a time where many animals have babies. We learnt the names of farm animals and their young and we even saw a mummy sheep give birth to triplets on a visit to a local farm. 

Class 1 had a wonderful time at Peak Wildlife Park. We saw lots of amazing animals including the polar bear family who are new to the park. We listened to talks from the keepers about the polar bears, lemurs and wallabies. What a fantastic day we had! 

What a lovely service we had at Holy Trinity Church today for Mother's Day! We sang them a special song to say thank you for all that they do for us each and every day.

We have enjoyed our Talk for Writing unit on the traditional Tale of The Gingerbread Man. We acted out the story with puppets and retold it many times using actions. Then Year 1 innovated the story by changing some of the characters and wrote a new version of the story. Reception enjoyed building bridges to help the Gingerbread Man to cross the river at the end of the story.

What an amazing week we have had immersing ourselves in our learning about the Chinese culture and the wonderful traditions of Chinese New Year and how it is celebrated! We located China on the map and learnt about it's huge population! We looked at where Mount Everest and the Great Wall of China is and we found out about the beautiful Giant Panda and Red Panda which can be found in parts of China. We've enjoyed tasting a variety of Chinese food and deciding if we like them or not and we learnt about the traditional dragon and lion dances. Then we made our very own dragon and created a dragon dance. We have very much enjoyed the role play area as a Chinese Restaurant this week. We have been busy with painting Chinese numbers and making lanterns and dragon masks! The sand pit has had lucky red envelopes and money to dig up and we learnt the meaning behind this. 

We had such fun learning about a Spanish artist and sculpture called Joan Miró, who liked to use lines and shapes in his art work. His work was abstract and created from images and shapes from within his dreams. 

Look at our very own art work inspired by Joan Miró. We used watercolour paints for a gentle, dreamy effect and we absolutely love how every painting looks unique.

The children couldn't wait to get stuck into their maths learning this week. We have revisited mass and capacity, but this time extending their learning further using cubes to find a balance! They also independently used Numicon pieces to find a balance too and learnt that the pieces 4 and 1 in one bucket would balance one 5 piece in the other bucket. They used their prior knowledge of composition to 5 to find other ways to balance the buckets. Very clever! 

This week we are thinking about how we use transport to travel. We read a story called 'The Great Balloon Hullaballoo' which took some animals on a journey into space! 

We made hot air balloons and enjoyed exploring the space small world, using 'scientific' space vocabulary in our play. Some children independently wrote a list of different types of transport, using excellent phonic knowledge to help them to spell words! The children were keen to know more about space so we found some non fiction books to help us find out some more interesting facts. We found out about what transport was like in the past and compared it to the present day. We enjoyed talking about the old black and white pictures. In the large outdoor construction some fantastic creations were made, from cars to lorries to campervans! To finish the week we will be finding out about the life and achievements of Amelia Earhart, a female pioneer of aviation.  

We started our new instructions writing unit today by following a sequence of instructions to make a jam sandwich. We all enjoyed eating them afterwards too! 

Look at our fantastic bird houses and feather quills that we made to fit in the Great British Bird Watch. 

We loved going outdoors today and using our binoculars to look for birds eating from our bird feeders! We could use our tick list to name some of the garden birds and listened for the different bird sounds. 

What a super week we've had learning all about British garden birds. We made bird feeders to hang in our school grounds, for us to observe the birds this week and we also enjoyed a variety of bird related provision. The children have made birds with loose parts and bird houses with large outdoor construction, they've enjoyed collaging and crafting, drawing birds and using oil pastels to colour. 

We created some lovely art work in the style of Piet Mondrian for our work on 4 sided shapes. 

We couldn't have asked for better weather to kick start our new topic 'Journeys'. We located the Arctic and Antarctica on the world map and learnt about what life is like there. We looked at a variety of animals and how they are adapted to survive in the cold including how many camouflage against the snow. The children learnt some incredible facts about the animals and have learnt that penguins live in the South Pole! The children thought about the clothing and items they would need to take to these places to keep warm and built a large scale aeroplane in the loose construction outdoors! We enjoyed smashing the ice in the water tray to free the sea creatures and talked about how cold and slippery it was and how our warm hands melt it! Painting icy pictures on the shiny foil was popular and we snuggled up in our igloo reading tent to look at fiction and non- fiction books.

This half term our Christian Value is Perseverance. We read the story of Noah's Ark and talked about how Noah had persevered to build the ark as God had asked. The children shared their thoughts on challenges that they had faced before and considered how they had persevered to reach an end goal. They enjoyed building a large scale ark outdoors, making boats and testing them on the school pond to see if they float or sink. 

In maths we have been learning about circles and triangles. We enjoyed spotting these shapes in the environment, looking at their properties and painting circles and triangles in the style of Wassily Kandinsky.  

The children have enjoyed being Santa's elves in the workshop this week. They've wrapped presents, written labels and delivered gifts!  

Thank you to Ashbourne Methodist Church for inviting us to see the 'Faces of Advent'. We enjoyed listening to the Christmas story, making Christmas biscuits and taking part in other festive crafts. 

The children enjoyed helping to tidy the school grounds of leaves today. They had fun making angel shapes on the frosty field, followed by hot chocolate and biscuits to warm up. 

The children made shadow puppets of nocturnal animals this week as part of our Light and Dark topic. 

It's fantastic how our children take what they have learnt and apply it independently in provision activities. They enjoyed exploring which objects were heavier and lighter and trying to make the scales balance. They were excellent at using new vocabulary to talk with their friends about what was happening.

The children have enjoyed reading the story of Rama and Sita. They have made Rangoli patterns with colourful loose parts and foam shapes, Diwali lamps from clay and enjoyed retelling the story in the small world area.

On our way to forest school today the children began to notice seasonal changes. They found some interesting cobwebs in the fields. 

We had a fantastic day raising money for Children in need and taking part in lots of lovely activities. 

This week we have been thinking about the changes that are happening around us at this time of year. We made leaf shapes biscuits and thought about our choice of colour, we created some lovely pumpkin art work, hammered golf tees into pumpkins to strengthen our fingers, made conker soup in the gloop tray, explored repeating patterns and made leaves from clay. What a fun filled, busy week!

At forest school today the children thought about their history and made a family tree using twigs they collected at forest school. Then they enjoyed playing at the park.

We have been finding out about different homes in the local area. Look at our beautiful DT work. 

We've been learning about our local area and where we live as part of our 'Marvellous Me' topic. We enjoyed a village walk to see what we could find. Then we went back to school and made maps of Clifton village. We are really proud of them.

Today the children met their special Clifton buddy who will help them settle into school. Their buddies will be there to help them at break and lunch times and during worship at the Holy Trinity Church.