November has been productive!

This month, Year 1 have been busy marking some very important occasions! We learned about the Gunpowder Plot and enjoyed the sparkle of Bonfire Night, we paused to reflect on Remembrance Day, and we joined in the fun of Children in Need. To make these moments extra special, we created beautiful crafts — including bright red poppies made from scrunched tissue paper. The classroom was full of colour, creativity, and thoughtful conversations as we explored history and kindness together.

In English, we’ve been poets, detectives, and word hunters! Inspired by a virtual firework display, we wrote list poems about Bonfire Night, using our senses to capture the sparkle, bang, and fizz. We became sentence detectives, unscrambling jumbled sentences to make sure they made perfect sense.

In Maths, we’ve been diving into our addition and subtraction unit within 10 — and wow, what progress we’ve made! Our teachers have been amazed at how confidently we can now write our number facts, complete with the correct symbols.

In Science, we’ve been busy exploring materials and their properties. From smooth and rough to bendy/flexible and stiff/hard, we’ve been investigating what makes each material special. To help us remember, we’ve been using hands‑on activities and even creating fun actions for each property.

In history this term, Year 1 have been travelling back in time to explore toys from then and now. We even got our parents involved by sending out a questionnaire — and discovered (to our surprise!) that they’re not from the Stone Age after all. One child even asked if dinosaurs existed when their parent was little!

We learned that many of our parents played with toys we still enjoy today, like Care Bears, Furbies, and Hama beads. To make our learning hands‑on, we brought in our own favourite toys, used iPads to take photographs, and labelled the materials they were made from — linking our history work beautifully with our science lessons.

In Art, we’ve been busy becoming little artists inspired by Paul Klee. Using our knowledge of lines, shapes, and effective colouring, we created bold and imaginative portraits in his unique style.

Our classroom was buzzing with excitement as we welcomed the amazing team from Groundworks! They inspired us with fascinating facts and fun activities all about recycling and reusing — turning everyday items into something truly special. Our little eco-warriors got creative and gave old glass jars a brand-new life… as beautiful lanterns!

October has been one busy month!

In English, we kicked off the month by diving into nouns (especially plurals with -s and -es) and used our new skills to write list poems inspired by Toys in Space. Poor Hoctopize was feeling a bit lonely, so we threw him a party—on paper! Later, we got moving with a noun and verb hunt around the school grounds. Who knew grammar could be so active?

Maths has been hands-on and full of fun! We’ve used all sorts of resources to help us understand key concepts. One lesson even featured party hats (thanks again, Toys in Space) to help us use STEM sentences like “There are fewer party hats than people.” We’ve also explored greater than, less than, equal to, and practised one more and one less. Lots of mathematical magic happening!

In science, we have begun to explore materials and their uses. We have organised and sorted materials based on its properties.

In RE, we explored the parable of The Lost Son and thought deeply about what it teaches Christians about forgiveness and God. One lesson had us creating a human scale with string to decide how easy forgiveness really is. We also learned about different types of prayer and found that asking for things like healing or forgiveness is very common.

In Geography, our school grounds became our outdoor classroom! We practiced using map symbols, drew simple maps, and looked at aerial views. We even shared ideas on how to make our yard even better—future town planners, perhaps?

In You, Me and The World, we tackled stereotypes head-on, especially around toys. At first, some of us thought Lego was just for boys and My Little Ponies were only for girls—but after some great discussions, we all agreed: toys are for everyone!

September: Year 1 Have Blasted Off into the New School Year! 🚀

What an amazing start to the year it’s been for Year 1! From day one, the children dived head first into exploring their brand-new surroundings — from a whole new playground to exciting areas within the classroom just waiting to be discovered.

They’ve quickly settled into their new routines and have already shown what an incredible group they are. We kicked things off with the heartwarming book ‘Our School is a Family’, which inspired a range of creative and meaningful activities. The children made their very own colour-themed bracelets, with each colour symbolising a special quality that makes our class family unique.

As if that wasn’t enough, imaginations ran wild as the children designed and built their dream homes using junk modelling — every creation more imaginative than the last! We also took time to explore our emotions, using art to express how different feelings look and feel to us.

In maths, the children have been keen to show off their number knowledge in creative ways, especially when they got to draw straight onto the tables! From looking at ten frames, to sorting objects in different ways, they explored all sorts of fun ways to represent numbers to ten.

In our english lessons, we began the year by looking at the difference between lowercase and upper case letters.  We practiced these on our special writing pads and in sand and glitter to develop our formation of them. We then moved onto identifying nouns.

In science, we have been investigating whether pine cones can predict the weather- results to follow! 

It’s been a fun and creative start to Year 1 — and this is just the beginning! 🌟