Year 1

Welcome to Year 1!

Year 1 cracked a series of codes to reveal the mystery numbers and 'unlock the icebox'. They used their Maths skills to solve the problems and were rewarded with cooling icepops when they entered the correct code and opened the cool box.

Natural Science Objects

Year 1 had a visit from the Curator of Natural Science at Leeds Museums. She brought along lots of amazing objects for us to explore and discover more about life under the sea. We were even able to touch a narwhal tusk and an echinoderm.

This week we carried out an experiment to see how much salt we needed to add to water to made different objects float. We then recorded our findings and discussed our observations.

As part of our exploration of the Atlantic Ocean, we made predictions about why whales have blubber. We then used our senses to carry out an experiment and compared our predictions to the results.

Music - Octopuses Garden

We have been listening carefully to the song by the Beetles called Octopuses Garden. We discussed the questions:

• What instruments can you hear?
• How does the music make you feel?
• What did you like about the song?
• Does the song tell a story?

We discovered that the same song can make different people feel different emotions. We then drew pictures inspired by the lyrics of the song. 

Whilst learning about the largest and deepest ocean, the Pacific Ocean, we discovered that some sea creatures camouflage. We had a go at making our own fish camouflage into their environment. Can you spot the fish?

We have been exploring atlases and globes to discover where the five oceans in the world are. We have also been learning this song to help us remember their names and locations: Five Oceans Song on YouTube

We launched our Under The Sea topic by setting sail and then diving deep into the ocean. We used chalk to draw pictures of the things we saw under the sea including, clown fish, hammerhead sharks, squids, shipwreaks and coral.

STEM Ambassador Visit

Year 1 were super excited to have a visit from STEM Ambassador Eleanor who is a landscape architect. We discovered all the things bees need in a garden to thrive. Then we all designed our own garden for bees. We were fascinated to discover that different bees have different lengths of tongue so some need deeper flowers than others.

We have been observing the changes as our caterpillars have grown. They have now all created chrysalis'. We are excited to see them emerge as beautiful butterflies.

We had a visitor from the Dogs Trust to help us in our learning to care for things. Rachael taught us the five rules for keeping safe around dogs and how to safely approach and stroke a dog.

We have loved discovering the story of the Bog Baby and were inspired to create Bluebell Wood for the Bog Bay to return to.

We designed and created our own minibeast sculpture using wire, material and beads. We worked hard to manipulate the beads into the shapes we desired to make the wings and legs.

Minibeast Hunt

We planned and carried out a comparative test to discover where we would find the most mini-beasts. We discovered mini-beasts preferred to hide under logs.

As part of our World Book Day celebrations, we came dressed in our PJs, enjoyed paired reading with our friends in Year 1 and our sponsored 'drop everything and read' challenge.

We have been identifying different ways in which we could classify creatures. We came up with some creative ideas, including: wings/no wings; water/land; flies/doesn't fly; omnivore/carnivore/herbivore; mammals/not mammals.

Hannah from Phunky Foods visited us to teach us how the foods we eat can come from all over the world. She also reminded us about the EatWell Plate and how it's important to eat different types of foods to keep us healthy.

She then showed us how to safely cut fruits using a 'claw' grip. We practised this to make our own rainbow fruit crunch. She was super impressed by our cutting skills and concentration. We then enjoyed eating our rainbow fruit crunch!

Both classes had such a wonderful time visiting the Nest this week! We know the Nest is a place we can go to if we need a little bit of extra support or a chance to chat. We love spending time with the Nest team!

We have been getting stuck into our new topic by exploring how our world is represented by different maps, atlases and globes. We have enjoyed creating our own 'My place in the World' flipbook to better understand the comparative size of our city, county, country, group of islands, continent, and planet.

Thank you for visiting our Toy Museum. We have been researching artefacts and writing museum labels to tell you all about them We hope you enjoy discovering more about how toys have changed within living memory.

We have exploring how technology had changes so dramatically within living memory. We enjoyed having a go with some of the old games consoles and discussing how the games and the consoles have changed over time.

We have really enjoyed the story of Traction Man. We learnt to retell the story using our own story map and then had a go at writing the story ourselves. We have also been created new outfits for Traction Man and inventing new sidekicks and Christmas presents to give him. We have use some great adjectives to describe these and are beginning to use exciting openers for our sentences.

We have been learning the different between history 'within living memory' and 'beyond living memory'. We have discovered how to plot this on a timeline in chronological order. After investigating teddy bears, we added the first teddy bear and some examples of bear that were 90 years old, 70 years old, 50 years old and modern bears. We also examine how the materials used to stuff these had changed.

We had a special visitor as part of our Toys Through Time topic. Mrs McDonald's Mum talked to us about toys from her childhood. Lots of us liked the bear that her mum had made from an old sofa best. We were fascinated by the puppets too, especially Muffin the Mule who was made from metal. We were able to make comparisons with toys today and ask question about how things, such as materials, have changed.

We hunted around our classroom for objects made from different materials and then sorted them correctly. We discovered that scientists call this classifying.

Happy Halloween!

We had loads of fun doing spooky activities on our Halloween Monster fun day!

We planned and conducted an experiment to investigate the effect of soap on germs. We substituted germs for pepper and found that our dirty fingers attracted the germs.

We repeated this with soap on our fingers and the germs dispersed!

This proved that soap stops the germs 

Evil Pea on the loose!

This week we returned to our classroom to find a crime scene! Somebody had captured the Superveggies - who could it be?

We made wanted posters and Evil Pea trap to track down the villain.

Welcome to Year 1!

We have had a fantastic start to the year. We discovered more about what our school values meant during CHIRP week.

We are Curious... 

We were curious about our new learning environment. We did a treasure hunt to find out more about what we can do in our areas of provision. We had a visit from Purple Pig Farm and York Birds of Prey including a flying display to round off our first day.

We are Healthy...

We learnt about how to keep healthy in our first PE lesson with Mrs Hannah.

We are Individual...

We discussed what makes us special and unique. We will continue to celebrate our differences and our individuality, including through Home Pride.

Inspired by Picasso we drew self portraits.

We are Responsible...

We learned about how we are all responsible for keeping our school a respectful, safe place and always being ready to learn. Our teachers are really proud of how we have been responsibly moving around school and looking after our classroom.

We are Positive...

We are becoming resilient learners. We had our first Learning for Life lesson and created positivity stars based around the story 'How to Catch a Star' by Oliver Jeffers. We were inspired by how the boy didn't give up and we hope to do the same.