Mrs Thomas and Mrs Wardle would like to welcome you to Blue Class!

Term 6

Make this world a better place.

How can I make a difference to the world?

English

We are starting off our term by reading 10 Things I Can Do To Help My World, and thinking of things we already do to help and what things we could do. The children have already come up with lots of good ideas showing what good citizens they are! We will be reading lots more books about environmental issues this term, learning about endangered animals and their habitats and writing fact books about them.

History

We are looking forward to a musical journey back through the last 60 years in History this term. We will be listening to lots of different music from each decade, dancing to some famous tunes and learning some others. We will link our work in History to Music and DT, where we will be making our own recycled instruments to form a Year 1 Junk Band.

Beach Walks

Our Beach Walks will be on Wednesday mornings this term, starting from 19th June.

Please look for the sign up sheet outside the classrooms if you can help us walk to and from the beach.

P.E.

This term in P.E. we will be swimming on Monday mornings. Please look for the sign up sheet outside the classrooms if you can help us walk to and from the pool.

We will also be doing athletics to prepare us for our Sports Morning which is on Tuesday 18th June. The children will be practising their running, jumping and throwing skills as well as competing in team relay and obstacle races.

Term 5

Island Life

What is on your island?

Trip to Reculver Beach

We had a fantastic day at Reculver Beach, hunting in the rock pool, doing a beach clean and learning about the wind turbines. The children found lots of interesting creatures and showed no fear in picking them up and investigating under upturned rocks and stones! Thanks to those of you who came along to help, and to Mel and Tom who told us all about the rock pools and wind turbines.

Scooter Workshop

Everyone had great fun at the Scooter Workshop this week, and their scooting skills were really impressive! Even those who were a bit less confident were able to take part in the 'Slalom', scooting in and out of scooter helmets without any collisions! Mrs Wardle, Mrs Thomas and Mr Dickinson even had a go (and only nearly fell off!)!

Stream Walk Community Gardens

We had a Stunning Start to our Science topic of plants this term with a visit to Stream Walk Community Gardens to find out more about the different plants that are grown there. We got to taste some of the herbs and vegetables that are growing, thought about what plants need to grow and identified some of the different flowers, vegetables and herbs that we saw. A big thank you to the parents who came with us and to Fiona (Ruben in Red Class' mum) for showing us around.

English

Our book this term is Grandad's Island by Benji Davies. We have started by thinking about Grandad, looking carefully at illustrations to find out clues about what kind of character he is and we will be writing some questions to find out more about him. The children all draw their own fantastic illustrations of Grandad, proving what super artists they are!

Maths

This term we will be practising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and using that to help us with multiplication and division. We will make equal groups of objects and use our counting skills to check whether groups are equal or unequal. We will add equal groups together to find out totals and solve mathematical problems. 

Science

In Science this term we are looking at plants, and will be learning about their structure and what they need to grow. Thank you to you all for the fantastic work you have brought in - we have some fantastic artwork, fact books and posters, plant diaries and even plants to add to our book corners and home challenge displays. We will be planting some beans and seeds in school, identifying plants and labelling diagrams to show the different parts of trees and flowers.

P.E.

This term we will be playing hockey and football, practising our individual skills and developing our teamwork. The children will practising working with a partner to improve ball skills and control and will improve their control of a ball or beanbag while travelling.

Cooking

The children will be making their third recipe on Friday afternoons and we have chosen something savoury for this term. They will making Grandad's Favourite Scones. Each week 1 group from each class will cook with Mrs Raymer and Mrs Wardle. Some of them may already have brought home their delectable treats, but some may have to wait until the last week of term! Rest assured, everyone will get the opportunity to cook!

Geography

The children will be travelling around the United Kingdom this term, identifying the different countries and capital cities on a map and making their own passports to show where they have visited. We will talk about and look at photographs of key landmarks of the four home nations, identify the flags and talk about some of the similarities and differences in the geographic features.

Term 4

In the Sea...

Where should they live?

Buster's Book Club Success!

Well done to Blue Class for winning the Buster's Book Club Trophy this week. We were the most improved class this week, with an increase in the number of children reading and in the total number of minutes read for. 

Congratulations, and keep up the good reading!

Relatives Event

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our board games afternoon. The children enjoyed playing their own games, as well as ones their friends had brought in.                      

Beach Walks

On our beach walks this term we have been acting out parts of The Storm Whale, thinking about how the characters felt at different parts of the story and writing goodbye messages to the whale. 

Pancake Day Races

Lots of fun was had during the Year 1 Pancake Day races.  All of the children took part in relay races which involved lots of pancake flipping and seagulls circling for a tasty treat!

Book Week

What a fantastic start to Book Week we have had on Monday! Author and Illustrator Chris Wormell was in school to share some of his stories. He read The Sea Monster and The Wild Girl to Blue Class, both of which we hadn't read before. We had already read and loved George and the Dragon, Two Frogs and Scruffy Bear and the Six White Mice.

Where's Your Wally?!

We had great fun dressing as Where's Wally or Wanda on Book Day. Everybody looked fantastic! Thank you to you all for making such an effort to put together some fantastic costumes. Thanks also the parents who came in to share stories in Blue Class on Thursday afternoon.

Half Term Challenge

Thank you to you all for your hard work in making such fabulous creations for our In The Sea topic! They are now on display in our and around our Reading Area, which looks far more inviting than it did before!

ENGLISH

During this term our book theme is 'The Storm Whale' by Benji Davies.  Although we have only read the first few pages together the children have already drawn what is in their 'mind's eye' when they heard where Noi lives, as well as discussed and written about how Noi feels when his dad leaves for work every day.

MATHS

After two weeks of measure where the children were very successful in measuring using centimetres (cm) for the first time, we have moved on to looking at place value in numbers up to 50.  We have started this topic by ordering numbers, discussing the patterns and thinking about how many tens and ones there are in each number.

SCIENCE

This term we will be studying the topic of Animals (including humans).  The children were very knowledgeable when we discussed the different parts of the human body and the five senses.  We had some animated discussions about our 'favourite' thing to use each sense for which included lots of ice cream and cats!

PE

Our multi skills sessions this term are on a Wednesday morning and we will be covering all areas of 'games', developing our skills such as jumping, catching, throwing and running.

In our afternoon sessions we will concentrate on dance when we will move in time to music, creating sequences which we will learn to perform as a class.

ART

We are learning all about printing this term and after exploring how to print with different objects / different amounts of paint we have now started making our own printing blocks.

COMPUTING

We are exploring music on the computers and tablets this term using the 2Music Toolkit.  The children will be investigating rhythm, pulse, melody and harmony by dragging and dropping sounds onto the grid.

Term 3

Treasure

What is buried under the X?

Treasure Hunt

We had a Fantastic Finish to our Treasure topic, with a treasure hunt in the school playground. The children ably guided their grown ups around the orienteering course, looking for clues to spell different animal names. All were successful and found the treasure chest full of chocolate coins! Thanks to all of you who joined us on a gloriously sunny afternoon to help the children in their quest!

Chinese New Year - Lion Dance

We a great time learning the Chinese Lion Dance in the hall to celebrate Chinese New Year. Everyone got to try leading the Lion Dance, even Mrs Thomas!

Art Week

Thank you to all of you who came in to help up us with our Art Day. The children made some fabulous parrots, marbled pirate pictures and treasure islands. The treasure islands in particular were quite tricky to make, and we were really impressed with the children's perseverance when faced with palm trees that wouldn't stand up and deck chairs that kept collapsing! 

Trip to Swalecliffe Brook

We enjoyed our geography field trip to Swalecliffe Brook, where we drew aerial maps of the site and plotted the main geographical features on them. The children observed and drew the church, sea, brook, playground, houses and areas of grass, thinking about which features were near each other.

We then enjoyed a much needed run around in the playground to warm up!

ENGLISH

This term we are reading the book 'How to Find Gold' by Viviane Schwarz.  We have started by looking at the characters and thinking about how we can describe them.  During the first week we are also making our own treasure maps and writing a set of instructions on how to find our own treasure.

Throughout the term we will be writing a character description as well as letters.

MATHS

We are continuing to look at numbers this term and will begin by revising addition and subtraction to 20 before moving on to place value in numbers to 50.

During the first week we have been investigating with Numicon how to add tens to our number bonds to show that, for example, 7 + 3 = 10 so 17 + 3 = 20.

SCIENCE

Our topic this term is Materials and we will begin by talking about the different types of materials we find in and around the school such as wood, plastic, metal and fabric.  We will use words such as 'bumpy', 'smooth', 'hard' and 'soft' to describe these materials to each other to think about their properties.  

PE (INCLUDING GEOGRAPHY)

This term we will be covering gymnastics and orienteering.  

Gymnastics will include the use of apparatus and we will continue to work on balancing, travelling and jumping as we think about linking these movements into a routine.

Our orienteering lessons will not only be physically based but will also include the geography element of map work.  We will begin by thinking about how to read maps and then move on to drawing our own maps of the school grounds to include main features.  The orienteering course in the school grounds will also help us with our phonics and spelling as we look for words and sounds.

COMPUTING

This term we will be learning how to code by using screen turtles and beebots.  Each week we have activities to complete including creating our own beebot mat, directing a screen turtle around using code and instructing characters such as the big, bad wolf using the tablet.

FRENCH

In French we will be practising the vocabulary we have already learned using songs and games, and will be learning some new French. This term we will be learning colours, numbers 10-20 and words for some pets, and we will continue to practise greetings and asking and answering simple questions.

ART

Mrs Lambirth is teaching Art in Blue Class this term, and our lessons will be based on the illustrations in our book, 'How to Find Gold'.  The children will be experimenting with charcoal, seeing what different marks they can make, and will create their own background scene for the characters of Anna and Crocodile.

Term 2

Deadly Dinosaurs

DINOSAUR WORKSHOP

What incredible fun we had today during our drama workshop with Perform for Schools.  Not only did we get to experience what it was like to live 65 million years ago but we had to hide from a Velociraptor who kept a very tidy nest!  Our imaginations ran wild during the session as we acted, sang and danced.  

Active Maths

Our BEACH WALKS will be happening every Thursday and during these sessions we will be taking part in ACTIVE MATHS ensuring we all have fun, keep warm and use resources to help our practical problem solving.

COMPUTING

This term we will be discussing how to stay safe when using computers both at school and at home. 

We will be using the 'Hector the Protector' series of videos and linked activities to ensure we understand what information we should keep safe and who we should talk to online.

You can watch Hector on the link below

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/5_7/hectorsworld/

This term we are looking at dinosaurs. We will be trying to answer the question: Which dinosaur ruled the world?

We will be learning about a different dinosaur each week, so stay tuned for fun facts.

Week 1

Triceratops

Did you know that ...

• The name ‘Triceratops’ comes from the Greek language, with ‘tri’ meaning three and ‘keratops’ meaning horned face.
• Triceratops lived in the late Cretaceous Period (around 65 million years ago).
• The Triceratops was a plant eating (herbivore) dinosaur.
• It needed its three horns to try and protect itself from the T-Rex which lived during the same time period

English

In English we will be continuing our work on simple sentences. We have been working very hard on trying to write our letters the right way round. We are finding b and d quite tricky, but we keep trying! We are also starting to generate adjectives and use them in our sentences. 

When we write sentences they need a capital letter at the start and for any names (proper nouns), finger spaces so we can read every word and a full stop at the end to show we have finished our sentence. 

We are working on trying to keep every letter sitting on the line, so there aren't any floating letters.

Maths

Last term we looked at place value in numbers up to 10 and practised addition with these numbers. 

This term we are learning all about subtraction.  

Our BEACH WALKS will be happening every Thursday and during these sessions we will be taking part in ACTIVE MATHS ensuring we all have fun and to make sure we keep ourselves warm! If you are able to come along then please sign up outside the classroom. Thank you.

Welcome to the first term of Year 1!

Our topic this term is Fantasy Worlds.

We will be answering the question: Where would you go?

We have been thinking about what we already know and what we want to find out throughout this term.

We will be kick starting the topic by watching Mr Benn. This is an animation about a man who travels to strange and exciting new worlds.

Later on in the term we will be designing our own fantasy worlds.

We have already started discussing them. Some ideas we have had: No Grownup land, Jellyland, Fire Castle and a Colouring Palace.  We are looking forward to designing and describing these later on in the term.

English

We will be watching episodes of Mr Benn (see above) to help us to generate our ideas.

We will be working on simple sentences. We will be cutting up and sticking sentences together, clapping out rhythms, role playing episodes and writing simple sentences. When we write, we will be making sure our sentences have: capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. We will also making sure our handwriting is neat and that all the letters sit on the line.

PE

This term we will be learning tennis and netball. On Tuesday afternoons we will be playing netball. We will be learning how to catch, throw and dodge, as well as practising attack and defence skills.

Our tennis lessons will be on Wednesday mornings with Helen from Appeti Tennis in Canterbury. She will be teaching the children the basic skills through fun games.

Enrichment

During this first term we will be having music lessons with Ms Diamond every Friday afternoon. On Thursdays we will also be learning some French with Mrs Thomas.

Druidstone 09.10.18

Wow what a fantastic time we had at Druidstone Park! Firstly, a huge thank you to Mrs Wardle for driving us all safely there and back in the new school minibus.

We started the day off by going for a wander in the Enchanted Woods. Did you know that every tree in the woods is magical and it is the place where all fairies from Kent get their wands from? Blue Class collected fallen sticks, decorated them and turned them into magic wands. We learnt a magic spell which made little men with toadstools on their heads appear!

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Toadstool, toadstool round and red.

Do not wear it on your head. 

We crossed the Billy Goats Gruff bridge where we waved our wands in the air. Did you know that trolls are terrified of children with magic wands?

After this we came across an ancient tree which had the face of an old man carved into it. We sat down and sketched the details of his face. Some of the children’s drawings are incredible, they can be found in their sketch books.

After this we had lunch where we were joined by about 10 chickens. They really wanted to be friends with the children. I am sure it had nothing to do with the food…all the grown ups showcased their best chicken chasing skills!

After this we had the wonderful experience of feeding lots of different animals. We were able to feed donkeys, sheep, deer, alpacas, chickens, goats and a cow. The children were very gentle and brave. The deer were very greedy and the cow left the children’s hands very wet and slimy. It was wonderful to see all of the children having fun and enjoying themselves.

It was a wonderful day and we hope you enjoy the photos below.