Category: Year 1 – St Francis of Assisi

This week, the children have been learning how to give each other directions, before moving on to programming a toy to move left, right, forwards and backwards as well as making half and quarter turns.  One child taught her friends that two quarter turns make a half turn!

This work on position and fractions continued on Friday, when the children made a honey sandwich for their teddy and divided it into halves and quarters.

Thank you very much for the donations that came in as part of our Teddy Bear’s Picnic that celebrated the end of our topic on Toys.  The children have certainly learned a great deal about old toys and have enjoyed talking about the family toys that they brought in.

 

Dear Year 1 children,

Your teddies are having a wonderful evening together.  Here they all are listening to Leon, the giant teddy reading them a suitable bedtime story.  They are looking forward to making sandwiches with you all on Friday morning!

Lots of love from Mrs Hayes (and lots of teddies!)

As part of their English and Geography learning, the children all wrote thank you letters on their first day back at school and then posted them at the local post box.  The children had to follow directions, including using the words left and right in order to get there.  The children learned that they can identify their left hand by looking for the L for Left.  This only works, if the children remember to look at their finger nails too!Please continue to use the words left and right with your child as these directions are very easily confused!  When we returned back at school, the children drew and labelled a map of their route, something that they thought very carefully about.

The children performed brilliantly in the Christmas production A present for the baby.  You should be very proud of them!

Monday 18th December: please send in a present for your child’s kriskringle on Monday.

Tuesday 19th December: details of what you can contribute as part of our end of term celebration have been sent home with your child.

Wednesday 20th December: we look forward to sharing our end of term mass with you on Wednesday at 9am.  Children should come into school in party clothes (please make sure that children are still warm, as children will go out to play as normal), ready for their Christmas lunch.

Thursday 21st December: during our end of term celebration in class, children will have a special snack time, during which they will exchange gifts and sing Christmas songs together.   Christmas holiday starts at 1.30pm!

This week, as part of their learning in Design and Technology, the children have been making Christmas decorations.

To start the week, they worked in pairs to weave ribbons and create huge baubles, which can be seen hanging in the classroom.

Next, the children carefully measured pieces of paper to make strips that could be joined together and made into paper chains.  Building on from last week’s learning, they made sure that their paper chains included both a colour and number pattern.

The week ended with the children reading and carefully following instructions to make lanterns to decorate the class Christmas tree.

These creative activities have developed the children’s English and Maths skills as well as improved the accuracy of their cutting.  The decorations look wonderful as does the whole classroom as we share our Christmas preparations together this Advent.

We look forward to seeing you in school next week when the children perform their Christmas play, A present for the baby.  Bring your child into school at 6.30pm on Thursday 14th December ready for their evening performance, which will start at 7pm.  Please ensure that any requested clothes for costumes  are brought into school by Monday at the very latest.

Have a wonderful weekend.

This week, the children have been developing their understanding of patterns, focussing on creating and continuing patterns that are not just colour based, but also include changes in quantity, size or shape.  The children have been encouraged to name the repeating pattern once, rather than read what they have created over and over again.  This is trickier than it sounds and the children have worked hard on their repeating patterns.  This learning will help the children as they begin to explore patterns in numbers later in the year.

The children created patterns on their Christmas decorations and these can be seen on the class display in the main hall.

In science, this week, the children explored different foods and found ways to sort them.  These included sorting them into foods that are good for you, or not so good for you, as well as sorting them into vegetables, fruit or meat.  Please talk about where food comes from at home, so that children can learn more about this.

In maths, the children have been finding ways to show 6, with the additional challenge of recording these using pictures, words and symbols.   The children explained their thinking to each other to show that they understood their calculations.

On Thursday, we will be celebrating harvest in school with an assembly that you are warmly invited to at 9am.   Please send in your donations for our local food project, Feed on Wednesday or Thursday.  Further details about this charity can be found at: https://www.thevineyardchurch.co.uk/feed

This week, the children have been exploring their hair colour and sorting themselves into groups.  This can be quite tricky when you can’t see your hair unless you are looking in a mirror!

We look forward to seeing you at tomorrow’s Mercy Mass (11am) which will be followed by a picnic.

Next Friday 29th September is Fitness Day at St. Adrian’s.  The children will bring home their PE clothes on Monday, so that they can come into school wearing them on the Friday for all the fitness focussed learning.  It would be great if you could ensure that these PE clothes are returned on the following Monday (2nd October) ready for your child’s PE lesson.