Happy last day!

Well, we have come to our final day in Year 1. We cannot believe this day has come round so quickly, but we had an amazing last day together with lots of fun-filled activities. We want to say how unbelievably proud we are of all of the Elephants and how hard they have worked this year. We also want to say a big thank you to the parents, for all of your support and help over the past year. We have appreciated it so much.

As we finish Year 1 and prepare for a fabulous year in Year 2, we also have some sad news that we will be saying goodbye to a few Elephants who are going to be going to new schools in September. We are so so sad to see them all go and we will miss them so much, but we know they will continue to be amazing at their new schools and we would like to wish them the best of luck. So, we say goodbye and good luck to Ava, Bella-Louise, Elsa, Evelyn, Lewis and Sky-Rose. You will all be fabulous at your new schools.

Finally, we would like to wish everyone a wonderful summer holiday and we hope the Elephants get a well-deserved break before they start their next journey in Year 2.

To finish this blog, here are some of our photos from today …..

Telling the time

First of all, we just want to say a huge well done to the Elephants for their wonderful singing in both Summer Concert performances. They were amazing! We hope you all enjoyed the performance, thank you so much for coming!

After the summer concert today, we continued with our learning, as normal. This week, in our English learning, we are going to be focusing on transition into a new class. All of the work we do complete this week will be handed to the Elephants new teacher, and you will be able to see it when their books come home at the end of the week!

In our Maths learning this week, we are focusing on time and today we learnt how to tell the time to an hour. We learnt that there is a second, minute and hour hand and in order to show the time to an hour, we would need the minute and hour hand.

We spoke about which one of these was the odd one out, we noticed it was the third clock, as it is meant to be showing ‘3 o’clock’, however the Elephants told us that the pink minute hand needed to be facing the 12 and the green hour hand needed to be facing the 3.

Tomorrow, we are going to be learning how to tell the time to half an hour.

In the afternoon, we have had Geography, where this afternoon we learnt about countries having different climates. We learnt that the countries closer to the equator have a hotter climate and we used this knowledge to compare the weather in Brazil and the United Kingdom.

Just a reminder that we have Sports day tomorrow afternoon, and so children are coming into school with their sports/PE clothes on, wearing their coloured tshirt to match their colour team.

Naming body parts

Elephants thought about everybody’s bodies and how they are all a bit different but also a bit the same. In Year 1 today we named lots of different body parts including elbow, shoulder and forehead and then we went on to talk about the names of the external private parts of our bodies. First we talked about the NSPCC’s Pants Rule, which says what’s in your pants belongs only to you. We watched their catchy song about it and you can watch the Pantosaurus song here:

Elephants then were introduced to two anatomically correct “new-born” baby dolls. They just had nappies on and we wondered how we could tell which was which. but we thought we couldn’t because they looked identical. Elephants just couldn’t tell the difference, but then we thought about how doctors and midwives tell parents if they have a boy or girl when they are born. They look at the naked new-born baby bodies and so we introduced the word “genitals” to mean “private parts” (which is what we have learnt in the Pants Rule song to mean what is covered by your pants) . We then learnt the words vulva for the external girls’ genitals and penis and testicles for the external boys’ genitals. Elephants were asked to label body parts, including the above, using a simple illustration. We then designed some swimming trunks and costumes for the children below, to cover up their genitals on the beach or at the pool.

Guide dog visit

We were unbelievably lucky today, as we had a visit from some special visitors from Guide Dogs UK (https://www.guidedogs.org.uk/ ) and their names were Dave, Larry, Lindsey and Dave’s guide dog Faldo. We had an amazing time listening to what Faldo does, as a guide dog for Dave and the Elephants had some fantastic questions to ask about Faldo and his special job. At the end of the talk, the Elephants got the chance to pet Faldo, but first Dave showed us how Faldo likes to petted. The Elephants who wanted to pet Faldo did and we got some lovely photos below!

Here is a video that Guide Dogs shared with us, so you can watch at home:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHXMePThvgw&feature=youtu.be

Thank you so much to Dave, Larry, Lindsey and Faldo for coming to see us and teaching us so much about guide dogs. We had the best time!

Here are some of our photos …

Money, money, money!

We have been working incredibly hard in Elephants so far in this term and we are slowly getting closer to the end of Year 1. We cannot believe it!

In English this week, we are going to be focusing on transition and moving into a new class (as we have our class swap next Monday 10th and so this will prepare all of the Elephants). In our English yesterday, we listened to a story about a boy called ‘River’ who was going to be moving from Year 1 to Year 2, just like the Elephants. We thought about what feelings River might have, including both good and not so good feelings. We also considered what would be the same about Year 2 and what could be a little bit different. It surprised the Elephants, how much of Year 2 looks the same as Year 1.

The Elephants then completed a drawing activity, where they drew some things they are looking forward to about Year 1 and things they are worried about. Then, they wrote 2 sentences to explain.

We reminded the Elephants that if they do have any worries, there are many adults or friends they can speak to or to ask any questions to.

In our Maths learning this week, we are focusing on money. We began yesterday with learning about ‘unitising’, which means knowing that each coin has it’s own value and they are not all the same value. We used ‘pre-money’ counters to explore this more.

Today, we learnt how to identify each of the coins shown below and put them in order from the smallest value to the greatest value.

This afternoon, we had PE, where we have been continuing with our Tennis lessons. We were really lucky that the rain stopped and we managed to get outside, where we continued learning how to use a tennis racquet and learnt what a ‘volley’ is.

We finished off by practising our class song for the Summer Concert at the end of this term, called ‘Reach for the stars’, which I am sure you have all heard as many of the Elephants said they have been practising at home!

Beach trip!

Good afternoon,

First of all, I just want to apologise as I have had some problems with posting on the blog, hence why there has been a break on posting. However, it is all sorted now and I can finally post again!

On Friday, we had our whole school beach trip, which was absolutely fantastic and the children had an amazing time. The weather and the beach were perfect.

We played, paddled, ate ice creams, picnicked, made sandcastles and even chased pesky seagulls -It was an amazing day and a fantastic memory to treasure.

New topic!

When the Elephants return after half term on Tuesday 6th June, we will be beginning our new topic called ‘The Scented Garden’. There have been some changes in our classroom to link in with this topic, have a look below ….

In our role play, the Elephants can have a go at making their own flowers to sell!

Reception area inside the garden centre.

Our new topic table, where you can find key words, word mats, non-fiction books and activities.

We hope you all have a lovely half term!

Half term home learning

We can’t believe we have come to the end of term 5! The Elephants have worked incredibly hard this term and we are so proud of them. We hope everyone has a wonderful half term.

At the beginning of next term, we have our Year 1 phonics screening check. During this check, the Elephants will be reading 40 words that include both real and alien (fake) words. The Elephants are encouraged to add their sound buttons to the word, sound-talk and then blend the word back together, saying the whole word.

To support this, we are sending home words in your child’s bag tonight to practise over half term. These will support your child’s learning in preparation for the phonics screening. Please encourage your child to read these independently, but also help if they get stuck or say the wrong sound. If there are any digraphs, trigraphs or split-vowel digraphs that your child finds trickier, if these are ones that can be focused on.

This is exactly what we have been doing in class and so the Elephants will understand what to do.

Below, I have explained how to add sound buttons to different phonemes:

digraph – 2 letters that make 1 sound (e.g. or, sh, ch, oa). We add a line underneath a digraph.
e.g.

split-vowel digraph – a digraph that has been split, with a letter in between (e.g. a-e, e-e, i-e) We add a ‘smile’ underneath a split-vowel digraph.
e.g.

polysyllabic word – a word that has more than one syllable. We can chop up a word, to help us to sound-talk and blend each part (e.g. playground, visit)
e.g.

Thank you so much for your on-going support with your child’s learning, we really do appreciate it.

Home Learning Term 5 Week 5

We are coming towards the end of our topic ‘Towers, Tunnels and Turrets’, can you believe! Your child’s homework this week will reflect what they have been learning in class.

Tonight the children will come home with a paper copy their home learning for this week. Included in this is:

• Writing sentences about the pictures. Please encourage your child to write these independently and help them, if needed, to recognise where their capital letter and full stop goes.
• Reading real and nonsense words, by adding phoneme buttons to read each sound-talk and blend each word.
• Answering addition and subtraction number sentences independently.

There is also one activity on Purple Mash, including: drawing a portrait of a family member or a friend and adding text to tell us about them (we have been learning about this in Computing).

Whilst there are lots of suggestions, there is no expectation for your child to complete them all – there are a range to choose from to suit you and your child working at home. Anything that is completed on paper, if it can be returned by Tuesday 24th May and the Elephants will put this into our home learning tray.
(with the phonics pack, this can be completed over the next few weeks)

If you have any questions regarding the homework, please do not hesitate to email me at: highl022@stpeters.medway.sch.uk.

As always, thank you for your support at home with your child’s learning.

Cyclopark

We had an amazing school trip to the Cyclopark in Gravesend this morning. Whilst we were there, we visited two play-parks with brilliant equipment, we visited the cyclopark for a cycling challenge, where the Elephants had to follow the pretend roads, stopping at traffic lights and visiting the petrol station. Finally, we also completed an obstacle course in the basketball court. Despite the weather, we had a really fun morning!

Thank you to Mrs Curzon for organising this trip!

Here are some of our photos…