Archived Class 1

Welcome to Class 1 Activities 2023-24

Summer 2

Week 4

We have had such a fun packed week this week! We have been using our phonics to write tricky words and using punctuation to make our sentences even better. In numeracy we have been finding missing numbers , forming our numbers correctly and saying what is 1 more/ less than a given number.On Wednesday we had class swap day and meet our new teachers and worked in our new classes. We loved class 2 and class 3. On Thursday we went to Hamsterley Forest, it was amazing. We made crowns out of Forest materials, built dens, went bug hunting and played in the park.

Week 3

In Literacy this week we have been sequencing the events of our class story, ‘A squash and a squeeze’. In Numeracy we have been focusing on the formation of our tricky numbers.
we have been learning about how to look after our animal friends in Science.
On Tuesday we had a fantastic time participating in our sports day we were amazing. We have been singing songs linked to our farm topic in our music sessions this week.

Week 2

This week has been yet another fun packed week. We have been learning about animals and their babies in science. In literacy we have been using punctuation marks to make our sentences even better! In Numeracy we have been taking away groups of objects from each other and finding the total.
Our Forest school this week was super exciting we listened to ‘A squash and a squeeze’ and decided to make homes out of the natural materials we found outside for our animals.
In P.E we practised our races for sport days! We are so good at our races I’m sure you will be very impressed on Tuesday. In Art we have been painting healthy fruit and vegetables. We have had great fun!

Week 1

We have had a fabulous first week back and have enjoyed listening to each other’s holiday news and looking at their holiday pictures. In Literacy we have been writing about farm animals linked to our farm topic. In numeracy we have been practising our addition. In science we talked about the animals we can find on a farm.
We looked at machinery from the farm of the past in our history session. In P.E, we enjoyed competing in races practising for our sporting event. We talked about people we love and why they were so special to us in SEAL.

  

Summer 1 

Week 6

We have had a fabulous ending to our half term. In Literacy we have been writing about our class caterpillars that have now made chrysalis. We now know how to use capital letters and full stops to make our writing amazing.
In Numeracy we have been continuing repeating patterns.
Our Science this week has been based on observations of our Caterpillars and exploring our school grounds for mini beasts. In P.E we practising our running, throwing and catching skills.
In Art we created beautiful butterflies using our painting skills.

Week 5

This week has been very exciting, we have been introduced to our mini beast friends, our Caterpillars. We have spent our time watching them grow and becoming cocoons. In Literacy we have been writing about our mini beast friends, using capital letters and full stops.

In Numeracy we have been counting groups of objects and adding them together.
For P.E we have been practising our throwing and catching skills. It has been mental health awareness week this week and we have been busy talking about our feelings and what makes us happy.

Week 3

This week in Literacy we have been working on writing our own names. In Maths we have been introduced to the number 15 and continuing with our addition.
We had visitors on Wednesday who came to check our vision, we looked so cool in our special green glasses!
In P.E we were perfecting our throwing and catching skills. In science we have been investigating different mini beasts and the environments in which they live. We had an excellent music session singing along to our favourite nursery rhymes and trying hard to clap to the beat.

Week 2

This week we have been investigating mini beasts and describing them in our writing jobs. In Maths we were introduced to number 13 and experimented making whole numbers out of two groups of objects.
In P.E we explored jumping and tried so hard to get ourselves over the hurdles.
Our science investigation was mini beast homes and we created these with natural materials in our Forest school session.

Week 1

This week we have been busy introducing our new topic of ‘mini beasts’,
We searched and observed mini beasts in Forest school for our science topic.
We made a fact file about a ladybirds in Literacy.
In numeracy we explored our numerals to 10.
In P.E we explored moving our bodies in different directions and different speeds around the hall.

Spring 2

Week 4 Highlights….

In Literacy, we have been busy using speech bubbles to write what our handsome Prince whispered to Sleeping Beauty before she woke.
In Numeracy we have been exploring and experimenting with shape and repeated patterns.
We have made knights with movable parts and Easter cards in our Design and Technology sessions.
In French we have been learning French nursery rhymes and singing them with our fabulous accents.
We have been exploring magnets in science and we now know the terms , attract and repel.

Week 3 Highlights…

This week we have been working on our Sleeping Beauty story. We have been writing about our characters and role playing them in our castle area.
In Numeracy we have been exploring shape by creating pictures using a variety of different shapes.
Our music sessions have been spent learning our new ‘frogs legs and dragons teeth’ song. It was very funny, we loved it.
In P.E we concentrated on making slow and fast dance moves to our music and making big and small movements.
We made knights with movable parts in our Design and Technology session.
We had a fabulous time celebrating Comic Relief by competing in our funny football session.

Week 2 highlights….

We have had yet another extremely busy week this week. In Literacy we have been working on our ‘Sleeping beauty’ story, sequencing and learning our princess song. We are fabulous at this job!
In Numeracy we have been counting groups of objects and matching the totals with their numerals.
On Tuesday we visited Rainton Meadows and enjoyed ‘going on a bear hunt’ activities. They were so well behaved and had an amazing time.
In P.E we enjoyed moving to music and keeping to the beat. We investigated Rosa Parks for to celebrate Woman’s history month.

Week 1 highlights…..

We began our week with a visit from Adam Bushnell, who introduced our new topic ‘Castles’ by telling us amazing tales and showing us his collection of ‘royal findings’. We have been writing and talking our castles in our Literacy sessions.

In Numeracy, we were busy bees ordering numbers to 5 and 10 on our number lines and forming our number 9’s.

We have been learning, ‘a princess lived long, long ago’ in music and loved role playing the different parts of the song.

In P.E went completed our final gymnastic session of this half term, we are amazing at our forward rolls!

In Science we have been investigating changes of state and being investigators of changing materials.

Spring 1

Week 7 Highlights….

We’ve had yet another fun packed week beginning this week with celebrating Chinese New Year. We made lanterns, dragon masks, watched dragon dances and ate Chinese food. What a treat!
We then celebrated Shrove Tuesday by designing, making, then eating delicious pancakes!
Our Literacy this week was all about sequencing Dinosaur pictures and writing about our yummy pancakes.
In Numeracy we practised our counting skills and we’re introduced to our Ten Town number 8.
P.E this week was all about our special gymnastic rolls and we even got our parachute out to play with. We loved that!
We have had such a brilliant week!

Week 6 Highlights….

This week in Literacy we read ‘Harry and the bucketful of Dinosaurs’ and talked and wrote about our favourite things and what we would carry in our buckets. Our Numeracy jobs this week have involved the introduction of 5/10 Frames and placing the correct amounts of objects in each section. We have also been introduced to Knight seven. We have been trying so hard to form our numbers correctly.
In Art, we worked as a team and created Dinosaur homes with our collected recycled materials, ( thank you again for those who contributed).
Being mental health awareness week we completed many tasks relating to our mental health and what makes us happy.
In P.E this week we perfected our forward rolls and played lots of team building games.
We have had so much fun!

Week 5 Highlights…

We have been such busy bees this week!

In Literacy we read, ‘How do dinosaurs eat their lunch’ and talked about their own food preferences. They drew their favourite meal and wrote words or sentences about their food choices.

Our Numeracy job this week was counting sets of objects and selecting the correct numeral to match our set. We have also been searching for our hidden numbers around our classroom and building towers of that number. Our Ten Town job was number 6 and we enjoyed watching ‘Seal six’ get up to so much trouble in the sea and practised forming our number 6 beautifully.

This week, in P.E we tried hard to do our 5 step forwards rolls. We talked about our feelings in our SEAL time and discussed what made us happy or sad, using our feeling fans to help us.

Our Art job this week to create printed repeated patterns using paint, which we placed on our dinosaur templates, we loved this job!

In computing we had great fun programming our Beebots to move forwards and backwards using our arrow keys.

Week 4 Highlights…

This week we have been introducing 5 frames in numeracy and focusing on blending CVC words in Literacy.

We have also been using adjectives to verbally describe dinosaurs and what they look like.

At forest schools we had lots of fun toasting marshmallows on the firepit.

In PE we have had a great experience taking part in New Age Kurling.

Swimming Superstar!

UNCRC Article 29: Every child has the right to an education that develops their personality, talents and abilities to the full. 

Well done to Maisie who has blown us out of the water with her swimming ability!

Level 4 and she is only in our Reception class – we can definitely see a talented swimmer of the future. Keep this up 🙂

Week 3 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Every child has the right to relax and play.

This week we have had lots of fun making dinosaurs in Art/DT. We got really creative and added personalised touches making our own OSAURUS!

In numeracy we have been doing rapid number recall for subitising numbers up to 5, 10 and some of us beyond.

We learned how to say hello in French and the children have been saying ” Bonjour” ever since 🙂

We had lots of fun at our Arts coffee morning too so thank you for everyone who came along. For the next 2 weeks Mrs Dyer will be shadowing in Class 1 so that she can get a good feel for our daily routines whilst watching Mrs Morton deliver our curriculum.

Week 2 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 29: Every child has the right to an education that develops their personality, talents and abilities to the full. 

This week we have been focusing on oracy skills in literacy and sharing our weekend / holiday news. In Numeracy we are continuing with ten town and really trying hard to form all of the numbers correctly, saying their number rhyme as we go.

Phonics regrouping and assessment has taken place and we are encouraging all of the children to update the writing in their red phonics books if they haven’t already. Sounds will be less frequent in these books now as we move into the blending stage of reading words e.g. c/a/t = cat.

Forest schools was fun this week and we enjoyed making natural woodland crowns.

Week 1 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 24: Every child has the right to good healthcare.

This week we have launched our new topic chosen by the children; ‘Dinosaurs’. In PE, we have moved onto the new skill; Gymnastics where we will be focusing on skills in balance and core strength 🙂

Autumn 2

Week 6 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 14 – Every child has the right to freedom of thought, belief and religion.

The Elves have arrived at Nettlesworth!

This week the elves have arrived in school – ooooh what a disaster they have caused! We need to show them our best Rights Respecting behaviour before it’s too late! Santa Claus will NOT be impressed 🙂

Week 5 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 14 – Every child has the right to freedom of thought, belief and religion.

This week we have been working hard in literacy to write our name independently, for making the capital letter tall and other lowercase letters smaller. We have been writing letters and making lists for Santa so that we can send them to the North Pole 🎅🧑‍🎄

In Numeracy we have been identifying sets / groups of numbers quickly. This is called subatising and is a skill we will use throughout school to recognise groups of numbers in different ways in mental maths. The quicker the better is the challenge and without counting 1 by 1 too, just knowing what the number looks like 🔢
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9N_IUgD_QM

We also performed our Christmas nativity on Thursday and blew our teachers away with our singing, dancing and speaking in front of a big audience. We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did!

Week 4 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 29: Every child has the right to an education that develops their personality, talents and abilities to the full. 

This week we have been getting into the festive spirit with rehearsals for our Nativity show. We have been learning about the Christmas story in RE and talking about the different ways it is celebrated around the world.

Our classroom was sprinkled with Christmas cheer as the tree and decorations went up on December 1st and we all joined as a whole school to decorate our Christmas Tree in the Hall. Forest schools this week was fun as we took a magical trip to the woodland and created wands from natural resources we could find. Finally, we had LOTS of fun in the snow this week and it linked great to our science work of melting and freezing 🙂

Week 3 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Every child has the right to relax and play.

We have had so much fun exploring our new role play area – We make wonderful Jungle Explorers 🙂

Also this week we had lots of Forest Schools fun, learning about road safety and the boundary of where we can and can’t go in the woodland, a mini Little Kickers sessions – which we excelled at and music movers – jungle style 🙂

Week 2 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 29: Every child has the right to an education that develops their personality, talents and abilities to the full. 

This week we have taken part in many whole school events; not only with our peers but the local community. These involved World Kindness Day, UK Parliamentary Coffee Morning, Anti-Bullying Week & Children In Need. We also completed our Balance Ability sessions and have made excellent progress.

Week 1 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 24: Every child has the right to good healthcare.

This week we have launched our new topic chosen by the children; ‘Down in the Jungle’. In PE, we have moved onto the new skill; Games. We are practising following instructions in throwing and catching as well as working so hard to dress and undress ourselves fully – it would be great if you could continue this at home too 🙂

We have also had our first visit from Oral Hygienist, Elaine and took part in the whole school Remembrance Day Service.

Week 7 Highlights…

Class 1’s Stay ‘n’ Play

Careers Experience – Intensive Care Nurse

Halloween Disco 2023…

Week 6 Highlights…

We have had so much fun this week looking at different careers. It was a great experience having a fire service engineer come into school to show us the different types of extinguisher to help protect us in the event of a fire. Here are some of our highlights…

Week 5 Highlights…

This week we have introduced musical instruments into our music lesson with Mrs McCartney. We explored tapping, scraping and shaking instruments and had lots of fun forming our own little band 🙂

We launched our Literacy topic of ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ and had so much fun exploring and describing all of the different textures from different parts of the story.

In Yoga we learned 2 new poses – Tiger and Slide which practised our balancing and core strength skills.

We have been taking a close look at Seasonal Changes as the Autumn leaves begin to fall and have created a wonderful class artwork display using different techniques such as; stroking, splatting and printing.

Week 4 Highlights…

This week we have enjoyed yoga and music again with our coach and music teacher. We have also been learning to sing Big Red Combine Harvester for our upcoming performance at the Harvest Festival in Church. The children have tried really hard to copy the actions at the same time as singing 🙂

We have also set our personal targets for the term and talked about our class charter. We have chosen to focus on UNCRC Articles:
28: Every child has the right to an education,
31: Every child has the right to play and rest,
23: Every child has the right to join in even if they have a disability.

Week 3 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 28: Every child has the right to an education.

This week we have began our baseline work looking at numbers, shapes, letters, colours and many more concepts.

We have been looking at our own features and spotting what makes us unique and special. It was so much fun looking in the mirror and painting a self-portrait for our classroom display board.

Week 2 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.

We have completed our first full week back in school after the summer break and have had lots of fun taking part in new activities.

We have been looking at how doctors and nurses can look at our bones inside of our bodies by using X-Rays before creating our own X-rays of different body parts 🩻

We also had our first music lesson led by Mrs McCartney who had us fascinated with the sound of the ukulele, as well as our first PE session with coach Beth who showed us many new yoga positions 🧘‍♀️It has been great to see the children build more friendships this week 😊

Week 1 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Every child has the right to relax and play.

What a great first few days at school we have had in Class 1. The children have settled in really well and made lots of new friendships. It has been exciting to explore our indoor and outdoor classroom – with the new areas and topic ‘Marvellous Me!’ I can’t wait to come back next week and see all of our lovely smiling faces – until then, have a wonderful weekend 🙂

WELCOME BACK!!!

UNCRC Article 24: Every child has the right to good healthcare.

It is wonderful to see all of the children settling into school really well. We are beginning the year with our first topic that is; Marvellous Me!

We are learning about all of the wonderful things that make us similar and different and about the careers of different people who help us. We have settled in to our new routines exceptionally well – we LOVE the dinner hall where we can see all of our older friends and family members.

Here are some photos of our role play area which is a hospital 🙂

Welcome to Class 1 Activities 2022-23

Week 5 Highlights

UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.

This week has been jam packed with lots of exciting events 🤩 On Monday, we marked the start of Wimbledon with a tennis festival led by Mr Beveridge & our sports leaders 🎾

On Tuesday, we held a Superhero event in school with other schools from around Durham. The carousel wolf activities were super fun and we had lots of fun dancing to the music as we moved around the school field 🦸🏻‍♀️ 🦸🏼‍♂️

We also performed our end of year performance of; The Enormous Turnip. The children looked fantastic in their costumes and I am sure you will all agree, pulled off an amazing show 👩‍🌾 *We are trying to get the video uploaded but the IT technician is having trouble so we will try to get this resolved as soon as possible.

Week 4 Highlights

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.

This week we have had so much fun practising cooking skills on the fire. We toasted marshmallows on the fire and made them into delicious S’mores 🍡

Week 3 Highlights

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

This week we celebrated SPORTS DAY in school, we were sad that we were unable to welcome our friends and family to the event but took part in it in school and had just as much fun! Green team were this year’s winners – well done to everyone who took part 😁

We also went on our trip to Hamsterley Forest which was so much fun! We took part in the Zog trail and found lots of clues that led us to the Gruffalo!

Week 2 Highlights

UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.

This week we had a visit from the amazing Author; Adam Bushnell. It was great to hear some of the stories he has wrote and we enjoyed making characters for our own stories too 😁

We practised our races for Sports Day and had lots of fun working as part of our team for the afternoon in PE 🏃‍♀️

In numeracy we have started to look at time measures; seasons, months and days of the week. Here is the link to the song we have been singing along to daily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwWzDTf0yBc

Week 1 Highlights

UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.

This week we were thrilled to come back to school after the half term holidays to catch the final butterflies hatching from their chrysalides 🦋 We found a beautiful new habitat for them outside on the yard with lots of wild flowers for them to fly amongst 🌸🌼

Our new topic, chosen by the children is ‘Down on the Farm’ and our new role play area will be a farm shop & café 🐮🐷🐥🐴

We took part in a football event on Friday, raising money and awareness for Soccer Aid. The children had lots of fun on the school field – and even more fun watching the ‘children vs. teachers’ final game of the day ⚽️

Remote Learning – 5.6.23

Hello and welcome back to the final Summer Term!

Today I have provided some remote learning activities for you to do at home with your child;

For Phonics, it would be great if you could watch the link below and encourage your child to join as if in a lesson in class.

The link is:
https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/6775Tp7F/vkmf1iHB

It would be also be good if you could spend some time 1:1 with your child reading their sound cards, green cards or reading book. Please record any comments in their reading log and encourage ‘Fred Talk – read the word’ if they are blending sounds together to read words. To build fluency please remember to get your child to read back the full sentence without sounding out – this will support their memory at sentence level too 🙂

In Literacy, we will be drawing pictures of our half term holiday. You could start by showing your child photos or talking about what you have done at home.
After this, encourage your child to make marks, draw pictures, write words or sentences about the holiday highlights.

For Numeracy, we are looking at doubling numbers and writing the number sentence for this. You can use any objects or toys around your home and double the quantity using lots of maths language:
“If I have 2 toys and I double it (add 2 more). How many will I have altogether? Double 2 is? 2+2=4”
For an extra challenge you could encourage your child to write the number sentence down on paper with the correct mathematical symbols.
I have attached a link to the doubles song that we listen to daily in class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYWclXKzOJo 

In Science, we are looking at life cycles and how many different species change from birth. I have attached a video below to share with the children. They could talk about their favourite animal and their life cycle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDDDwfvVUe4 

If you have any questions, I am in all day, so please do not hesitate to contact me 🙂

Our Sixth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

This week we have had lots of end of term fun 🤩

We have taken home our bean plants that we have carefully been taking care of – it would be great if you could continue to share the growth of them at home too 🌱 We completed our final balance ability session with coach Darren 🚲 He was very impressed with our listening skills, balancing and coordination 😊 We were very excited to see that our caterpillars had all moved into their chrysalides, meaning they could be moved into the net in preparation for them to become butterflies 🐛 🦋 Finally, well done to everyone who completed the reading challenge! You are little superstars. Have a fantastic half term 😊

Our Fifth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

This week we have been working extremely hard with the balance ability coaches to perfect our gross motor skills and coordination in order to improve our movement when riding a bike 🚲 Darren was really impressed with how well we responded to the sessions and thinks many of the children will be ready for pedals adding to the balance bikes soon. We have 5 riders with pedals too which is FANTASTIC 🤩

We have observed our caterpillars change into their chrysalides this week which has been amazing to watch – we are now waiting for them to turn into butterflies 🐛🦋

Our bean seeds have started to grow too and I am very proud of the care and attention the children have given to them, remembering each day to water them 🌱

In Literacy, we have been looking at ‘The Cautious Caterpillar’ and writing about the feelings of the characters in different parts of the story. In Numeracy, we have continued our number bonds work and are beginning to recall numbers bonds to 10 as well as 5.

Our Fourth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.

This week we have have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar 🐛

We have 5 new additions to the classroom at the moment as we observe the lifecycle of a caterpillar to a butterfly. Each day the children get excited to see how much food they have eaten and how much they have grown 🦋

In Numeracy, we have been working on rapid recall of number bonds to 5 and their written number sentence (e.g 3+2=5) and beginning number bonds to 10 (e.g 2+8=10).

Finally, in Science we have been planting seeds and over the coming weeks we will be observing the growth process as they grow into bean plant. The children chose their own type of bean to plant; climbing beans, broad beans, French beans and runner beans and are working hard to water it each day 🫘

Our Third Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.

This week our learning has been focused on the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III, throughout the curriculum in different subjects, assemblies and after-school clubs. It has been a fantastic build up to the King’s coronation ceremony which took place on Saturday 6th May 2023, 11am at Westminster Abbey in London.

On Friday 5th May 2023 the children and staff were invited to come into school wearing red, white and blue clothing to mark this amazing event that will be wrote in the History books for many years to come. We had a mini street party and took part in a special ‘run through’ of a coronation service 🇬🇧

We have had lots of fun celebrating our wonderful country and the British Values we keep, have a wonderful long weekend 🤩

Our Second Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

This week we have enjoyed engaging in our new topic, MINIBEASTS! We visited Washington Wetlands Centre and took part in a Minibeast hunt; focusing on the different habitats that they in. It was interesting to see the pond bugs that we had collect in our trays on the special camera. It was great to see so many different types of ducks too – our favourite was the Ed Sheeran with an orange fluffy head. We watched the otters being fed and talked about how we can play a part in protecting endangered species in the wild. In the afternoon, we saw the flamingos being fed lunch and found our fun facts about their colour changing life cycle.

Welcome back & First Week Highlights 👋🏼

UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.

Welcome back, I hope you have all had a wonderful Easter break! As we start the new term the children have chosen to learn about the topic ‘Minibeasts’. The children are so excited to find out about all things that wriggle, fly and crawl 🐜 🐛 🐞

Spring 2

Our Fifth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

This week we have enjoyed lots of Easter fun and celebrated the end of our castles topic 🌟

We…

* planned and designed our egg to enter in the whole school Easter egg competition – all were fantastic and everyone received a prize for taking part,

* made Easter cards with little finger and thumb prints to create bunnies and chicks 🐥

* made crowns and cakes for our medieval banquet 🏰

* took part in a hattastic day raising money for brain tumours 🧠

* attempted to track down the Easter bunny (or at least we tried) only finding his chocolate-y treats 🐰

Have a wonderful Easter break! 🥚🤩

Our Fourth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

This week we have had enjoyed lots of role play in the Castle. We have been looking at different foods that may have been on the table during a medieval banquet 🍗 as well as the different roles and jobs within castles from long ago 🏰

In science, we have been nature detectives finding bugs in different habitats on our field now that spring has sprung 🐜 🐛 🐞

We have been exploring the celebrations that happen at Easter and in PE we have been finalising our Dance routine that we have been learning this half term 🤩

Science Day

Today we had a fantastic afternoon, taking part in a science experiment, investigation or activity. Each class had a teacher from another class teaching a fun activity, all to do with ‘connections’.

Class 1 became Nature Detectives with Miss Grimes and had to find lots of different mini beasts. We named as many different bugs as we could, before going outside and seeing which ones we could find on the school grounds. We all described one of the bugs and discussed the similarities and differences between them. We loved using different equipment to explore various habitats.

Maths Day

Class 1 were learning all about one more and one less and showing me how they can count to 8! Each of the children were given a certain amount of objects and had to tell me one more or one less. It was lovely to see the progress the children have made so far!

Our Third Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.

This week we have enjoyed looking at different castles through the ages and how they have changed over the years. We found out that Castles needed to have very thick walls to protect the people inside of it! We also found out that building a castle on top of a hill, with water around it is a good way to protect it!

We had great fun on our Bear Hunt at Maiden Castles; we learned actions to create a bear dance, participated in a carousel of activities focusing on our fundamental movement skills and as a grand finale went on a bear hunt and found THE BEAR!!

Red Nose day was so exciting – we took part in a whole school skipping afternoon focusing on jumping skills with the big rope 🤩

Our Second Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.

This week we have so many exciting things to share with you all 🤩 In Literacy, we have been looking at setting the scene for stories based around fairytale castles 🏰 In numeracy, we have started our new focus on odd and even numbers 🔢

We have celebrated International Woman’s Day, this year we held an assembly that focused on how we can challenge gender stereotypes through career-related learning, giving ALL children the inspiration and support to pursue their dreams #EmbracingEquity 🙅🏻‍♀️

We had lots of fun on our school trip to the Seven Stories in Newcastle (a firm favourite highlight for many was the bus there and back 😂). We played the important role of detectives and had to find the nursery rhyme thief in the castle gallery. We took part in a carousel of activities to unveil the clues that solved the royal mystery, having lots of fun along the way 🕵️‍♀️🕵️‍♂️

As part of our ongoing work for Fairtrade Fortnight 2023, we have worked hard to identify the logo which is found on Fairtrade products and learned about how these products allow farmers around the world to be paid a fair price for their hard work when growing crops such as bananas🍌

We had a visit from Martin and the firefighters, who talked about the importance of fire safety and even let us climb into the fire engine and try on some protective clothing that they use at work 🔥

Finally, we were surprised by a fantastic covering of snow today ❄️ We had lots of fun making Frosty the Snowman, making snow angels and exploring the effects of freezing and melting ☃️

Our First Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

This week we have enjoyed interacting with our friends from school again and have had lots of fun choosing our new topic of learning and designing our role play area.

In Numeracy, we have been focusing on number bonds up to 5 and working hard to recall these as quickly and accurately as possible. In Literacy, we have begun our new focus on Fictional Fairytale texts which have Castle settings in them – we can’t wait to visit the Seven Stories next week!

We also took part in an whole school games competition with the Durham Sports Partnership – it was lots of fun 🙂

‘Skip into Spring’

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

We have launched our half term of skipping challenges in Class 1 and have been focusing on perfecting our 2 feet to 2 feet jumping. We started off low and were jumping over the wriggling rope before working hard to listen to the click and jumping high over the rope. It was great to see so many children taking their PE session out onto the yard with our sports leaders 🙂

World Book Day – Thursday 2nd March 2023

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

Today we celebrated World Book Day and all of the children came to school dressed as their favourite book character, bringing along their favourite book. We had lots of fun finding the hidden character form the fairy tales.

Welcome back 👋🏼

UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.

Welcome back, I hope you have all had a wonderful half term! As we start the new term the children have chosen to learn about the topic ‘Castles’. The children are so excited to take their learning through different ages of castles and learning some wonderful traditional tales along the way!

Spring 1

Our Sixth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

This week we have had so much fun celebrating the end of our Space topic. We have created a wonderful piece of art work using different materials to achieve the most amazing solar system 👩‍🚀

At Forest schools, we were creating dens for our woodland friends and as an end of term treat we walked the long way home and stopped at the local park right next to our school. We had so much fun 🤩

Our highlight of the week was the springtime disco and Stay ‘n’ Play. It was so exciting to show you our classroom, play with our toys and friends as well as making delicious alien cheesecakes! 👽

Have a wonderful half term everyone 🌟

Our Fifth Week Highlights…

E-Safety Coffee Morning

Mental Health Week

Our Fourth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.

This week we have been looking at addition and subtraction by taking or adding 1 to a group of objects. We are also looking at the composition of numbers and what they are made of so we can identify quantities and numerals quickly by just looking at a group of objects. 🔢

In PE we have been perfecting our balances in Gymnastics and beginning to move onto rolls. We are focusing on log rolls, egg rolls and progressing onto forward rolls. 🤸🏼

We had lots of fun developing our teamwork skills during Commando Joe’s on Friday as we need to rescue the Teddy from Space and help the stars shine brighter to find our way home. We worked very well in groups of 5 to effectively communicate and work as a team on this mission – well done class 1 & the Class 5 COJO leaders! 👏🏼

Our Third Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 14: Children and young people are free to be of any or no religion.

This week we have been busy celebrating the festival of Chinese New Year. We had fun exploring the Forest again and it looked different to the previous week – there was no frost or snow 🙂 We began our computing work with beebot and were fantastic at giving directions and programming him around the space mat.

Chung Hei Fat Choi 🧧🥠🥢

Today we celebrated Chinese New Year with our friends in class 2, we made Chinese lanterns, created a handprint bunny card, looked at the story of the great race and zodiac calendar as well as tasted some delicious Chinese food and watch a video about a Chinese street celebration 🤩🥢🥠🧧

Our Second Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.

This week we have began our forest schools journey. We started with a fresh and frosty walk to and from our site and explored the boundary and where we can and can’t play. We introduced our fire circle and listened to the story of how to keep ourselves safe in the woodland.

We completed our role play rocket in Art & DT and have had lots of fun looking at famous astronauts from around the world 🌎

We have also had lots of fun in the snow ❄️ We tried to build a snowman but it ended up a miniature snow mouse instead ☃️

Our First Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities. 

Welcome back 👋🏼

UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.

Welcome back, I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year! As we start the new term the children have chosen to learn about the topic ‘Space’. The children are so excited to take their learning all the way around the solar system!

Autumn 2

Dib & Dab’s Christmas Panto

UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.

Christingle 

UNCRC Article 14: Children and young people are free to be of any or no religion.

Today we shared our Christingle service in school with Rev.Michael from the local Church. Here are the highlights of the service for you to watch from home…

Merry Christmas to you and all of your family!

Our Seventh Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an education.

This week we have had so much Christmas fun! We have had Christmas lunch with all of our friend’s and teacher’s, a Christmas Disco with a surprise visitor, took part in an Elf run for charity, performed an icy science experiment, created Christmas cards, calendars and a tree decoration for our family as well as had some cheeky elves visit the entire school causing mischief throughout our final days 🙂

Our Sixth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.

This week we have enjoyed exploring our topic even further by looking at Polar climates and how different animals survive there. We have compared this to the climate of our country and  talked about how different animals live in different parts of the world.

We have looked in detail at the Christmas Story and discussed why Christmas is so important to many Christians today.

Christmas Counts – Our Nativity

Today Class 1, 2 and 3 performed the show; ‘Christmas Counts’ to our family and friends. We have all worked incredibly hard to learn our lines, perform the songs as well as remembering when to come on and off the stage. We hope you all enjoyed the show as much as we did 🙂

Our Fifth Week Highlights…

This week we have stepped into the Christmas Cheer as we saw the month change from November to December! We saw our first frost on the field and did little science experiment to see what happened to the ice and frosted leaves when we brought them indoors with us. ❄️ Also in science we have been adding to our seasonal change chart as lots of things have changed since we updated it in Autumn – I can tell the children are going to love learning all about Winter 🌨

Our big focus this week has been The Nativity as we started rehearsing it in the school hall in preparation for the play on Thursday 🌟

We have also been creative in Art making Arctic background by colour mixing and collage polar bears for our new classroom display 🖼

One of our special school traditions took place this week too, our classroom changed and we helped decorate them to mark the 1st December … as well as our whole school tree in the hall. Every child and adult had to add a bauble whilst dancing to festive music 🎼 We had so much fun, especially when the lights got turned down and we all listened to the traditional poem ‘Twas the Night before Christmas’ before the great unveiling of the light switch on 🎄Special memories with our school family!

Our Fourth Week Highlights…

UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.

This week we have been reading the story ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ and thinking about words to describe the story setting. We are going to be creating our own story settings next week ❄️🗻

In numeracy we have been looking at language that give clues as to what calculation we need to do. For example the word altogether is linked to addition and the phrase how many are left links to subtraction ➕➖🟰

We have also had the first of our ORAL HYGIENE visits this week and in the first session we have been learning how we can look after our teeth. We talked about
🔵 Foods that are good as snacks,
🟢 Foods that are not good snacks with lots of sugar in (therefore these should be kept to only eaten at mealtimes)
🟣 Brushing our teeth twice a day,
🟡 Going to the dentist.
The children loved dressing up as the dental nurse, dentist and patient – I can see some future careers in dental hygiene in Class 1 🦷🪥