Class 1 Activities

Week 3 highlights…

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

This week in Literacy we have been looking at punctuation and what we need to use in our sentences to make them perfect! We have focused on finger spaces in between words and a full stop at the end to show that we are finished.

In Numeracy we have been looking at ways to make 5 and ways to make 10, quickly. We have done this over and over again to help it stick.

We have been looking at different animals in the jungle and comparing their habitats – the children had so much fun learning our new song ‘Jungle Boogie’ too!

We have continued to enjoy our weekly forest schools sessions – this week we made s’mores with chocolate on – mmmmmm! We also had so much fun with our Year 5 friends who came along with us too.

🐆🐒🦧🐍🦜🦁

Bike ability with Coach Darren

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

We had so much fun taking part in bike ability with the Durham School Sports Partnership; Coach Darren was blown away by our determination and resilience when Learning this life long skill. Every child has made progress since starting the sessions on Monday and I am very proud of everyone 👏🏼🚴

Dentist Visit

UNCRC Article 24: Every child has the right to the best possible health.

It was great to welcome a Dentist into school this week who worked with the children to look at sugar content in food and drinks, tooth decay and oral hygiene. The children were extremely engaged in the activity’s and so excited to share it with other children in the school. Well done class 1 🦷🪥

VE Day Celebrations 2025

Yesterday we celebrated VE Day and had a mini street party on the school field. We have been learning about World War 2 in history and creating artwork to share with the community on the school fence.

Summer 1

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Welcome back after the Easter break – I hope you all had an EGG-cellent time together doing all of the things you love. Our new topic is Jungle Explorer’s and we are so excited to for our learning to be taking a journey down in the Jungle! 🐆🐒🦧🐍🦜🦁

Easter Crafts Stay ‘n’ Play

Huge thank you to everyone who came along to our Easter crafts afternoon – the children had so much fun and it was lovely to welcome you all in school before the Easter break 🙂

Easter Egg Competition 2025

Huge congratulations to every child and their wonderful egg creation that they have been working hard on in school this year. Every child received a prize for their efforts, donated by Nettlesworth School Community Group and the winners received something EGG-stra special.

As usual the competition was judged by 2 children from a different class and no names were on the egg creations to make sure it was fair – big well done to the judges too for standing up on stage and announcing your reasons for the 3 top prizes.

Class 1 winners…

1st Place – Bobby with Gruffy, 2nd Place – Joshua with Sam the Dinosaur, 3rd Place – Jos with Spiderman

The Mayor of Durham visits Nettlesworth…

We were incredibly lucky to have a visit from the Mayor of Durham this afternoon, along with her bodyguards.

The children in Class 1 were fascinated at the jewels and clothing worn by the Mayor and were excited to perform her an action song using makaton signs. Class 2 performed a song in French that they have been practising this half term and Classes 3 and 4, performed; Three Little Birds using sign language. The children in class 5 ended the afternoon by sharing their work they have been doing with Durham Business Enterprise – she was blown away by the designs and detail put in and said she will pop by their market stall selling their products this weekend in Durham city. ✨

Through the Ages History Day…

Class 1 went right back to the stone ages and the children learned about how people used to live many, many years ago. We looked at mark making and places people would love – it was very different to our life today! We created fire torches to compliment our wonderful costumes 🐆

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom…

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

We have been having so much fun learning all about Space and the different planets that are in the Solar System. We have also been on a Space mission to the Moon – which the children enjoyed so much!

In Numeracy, we have been looking at odd and even numbers as well as 2d shapes and their properties. The children love hunting these shapes in the classroom. In Literacy, we have been looking at Non-fiction texts such as ‘Neil Armstrong’s moon landing’ and writing words to describe how he would feel / what the Moon would look like.

In Forest Schools, we have had lots of fun learning campfire cooking skills and have enjoyed; marshmallows, s’mores, chocolate bananas and even ‘Moon Milk’. We ended the week making Mother’s Day cards for the most important women in our lives… Our Mammy’s!

Forest Schools

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

We have been learning about fire safety at the forest and practising cooking skills in the fire circle at forest schools this half term. The children have perfected the ‘respect’ position when kneeling down near the fire and have had so much fun toasting marshmallows and making Smores.

Red Nose Day 2025

UNCRC Article 24: Every child has the right to the best possible health.

We had a whole school Red Nose Day party to celebrate the charity’s 40th birthday. We played sporty party games in the hall with the school sports leaders and watched the teachers take part in a party games race at the end of the day. 

British Science Week 2025

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

LET’S MAKE A PAPER CHAIN CATERPILLAR –  Class 1 children made a paper chain caterpillar, then changed it into a butterfly! By using different coloured paper, the children learned about metamorphosis and the colours of the rainbow.

We’re going on a Bear Hunt…

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Today we took part in a sports event with school’s across Durham at Maiden Castle. It was so much fun and based around the story – ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’. We worked both indoors and outdoors on different speed, balance and agility activities that were so exciting!

World Book Day 📚

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

This week we celebrated World Book Day.  This annual celebration of authors, illustrators, books and the joy of reading is one of the highlights of our year! Class 1 had so much fun taking part ion a day of storytelling & reading for pleasure – celebrating texts of all genres.  Our assembly focused upon the importance of reading and we had a special visit from 2 sneaky burglars, a cat in a hat and a ‘Thing’ who caused a whole lot of mischief! 

Thank you to all our parents and carers for supporting the day and sending children into school dressed as a favourite book character.  All staff joined in for the occasion too – it was a wonderful day for everyone 🙂

 

Pancake day

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Today we were learning about Shrove Tuesday and why it is celebrated in the religion of Christianity. We marked the occasion by making our own pancakes and adding our favourite toppings.

Forest Schools

Today we have had so much fun putting all of our safety and fire skills into practise by having a fire and roasting marshmallows as a yummy treat! 🔥🍡

Spring 2

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Welcome back after the half term holiday. Our new topic is Space and we are so excited to for our learning to soar into infinity and beyond! 🚀☄️

Arghhhh me’ hearties

To end our topic this week we have had so much fun programming beebot around Treasure Island, making our own treasure maps and having fun sailing the seven seas. We have had a wonderful half term of learning all about ‘Pirates’!

Trincomalee Trip

Today, Class 1 went on their first ever school trip. We spent the day at Hartlepool Marina where we explored the historic quayside and museum as well as a real pirate ship! We had so much fun – especially when we stumbled across some fearsome pirates and had a dual with them! Shiver me timbers!

Pirate Wrap Maps

In DT, we have been planning and reading instructions to make our very own pirate wrap map. The children carefully planned what they were going to add to their wrap map before creating a delicious masterpiece! 

Dance with Gemma

Class 1 performed their finished dance project that they have been working on with Gemma this half term. It focused on moving in a group, individually and as a whole class – what a fantastic performance I am so proud of you all 🙂

Forest Schools

This week we have been creating a new area for our camp cafe at forest schools. We have been collecting natural resources for this in preparation for next week’s launch.

Children’s Mental Health Week 2025

This week, we have done lots of work linking to Children’s Mental Health Week. This year’s Place2Be theme is ‘Know Yourself, Grow Yourself’. The campaign this year aims to empower children and young people across the UK to embrace self-awareness and explore what it means to them.

We have been learning about emotions and how we cope with them as well as talking about what makes us feel different ways at home and at school.

On Friday we are having a dress to express day – where we can wear anything which makes us feel comfortable. We discussed anyone can wear dresses or football strips or pjs or fancy dress and how gender doesn’t have a uniform! 😊

E-Safety Coffee Morning 

Safer Internet Day

UNCRC 17: Every child has the right to media.

This week, we have done lots of work linking to Safer Internet Day. This year’s theme is Too Good to be true.

In Class 1 we have been learning about scams and Pop up Gremlins. We were shocked to find out that not everything we see on digital devices is always truthful.

For example; we can sometimes click on a cute little emoji telling us we have won some sweets or money and it could damage our whole device or take our important personal information!

We enjoyed sharing our work at a coffee morning with our friends and family.

Message in a Bottle

Arghhhh me hearties,

Today we arrived at school to find a ‘message in a bottle’. We thought we could hear a hook tapping on the window and all of a sudden a pirate sea shanty began playing! We were soo shocked and excited and went straight to investigate!

The message was all soggy but we managed to read it and found out that there were pirates loose in the school! We had to write words describing what the pirates could have looked like. The children created some fantastic pictures and used some great vocabulary. We had so much fun exploring indoors and outdoors to see if we could hunt any of them down! Some of us even created wanted posters to go around the school.

Before going home we checked the whole school and found a note staying they had left to go back to the Jolly Rodger not far from here! Phewww what a day!

Kung Hei Fat Choy!

Class One have enjoyed celebrating and learning all about Chinese New Year. This year is the year of the Snake. We learned about traditional ways that in China, people clean their houses to get rid of any bad luck and decorate with colourful lanterns and banners to bring in the New Year. We created our own paper chain dragons and spiral snakes to celebrate in Art.

In Literacy, we recreated the story of the Great Race learning how the Jade Emperor created the zodiac calendar in order of the animals who crossed the finish line.

In Maths, the children used 2D shapes to recreate images of Chinese dragons; we learned this is a symbol of good fortune.

Land Ahoy!

The children have settled back into school extremely well and have been very busy showing off all of their phonics and number knowledge so we can regroup for our adult led activities. I am so proud of each and every one of them and every child has made good progress from starting here with us in September.

In PE, we have started dance with coach Gemma. She has choregraphed us an amazing dance that we are learning each week and will send home once it is perfect!

This half term we are learning about Pirates as our learning sets sail. The children chose this topic and I think it is going to be arghhhh-mazing 🙂

The Next Generation of Authors – inspired by Adam Bushnell

Our children in EYFS worked incredibly hard with Adam to create their own super-animals based on the interactive and engaging story he told us all about ‘The Wise Old Man & the tortoise”. The children created their own sounds and actions for different parts of the story and had so much fun retelling it with great articulation. They were astonished when at the end of the story a tortoise statue appeared out of Adam’s special cage…. Which then turned into a real tortoise when we thought of our longest and craziest magic word “bomballiniosa”

We had so many children want to write more about their super-animal and some even created sentences for theirs. One of our favourite was the “elephant that had laser power eyes” 🐘

   

Welcome Back!

Hello and welcome back the first half of the Spring Term! I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. It is great seeing so many of you blogging on our EYFS platform of ClassDojo – the children have loved sharing their holiday news in circle time 🙂

Christmas Party 

Autumn 2 

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Welcome back after the half term holiday. Our new topic is Polar Explorers, where we will be visiting the North and South Pole on our Learning Journey 😊

Our First Harvest Festival at Church 👩‍🌾🌽🚜👏🏼

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

Week 8 Highlights…

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

Wow, how did we get here so fast?! We have completed our first half term in school and what a success it has been. I would just like to say how incredibly proud I am of your children for settling in so well, they are an absolute delight to teach and I can’t wait to share more milestones with them after the holidays 💫

This week we have been working hard to bring together our topic that we have been looking at this half term, ‘Marvellous Me and the People who help us’. We have been painting self portraits in art and used a mirror to carefully look at our features and talk about how we have changed from being a baby to now.

We have focused on hand hygiene with it being the time of year for bugs to hit, we learned a song to help us wash our hands correctly and practised hand washing for 20 seconds to match the length of time we sang 🤲🏻

We also had our first Halloween disco after school 👻🎃

Finally, we said a sad goodbye to our good friend Oskar who is moving to Scotland during half term, we had a party for him and have sent him away with a huge book of photos and memories that will last a lifetime – we wish you all the best Ozzy and hope you come down to visit soon ❤️

Week 7 – Stay ‘n’ Play…

UNCRC Article 31: Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

We had so much fun at our first Stay ‘n’ Play afternoon and the children were so excited to share with you their classroom and favourite areas to play. Thanks again to everyone who came along 🤗

Week 6 Highlights…

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

This week we have been really focusing on Oral blending. We have blended the sounds that we have learned this half term such as c-a-t together to say the full word afterwards. By the ends of half term, we are hoping to be able to blend 3 letter words when an adult says the sounds in the words to us 🙂

In art we have been creating skeletons of ourselves which links to the science work we have been doing which is all about our body parts.

In Little languages we have learned how to say Hello in French and we have also had an exciting taster lesson of Judo with Jamie.

Finally we came together with the rest of the school to raise awareness of Mental Health by taking part in Young Minds #wearyellow day. We were talking about feeling unwell on the outside e.g. falling over and hurting our knee – and explaining that we would ask for help or go to the doctors. Then talking about if you felt unwell or sad on the inside you would do the same thing!

Week 5 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

This week we have been putting all of our skills learned from Leanne’s weekly Fundamental Movement sessions into practise when introducing a ball to our game; Dodgeball. She is very impresssed at how good we are at listening and following instructions for Re pet ion children! Well done class 1 👏🏼

We have been focusing on forming the letters in our name this week, so if you could continue this at home that would be amazing ✍️

In music, we have been adding instruments and action scarves to the songs we have learned, as well as starting to learn the songs for our Harvest Festival at church in a couple of weeks time 🚜🌽

Week 4 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 1: Everyone under the age of 18 has all the rights in the Convention.

This week we have been talking about all of the careers around us that help us when we need it; doctors, nurses, dentists, police officers etc. We had lots of fun learning about these wonderful careers and all of us have big dreams and high aspirations for our future.

We have been creating our Class Charter, linking to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). As a Rights Respecting gold school we ensure that children’s rights are learned, practised, respected, and promoted – not only in our school but within the local as well as wider community. The children chose articles:
🌍 23 – Every child has the right to live a happy and decent life even if they have a disability.
🌍 28 – Every child has the right to an education.
🌍 31 – Every child has the right to rest and play.

Look below to see how we; as right holders and the adults; as duty bearers help us to ensure these rights are in place 🙂

Week 3 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 24: Every child has the right to the best possible health.

This week the children have explored our outdoor provision and it is wonderful to see so many friendship’s blossoming. We have been learning about people who help us and talking about how everyone is different but equally amazing.

We have celebrated Fairtrade Fortnight in School this week and have been identifying items that have the logo on, making sure that workers around the world get a fair price for their hard work. On Thursday we visited our school, Fairtrade Shop and had the opportunity to buy a range of Fairtrade products.

Today, we came into school wearing Jeans to raise money and awareness for children with genetic disorders; such as, sickle cell anaemia and brittle bone disease. We talked about how we can include children with genetic disorders and make them feel safe and happy 🧬

Week 2 Highlights…

UNCRC Article 31 Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities.

This week we have had so much fun getting to know our friends in class 1 and the routines in our school day. We have enjoyed our daily Storytime and singing nursery rhymes as well as acting our different roles in the areas of the classroom.

We began our weekly music lessons with Mrs Foster and Mrs Morton was extremely proud of how well we could keep the beat to different song tracks 🎶

We also began our PE sessions with Coach Leanne on a Monday; focusing on fundamental movements and Beth on a Wednesday; teaching Yoga 🧘‍♀️

Our Topic…

This half term we are learning about ‘Marvellous Me’ and how we are all unique. 

UNCRC Article 24: Every child has the right to the best possible health

Welcome to Class 1…

This week our youngest members of our family joined the school. They have had so much fun exploring their new classroom and meeting their friends and teacher. 

UNCRC Article 28 Every Child has the right to an education