Christmas lunch
We had a lovely lunchtime yesterday. We visited the ‘Mrs Pennock inflatable display Christmas grotto’ and then had a lovely Christmas lunch together in the hall!
Christmas in 2C
This week we have been very excited about the run up to Christmas. We’ve done lots of lovely activities such as made cards, calendars and crafts. We’ve done 2 Christmas productions for the adults, seen some special Christmas decorations and today we had a lovely Christmas lunch. See what we’ve been getting up to!
We can’t wait for our Christmas party tomorrow (9am)! Remember to send your child in their own clothes, some snacks for after the party and a bag to send all of their bits and bobs home!
Christmas in KS1
The children have been enjoying a lovely festive week in school this week. They performed their little socks off and displayed their singing and dancing talents at both of the Nativity shows. WELL DONE YEAR 1 AND 2!!!
Today, in all classes, we received a mysterious phone call to tell us that we had been sent a very special email. The big man himself, Santa Claus, had sent us an email with a video to watch. It turns out he had been to our school when we were at home last night and he had delivered some gifts to our classrooms for us. We were SO excited and searched for the presents in class. There was one for everyone. We’re even more excited now for the Christmas dinner tomorrow and for the party on Friday.
Merry Christmas everyone from all the KS1 staff.
Help at home: by taking some time to relax and recuperate after a long term and by enjoying some wonderful family time together.
KS1 Science
For our final piece of Science learning this half term, KS1 have learning about the word ‘absorb.’ We did a comparative test where we used 4 different types of material to soak up the same measurement of water.
We found that cotton wool absorbed the most water, foil absorbed the least water and the carboard absorbed some but not all of the water.
Y2 Maths – adding 2 two-digit numbers
This week in Year 2 we are focussing our learning on adding two 2-digit numbers together. To start with, we are learning to add two 2-digit numbers together that are not across ten. After this, the focus will be on adding across a ten.
Step 1 – write out the equation.
Step 2 – draw base ten to illustrate how many tens and how many ones are present in each number. (Lines to represent 10s, circles or squares to represent 1s).
Step 3 – add the tens together.
Step 4 – add the ones together.
Step 5 – add the above together.
By breaking the addition down into small, manageable steps we are able to answer these difficult questions with ease.
Here are some photographs of 2C in action! I am very impressed by how quickly the children are learning the process this week.
Help at home: by practicing these skills at home with your children. Use blank sheets of paper and ask children to talk through and show you their working out.
2C – making predictions
This half term, KS1 are reading ‘Not Now, Bernard’ by David McKee. Before reading the book, we had a good look at the front cover and made a few inferences based on the pictures. We had a discussion about what the book might be about before reading it. We used clues on the front cover to help us with this.
We then read the first part of the book. We stopped to predict what might happen next in the story and why. Here are some of our predictions.
Topic review
Thank you if you came along to our topic review session today. If you didn’t make it, the quiz is here if you’d like to have a go at home!
You can always help at home by talking to your child about what they have learnt at school.
It’s been freezing indoors and outdoors this week!
This week in Science, 2C had a fantastic time learning about freezing and melting. We are Chemists this half term and this week, we learnt about water.
We know that water is a liquid but when it reaches freezing point (0 degrees celsius), it turns into ice. Ice is a solid.
When ice heats up, it melts and turns into a liquid, water.
One of our experiments involved placing a cube of ice in our hands and watching it change state. The ice went from a solid to a liquid after some time.
Our next experiment included trying to melt a block of ice containing a small toy. We used four different methods. We used a hairdryer, a hot water bottle, water and a towel.
We found out that the hair dryer was most effective in melting the ice and freeing the toy because it produced the most heat. The towel took the longest because it emitted the least amount of heat.
Help at home: by freezing and melting ice and discussing how the heat and cold help change the properties of water.
Art – creating printing plates
All the year 1 and 2 classes have been exploring line, pattern and shapes in our Arty Ideas books. Some of the inspiration has come from our visit to The Hepworth Wakefield and from looking at the work of Paul Klee.
We used pencils, pens and lots of other things around the classroom to make the marks on our polystyrene printing plates.
1A Art
Last week, Class 1A went on a school trip to The Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield. We set off on the bus which was super charged with lots of the children’s favourite tunes. The journey was full of singing, laughter and wonder as to what the day would hold.
The morning
When we arrived, we were greeted by the friendly staff and we were introduced to our workshop artist. We started the day by exploring one of the galleries. The artist gave us a natural object and we needed to find a sculpture which represented it in some way. We were asked to draw the sculpture on tracing paper. Next, we observed real nature through the giant window and we were given another piece of tracing paper to draw the patterns that we could see. We placed one on top of the other, framed them and held them up against the window to see how the light accentuated the layers and colours in the work. After that, we headed downstairs to start creating our very own collagraphs with a range of materials. Mrs Brown was so impressed with our focus, concentration and creativity! We used rollers to roll ink onto the collagraph and then carefully placed paper on top before rolling with a dry roller to create a print. We repeated the process with a different colour on top. They looked absolutely incredible!
The afternoon
After a spot of lunch, we explored the outdoor sculpture garden and then we explored all the other indoor galleries. We discussed what we saw along the way. Looking at some large pieces of art in silence helped us to keep discovering new things in them. In the abstract art, we observed the lines, patterns and colours and thought about what it would be like to be Katie from the James Mayhew stories and enter some of the paintings. We looked with wonder at the abstract art and thought about what they might represent. One gallery had a sound installation and we wondered around to the noises and noticed how the sculptures seemed to change before our eyes as we moved around them.
This week in school, our art journey continued. We looked at and and talked about different pieces of Paul Klee’s work. We used his works as inspiration to create designs using lots of different lines (curved, straight, short, long, thin, curly, light, hard.) After that, we used our favourite lines on polystyrene tiles to explore and experiment what their effect would be. Some children suggested using their nails or objects from around the classroom and we tried them out by pressing and pushing them into the tile noticing similarities and differences in the lines they created.
Help at home – You could look at pictures in books, photographs or a paused frame on the television to notice and talk about the types of lines, shapes, tones and textures that you can see.