A warm welcome to the new Caterpillars of 2015-2016.
I hope you have all had a relaxing holiday and are now ready to face the challenges of Year One. I am looking forward to working with you all and having lots of fun.
Don’t forget to bring your wellies back to school now as you will have some time everyday where you will be working outside with Miss Claxton, and wellies must be worn on the field and in the forest area.
You now need to empty your book bag yourself each day. Please hand in your learning journal and reading record to Mrs Chaplin when you arrive in the morning and change your book if you need to. If you have any letters/money etc remember to hand them to me, Mrs Chaplin or Miss Claxton.
….and remember to share our class blog with your friends and family each week so they can see your learning and the fun we’ve been having.
‘We have been talking about jobs on a Pirate ship.’ Thomas
‘We did some drama. We acted out Pirate jobs and we heard sounds of what it was like on a Pirate ship.’ Millie
‘I would have enjoyed being a gunner because they have to clean the cannons.’ Laney
‘I would have liked to sail the ship because you can turn the big wheel.’ Nell
‘Pirates didn’t have good food to eat. They only had salty meat and a hard biscuit, which might have had worms in it. They drank rum and their medicine was rum and lemon.’ Jack
‘We made models of pirate ships.’ Owen
‘We wanted to see of our Pirate ship floated or sank.’ Millie
‘Pirates had ships called a Sloop and a Square Rigger.’ Jack and Thomas.
‘A Square Rigger had lots of decks and a Sloop only had one deck.’ Laney
‘A square Rigger was a big ship that could carry 200 pirates.’ Charlotte
‘A sloop was a small ship which meant it could travel faster and catch up with other boats.’ Harry
In Maths we had a challenge from Pirate Pearl.
To solve the puzzle, ‘I got some cubes out and had to sort them into 4 groups.’ Layla
We were all able to use different apparatus to find different combinations of numbers to unlock the treasure chests for Pearl.
We have also been working with maps. ’We used North, South, East and West to find our way around the island.’ Robyn
‘We have made our own island maps. We drew some different things on our maps like cave, ship wreck and a jungle. We then had to find the co-ordinates of those places.’ Millie
Next week we are going on our last trip of the year. We are off to the………..BEACH!!!!!
A PCSO came to talk to us about how we can stay safe when we are there.
‘We are going to wear a wristband with Miss Davenport’s phone number on it in case we get lost. Then we can phone Miss Davenport.’ Albie.
‘If we get lost we can show somebody the number on our wristband.’ Taylor.
‘She also told us that there would probably be a lot of people at the beach if it was a nice day.’ Arabella
‘We need to stay with our grown ups so we don’t get lost.’ Maisie.
Today we are excited about our Summer Fayre.
‘I am looking forward to throwing sponges at Mrs Burt!’ Chloe
We are all looking forward to singing our Pirate song:
As we have been reading the story of Peter Pan over the last few weeks we decided to investigate shadows this week.
We were able to go outside and draw around our shadows on the playground.
‘To make a shadow you need to have it sunny. A partner drew round our shadow.’ Jack.
‘You can’t draw around your own shadow because when you bend down so does your shadow.’ Robyn
‘It looks like the sun moves in the sky but it is really us rotating.’ Laney
‘They (the shadow) were pointing in different directions at different times.’ Taylor.
‘We found that shadows were shorter at lunchtime.’ Charlotte. ’Because the sun was at the highest point at this time.’ Thomas.
Using the idea of shadows we made our own picture of a Peter Pan scene.
‘We made a picture of Peter Pan and the Darling children by using silhouettes.’ Bella
Why not pop into our class to have a look at our fantastic art work?
Finally this week, we have made our models of Pirate artefacts using junk materials. We have tried to think about making them just like the real thing so when making a telescope we tried to make it slide in order to see further away. The same with a cannon, it needed to be able to slide so the cannon balls were pushed out. A treasure chest needed to have some type of hinges on it so that the lid would not fall off.
Here are some of our completed models.
‘I liked making a treasure chest.’ Millie
Look at all the treasure inside this treasure chest!
A great telescope here and I can see where it can slide in and out.
Wow! This is a large treasure chest. I like the fact it can be locked with the special key too.
This is an amazing cannon. An appropriate choice of materials and it has wheels too. Amazing!
This week we have been practising our times tables and multiplying numbers, particularly by 2, 5 and 10.
‘We have been using arrays.’ Macy
An array is when, ‘you change the number sentence into dots and arrange them in rows and columns.’ Taylor
‘This morning we played bingo with the 5 times table,’ Mrs Burt drew an array and if it matched the multiplication on our board, ‘we had to put a cube on the number sentence. We had six of them.’ Harry
‘I was the first one to win.’ Ava
‘On Monday, in Literacy, we acted out the part of Peter Pan where they flew out of the window.’ Thomas
‘We had to think of our own ‘happy thought.’ Zac
‘I enjoyed playing Peter Pan in the role play area.’ Isabella
Click on this link to watch the ‘You can fly!’ clip
Monday was ‘Pirate Day.’ We all came to school dressed as Pirates and a man called Adrian came to school as a pirate to do map activities with us.
‘We used maps to find treasure.’ Jack
‘Before we went treasure hunting we looked at directions. North, South, East and West.’ Thomas
‘I enjoyed making a cutlass using a template and wrapping tin foil around it.’ Chloe
‘I enjoyed making a flag.’ Brody
In English this week we have been looking at the story of Peter Pan. We all watched the Disney version of it and thought it was really good.
‘I wrote about Nana.’ Robyn
‘Mrs Chaplin found a treasure chest in the cupboard. We picked out some of the bits inside and thought they looked like they were from the story of Peter Pan.’ Owen
‘We had to match the objects in the treasure chest to the character pictures.’ Layla
We are looking forward to more work with Peter Pan next week.
We have also begun thinking about floating and sinking.
‘If something floats it will be on top of the water, if something sinks it will be under the water.’ Laney
‘If something floats it means it has air in it. If it sinks it means it has no air in it.’ Thomas
‘We dropped an egg into water and it sank.’ Maisie
‘When I put an orange in a tank of water it sank.’ Isabella
Today we said good bye for a little while to Miss Claxton as she is leaving to have her baby. We had a big circle time with the Crickets and all gave Miss Claxton a compliment. We wish you all the best with your new baby, we will miss you.