What a wonderful, busy first term we have had in Year 1! We want to start by saying a huge well done to all our Year 1 children for settling so brilliantly into their new classes. They have loved spending time with their friends again and have adapted amazingly to our new routines! They have also enjoyed our topic of ‘Dinosaurs Galore’ and it has been great to see their enthusiasm for learning.

We have enjoyed lots of dinosaur stories during our English lessons. The children have been focusing on writing good quality sentences; remembering to start with a capital letter, end with a full stop and leave finger spaces between words. We are also learning to use ‘and’ to expand our sentences and make them more interesting!

In Art and Design, we have been learning about primary and secondary colours. We have been mixing primary colours to make secondary colours and we have been adding black and white to primary colours to alter shades and tints. We have explored the work of paleoartists and have created our own piece of artwork using these artists as inspiration. We painted a sunset background, mixing paints to create other colours and then we drew and cut out silhouettes of dinosaurs to create our final pieces.

In Maths, we have been securing our understanding of place value to ten. The children have been finding one more and one less than a given number and learning to use the vocabulary and symbols to represent ‘greater than’, ‘less than’ and ‘equal to’.

We have been learning about physical Geography and what it means. The children walked around the school grounds identifying some physical features. They used this knowledge to create their own maps of a dinosaur island and then were able to create it from different objects. We loved the results!

After reading ‘Tom and the Island of Dinosaurs’, we had a great Science lesson making our own volcanoes. We mixed washing up liquid, bicarbonate of soda and red food colouring together, added the vinegar and then stood back to watch the effect! It caused a great deal of excitement and scientific talking.

Throughout the term, we have completed lots of challenges in our Continuous Provision. We have completed independent writing activities, made some wonderful craft projects and gone on a Sounds Write scavenger hunt around the classrooms! We have been so impressed by the children’s enthusiasm and passion for their own learning.

We are proud of all our Year 1 children and we hope they all have a lovely, restful half term break. We look forward to seeing you all again for an exciting Term 2!