Bridge Designers Extraordinaires
This term, we have been looking at ‘Inventions that changed our world’. We’ve looked at how the telephone was invented and, this week, we moved onto how Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s designs changed the world we live in.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel is famous for designing radical bridges and pushing the boundaries in shipbuilding and tunnel building. We used some of his designs to influence our own bridge building.
The task: To create a bridge 50cm wide and strong enough to hold a toy car.
Materials: cups, paper straws, cellotape, glue, scissors and paper clips.
Here are some of our designs.
We created our own design then worked together as a group to decide on the best design. Then, we set about building our creations.
Here are our finished results. This week, we shall be evaluating our bridges. What was the best thing about them? Did they work? What would we do better/differently next time?
The Royal Wedding
What a beautiful day for a royal wedding!
On Thursday, Foundation enjoyed celebrating the occasion by creating crowns, flags and wedding invitations. We had some beautiful brides and grooms at the dressing-up area! We also had a special snack time with napkins and jam scones.
The celebration opened up some lovely discussions about weddings and their traditions, our flags and the royal family. We took a look at the map to see how far Meghan and her family will travel from America to England.
What can your child tell you about today’s royal wedding?
If you’re going to any special events or taking part in any street parties to celebrate the wedding today, we’d love to see your photos so please do bring them in.
You can also email any photos and learning from home at any time! Send to: stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
Have a lovely, sunny weekend Foundation! 🙂
Peace and quiet in the library
This morning, we went to our different-looking library. All the books are now in alphabetical order so that we can find and put books back more easily and in the correct place.
Also, all the non-fiction books about history and animals etc now have coloured labels so we know where to look for books that might interest us.
In addition to this, we have also come up with rules for looking after the library:
- We put books with the spine facing towards us.
- We put books back the correct way up.
- We put books in the correct place.
- We must respect the library and the books.
- Make it a peaceful place to enjoy reading.
Funky Phonics
Thank you to the parents who were able to join us for our ‘Funky Phonics’ stay and play yesterday. The children made us very proud, showing their grown-ups how they use phonics skills in their reading and writing.
Supertato, Super Learning!
Supertato took over the classroom this week and the children have just loved exploring this story, written by Sue Hendra. 
We’ve been re-telling using our veggie characters, creating story mountains, mini-books and ‘wanted’ posters to find the “Evil Pea” after he sneakily tied up our vegetable friends!
The children used some great adjectives to describe him and wrote descriptions of how Supertato was going to capture him. We were all relieved on Friday, when there was a happy ending (just like in the story); Evil Pea was captured in the jelly on our sensory table! Phew!
In Mathematics, F2 children have been focusing on numbers 10-20: recognising the numbers by sight, counting forwards and backwards from 1-20 and identifying ‘1 more’ and ‘1 less’ than a given number.
Please continue to work on these skills at home.
F2 children have enjoyed practising various PE skills by racing through an obstacle course- jumping, weaving, throwing to target and catching!
F1 children enjoyed their own mini PE session, too… Practising hula-hoop skills, throwing bean bags to target and working together in parachute games.
A reminder that our ‘Funky Phonics’ Stay and Play session is taking place for parents and carers of F2 children this Wednesday 16 May, 3.15-4.15pm. We look forward to seeing you there!
The Owl and the Pussycat
This past fortnight, Year 1 and two have been looking at the poem The Owl and the Pussycat.
We have learned to use adjectives before a noun (year 1) and to write expanded noun phrases (year 2).
Then, we learned to add these into sentences and wrote a description using them.
After that, we learned all about rhyming words – we had great fun trying to find as many words as we could to rhyme. We used these words to write our own class poem of the Owl and the Pussycat.
Finally, we wrote our own rhyming poems based on the Owl and the Pussycat. Here are a selection of Year 1 and 2 poems. 
Nicholas, Yr2
Jessica, Yr2
Jacob, Yr1
Leah, Yr1
Good vibrations
We’ve now moved onto our next mini-topic, Hearing. In this topic, we’ll learn lots about sound: how it is made; how it travels; and how it can be changed.
We’ve already been using musical instruments to discover how sound travels throug
h the vibration of air molecules.
We then measured the volume of sounds around different locations in school using a decibel-o-meter on our iPads. Unsurprisingly, the hall at lunchtime was the loudest at over 100 decibels.
Finally this week, we carried a rather fun, but odd-looking investigation involving coat hangers. From this we learn that sound can also be transmitted through solid materials the same it way it is transmitted through the air – vibration of molecules.
Spot of gardening!
We have been busy planting some flowers around the playground to brighten up our outside area. We just need to remember to water them!
Power – in all its forms
For the last couple of weeks, our topic has been ‘Power’. During the topic, we have mainly been focused on studying electricity as this is what powers most of the objects we use in everyday life.
We have dismantled plugs and electronic toys; made circuits using wires, batteries, bulbs and motors; investigated which materials make the best conductors; and most recently made our very own switches so that we could control the flow of electricity through a circuit.
Our topic didn’t just cover electricity, though. We used some of our living and learning time to discuss what other forms of power there are. We talked about the government and the police and how they have the power to make laws or to enforce them.
As well as this, we thought about we ourselves are powerful and what we can do when we are resilient, take risks and persevere.
Serious Skipping
On Wednesday, we went to Boston Spa High School for the annual skipping competition. This contest is the culmination of weeks of hard work and perseverance on all of the children’s part.
The competition began with the children demonstrating their individual skipping skills: double bounce, speed bounce, crossover and pretzel to name just a few. They also worked as a team to compete in the run and jump in the rope contest.
In this part of the competition, we had some children win bronze and silver certificates for their incredible efforts.
However, the real showpiece was our skip dance routine. The children have worked so hard on perfecting the routine and getting all the moves correct – some of them were very tricky! Doing this meant the children had to not only skip, but listen to the beat and count a lot to make sure they didn’t go wrong.
Thankfully, all their hard work paid off and they were rewarded with third place! Great work!!
