Summer 1
Welcome back to the summer term! This half term our theme is Life on Earth and our first focus book is The Bug Detective by Alex Griffiths.
This week we will be beginning to look closely at minibeast and where they live. We will also be creating a class Bug Hotel using the hand drills.
We can’t wait to see you all,
Mrs Kendrew, Mrs Rippon, Mr Smith and Mrs Small
Welcome back!
Hello and welcome back!
I hope you have all enjoyed the Easter break; I can’t wait to see everyone back tomorrow for the Summer Term!
Although this is only a short half-term, we’ve got lots of exciting things planned:
Topic – History – we’ll be learning all about Leeds West Indian Carnival. Have you been to the carnival? If so we would love to hear about your experience and share any photos you have.
Maths – we’ll be learning how to add and subtract fractions. Children will also bring home their fortnightly arithmetic quizzes. If you would like any questions to practise with your child at home please let me know.
Writing – inspired by Michael Rosen’s poem Chocolate Cake, we’ll write a story about sneaking in to the staff room to take a tasty treat!
Reading – it’d be great to make our Friday Book Club even better by sharing the challenges the children do in their Reading Record. If you need a new Reading Record let me know.
PE – we’ll continue our swimming lessons on Tuesdays and also be developing our skills in Netball on Thursdays.
Science – we’ll be learning about different habitats and how humans can positively and negatively impact them. If you have visited any interesting habitats we would love to see your photos and hear about your experience.
RE – we’ll be finding out what happened at Pentecost.
Food Technology – we’ll be making savoury scones.
Do let me know if you have any questions or if you have any experiences you would like to share with the children!
Science: Electricity
This half term we’ve loved learning about electricity.
It has been wonderful to see the children showing resilience, problem solving and working collaboratively to build a circuit. Whilst not everyone will have parts to build a circuit at home, children can explore circuit building using this simulator: https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/circuit-construction-kit-dc
Have a lovely holiday!
We had a brilliant last day of the spring term. This consisted of Easter baking and Easter bonnet making!
We even went into collective worship to show the rest of the school our bonnets!
We hope all the wonderful children and their families have a lovely break.
The Nursery Team 🙂
Planting Sunflowers and Writing a Recount
This week, Year One completed an amazing independent write all about their science learning! The children wrote a recount about planting their very own sunflower seeds and showed off what they’ve learned about the life cycle of a plant. They carefully planted their seeds and made thoughtful predictions about how much they would grow over the Easter break. They also explored what plants need to grow healthy and strong – like sunlight, water, and care.
We are so impressed with how fantastic their writing has become. The children are becoming much more independent and confident, especially when using verbs and adjectives to make their writing exciting and detailed.
I’m looking forward to investigating how much our sunflower seeds have grown over the Easter break and comparing this to our predictions!
What a fantastic end to the Spring term – thank you Year One!
Help at home idea: Encourage your child to keep a plant diary or describe what they see in the garden using adjectives and verbs!
Topic – D&T Cooking and Nutrition
Food preparation is part of Design and Technology; children have three opportunities each year to prepare food.
This term, the children made overnight oats using a variety of skills:
- snipping
- weighing (using digital scales)
- measuring liquids
- use measuring spoons
- claw chopping grip
- mixing
- arranging toppings
First, we read the recipe together, discussing some elements that might be changed. We also discussed hygiene and how we can stay safe in the kitchen.
The children enjoyed a great deal of success, building on previous food preparation learning.
Children took their food home to try then returned to school to evaluate the product. We considered the success of the product and how close it was to the recipe. We discussed challenging techniques and any changes we would consider for next time.
Help at home by watching some of these fantastic cooking videos. If you try any of these recipes at home, we’d love to see the results.
Computing
In computing this week, we have been developing a pedometer. Pedometers are devices that track the number of steps you take. They contain an internal mechanism or arm that moves up and down in response to the motion of your hips. With each step, your body tilts to one side and your leg swings forward. As your body shifts the other way, your other leg moves forward as well. Each tilt of your hips, along with the forward swing of your legs, is counted as a step.
In our first lesson, we developed our code – the children needed to fix a few problems with their initial algorithms. We had to use decomposition to help us debug it. Then, we downloaded our pedometer code to our micro:bits and checked to see if they worked. We had do some trial and errors and tweak the sensitivity of our pedometers.
We then put our pedometers to the test outside.
Living and Learning
Feeling good and being me
We have been having a big focus on peer pressure and how this may impact on someone’s wellbeing. We are all clear on what peer pressure is and why it might happen. It is crucial that we speak up if we feel that is happening in any aspect of our lives (at school, home or online). Children were very mature and were very respectful throughout our discussions.
Help at home – discuss peer pressure with your child. Ask them what they can do should they be worried about something.
Easter Egg Hunt
We have been learning about Easter using the book, Story of Easter by Fiona Boon. We’ve enjoyed painting Easter pictures, making Easter cards and going on spring walks looking for signs of new life.
Today we went on an Easter Egg hunt in the Nursery Garden. We thought about where the eggs were hidden using our new maths vocabulary ‘under, on top, behind, next to and in front of.’ We had to find 4 eggs each!
After the holidays we will be looking at the Number 4 and The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We’ll also have some exciting visitors in Nursery, can you guess what they might be?
Help at Home: Look out for minibeasts! Have a look under logs and stones, or a walk round the garden and see which insects and other Minibeasts you can find.
A Happy and Healthy School
On Friday, Year 3 took time to organise and clean up our school grounds. We had noticed that lots of equipment was missing, and that there was a significant amount of rubbish around the edges of our school field. So, we took matters into our own hands and got to work! The children were absolutely fantastic and showed good teamwork and perseverance. Here are the results from their hard work – we now have lots of equipment to keep us happy and healthy during break and lunch times!
