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!
The Tiny Seed
This week our focus book as been The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle.
In the story we follow a tiny seed traveling on its journey through the seasons. We went on our own seasons walk to find signs of spring, we spotted blossom, buds, daffodils, insects and leaves. We even stopped to listen to the sound of lots of birds singing.
Our word of the week was miniscule: something that is even smaller than tiny.
Maths
In Maths, we’ve been doubling!
Poetry Picnic
Each week we learn a new poem and recite it every day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Hungry Birdies.
Hungry Birdies
I have built a little nest,
look inside, look inside.
Hungry birdies with their beaks,
open wide, open wide.
And the little birdies grow,
day by day by day.
‘Till they spread their wings and fly,
far away, far away.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
Have a happy and healthy weekend and thank you as always for your support.
Mrs. Kendrew, Mrs. Rippon, Mrs. Small and Mr. Smith
P.E.
This week in P.E. we’ve been practising our coordination skills with the quoits. We rolled the quoits from the top of our head to our toes and named our different body parts. We worked with a partner, rolling the quoits to each other, then balanced them on our head as we moved around the hall. The children showed brilliant listening skills as well as perseverance.
