Week 4 – The Magic Paintbrush
Happy New Year!
This week in Reception we have been learning more about the Lunar New Year. We discovered how people across the world will be having new year celebrations and that 2023 is the year of the Rabbit! We were particularly interested in how dragons featured not only in our focus book but in lots of the celebrations. We created our own dragons and even learnt to dance like a dragon in our own parade.
We wrote good luck messages for the year ahead and build great walls to show our representations of the Great wall of China!
Bex Rayner
Thank you to everyone for all of the amazing sponsorships which allowed this great visit to take place. we were so excited to meet Bex and to learn more about what it is like to be a football player. We loved taking part in the circuit training and even our very own Mrs Walton showed her football skills in the assembly.
As you all know we love reading in Reception and love sharing stories with others. On Wednesday Yr 5& 6 came down to share some special stories with us. It was so nice to hear other people read and we even showed off our new reading skills to them!
Ways to help at home:
- Phase 3 phonics flashcards have been sent home. Please keep reading together to gain confidence
- Writing words together
- Daily reading using e-books. If anyone is having any problems logging in please let me know.
Mrs Payne
It’s freezing!
This week the children explored our outdoor provision to see if they could find some ice. We talked about why and how things freeze and what would happen if the temperature would increase.
The soil is hard because it’s got water in – Austin
It’s frozen in the same shape, you can see the lines from the tyre- Gracie
Look Miss Ward, the car is stuck in the ice!- Deacon
The sun has melted the grass- Beau
We also explored Lunar New Year this week. Lunar New Year is the beginning of the lunar calendar, the months are based on moon cycles. This event is a celebration observed by many cultures around the world.
The children cooked up a storm in the kitchen, experienced using chopsticks, made rabbit sun catchers and enjoyed a traditional new year meal in school. 2023 is the year of the rabbit.
Red is a lucky colour- C
They clean their house to get rid of bad things- Sophie
A horse , a dragon and a rabbit- Frankie
I like noodles- Ella
Have a lovely weekend!
Miss Ward
Geography: A case study of the Icelandic volcano
This week during our topic lessons, we’ve been learning about the Icelandic volcano that reeked havoc throughout the world when it erupted in April 2010.
We’ve thought carefully about how the erupting Eyjafjallajokul affected life on a local, national and international scale… but it’s pronouncing the name of this dormant stratovolcano that’s proved tricky for us..! Jacob, Jayden and Lilly gave it a really good go but weren’t quite right…
Have a go at learning how to pronounce this volcano…
Can’t wait to hear how you get on!
St James’ goes to Magna!
Last week, we took our geography learning to Magna in Sheffield. It was a great way to kick start our Natural Disasters topic and got us all excited to find out more about the world around us.
We started by creating our very own erupting volcanos. Check out how we got on…
In the afternoon, we explored the different pavilions, water, ice and fire. We watched The Big Melt which showed us how steel is melted. Sparks were flying everywhere!
It was amazing! 
Topic: Local walk
As part of our Geography topic, we went on a walk around our local area and visited 5 places. Before we left school we spoke about ways to keep safe on our walk.
“We listen to our grown ups.”
“We need to wear our hi-vis jackets.”
“We need to stay in our groups and hold our partners hand.”
“We need to stay on the path and only cross the road when a grown up says it’s safe to.”
At each of the 5 places we completed a survey looking at the noise levels, litter and number of bins/recycling bins. We gave each area a score from 1 to 5.
Challenge: Can your child tell you the 5 places we visited? Can they tell you about any other places we saw on our local walk?
When we came back to class we looked at our surveys to see which place was the best. We talked about why we felt this way. Have a look at our amazing work!
Writing: nouns and adjectives
Wow, we’re very impressed with the writing Year 1 have produced recently. We’ve been reading books by the author Oliver Jeffers and using his books to inspire our writing. We’ve been focusing on nouns and adjectives and using them in sentences.
Have a look at our super writing!
PE: meeting a footballer!
In PE this week, we met a footballer named Bex Rayner.
She told us all about herself and how she started out as a footballer. She also gave a live demonstration of her skills – one of our lucky Year 2 children had a go at copying!
Then, we completed a circuit of different exercises that Bex does to help her stay healthy and active.
What’s a fronted adverbial?
This week, year 3 have been learning about fronted adverbials (sounds tricky)!
We started by recapping adverbs. These tell us how, when or where a verb is done. We then moved the adverbs to the front of our sentence. This creates a fronted adverbial!
The children thought of some of their own sentences using fronted adverbials. We had to be careful to make sure we changed the capital letters and used a comma after the fronted adverbial.
Check our some of out ideas- we tried to link some sentences to our recount about a volcanic explosion!
Quickly, the boy ran to the park.
Frantically, Miss Gledhill marked the Year 3 books.
Suddenly, a cloud of toxic black smoke shot from the boiling volcano.
Outside the magnificent temple, people were shouting at each other.
Watch this video about fronted adverbials.
Word classes can be tricky to remember. When reading with your child, why not see if they can identify nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs?
Wake up Shake up!
Today, Wake up Shake up happened indoors! Check us out in action…
Geography: the streets around our school
Today, we went on a local walk around Wetherby to survey some areas. We considered the amount of litter, bins, traffic, plants and trees and we talked about how safe we feel in our environment. We noticed that most places with lots of litter did not have many bins. When we returned to class, we discussed which areas we liked the most and why.
Help at home: wrap up warm and go on a walk around Wetherby. Have a look at what you can see. Talk about your favourite places.
