KS1 – Newsletter – 29.4.22

It’s been all about animals in Key Stage One this week as we get our topic into full swing. It has culminated in our pet day today. We have had great fun at forest schools doing animal yoga, sketching and colouring animals and making some clay animals. We whittled sticks to make an animal enclosure and using the book ‘The clue’s in the poo’ we even made our own animal poo! We really enjoyed watching our virtual pet show, having a look at everyone’s pets. Thank you for sending in all your photos.

English has been based around our topic of animals this week and we have been looking at some new animal books. Year One have been reading the book ‘Animal Antics’ and learning new facts about animals. They have learning about suffixes and adding ‘-ing’ onto verbs. Eg. Jumping, walking, crawling. They have been revising all their phonemes and using this knowledge to write sentences about animals using verbs with suffixes. In Year two, they have been looking at the book ‘The clues in the poo’. They have been doing reading comprehensions and answering questions about the text. They have been finding facts out about hedgehogs and using their knowledge of conjunctions to join sentences about them. They have also been finding out facts about bearded dragons and categorising these facts into groups of things telling them about where they live, about what they eat and other facts.

In Year One Maths this week, they have been learning to count in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. They have done this is a variety of fun ways, including taking their socks off and adding them to a washing line in two’s. Please practise with your child at home, counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, as this will benefit them as they begin to learn their times tables. In year two, one group had a whistle stop tour through identifying lines of symmetry on shapes and then have been looking at telling the time to the nearest five minutes. The other group have been identifying and colouring fractions of shapes.

In Science this week, we have been looking at the life cycle of animals. We noticed how some animals go through relatively small changes, simply getting bigger and growing to full size. Some animals change completely from what they looked like as babies and what they look like as adults. We put together the life cycle of a butterfly, from being a caterpillar, creating and living in a chrysalis and how different it reappears as a butterfly.

In RE, Year one have been looking at buildings that are special to them. Places that they enjoy going to like the cinema and places that are important to them because of who lives there eg.  Grandma’s house. Year two have begun a topic on ‘rules that we live by’. They did some great acting around scenarios where we need rules and what would happen if we didn’t have rules. They then began to look at the ten commandments from the Christian faith. They thought about why they follow those rules and discussed whether they thought these were good rules to live by.

In music, the children started to look at Saint-Saen’s ‘The carnival of animals’. They heard roaring lions and met a strange instrument called a glass harmonica for the aquarium. In art, they continued looking at lion’s and each created their own lion, carefully drawing the face and adding on strips of paper for the mane.

Year two have been lucky to have Katie from Leeds skipping school in to help us with our skipping, before we take some . We have been learning how to use our rope to jump in a variety of ways. We have also learned how to jump into a long rope turned by adults and how to jump out again.

We are happy to invite parents to a reading event in the garden. We will be sharing a story and will have a range of books for you to enjoy with your child. This will give you an opportunity to have a look around our Forest Schools area and meet the animals.
Please wear weather appropriate clothing as it will be outside
Year One-Tues 9^th May 

Year Two – Tues 17^th May

Please come to the gate by our Forest School area at 2.30pm.

Mrs Koopman’s daughter Ruby, is continuing her fund raising and has another event coming up on 21^st May 4-6pm. It is a ticketed event and if you would like a ticket, please see Mrs Koopman.

Key Dates:

9.5.22 – Year One – Reading event in the garden – 2.30pm

17.5.22 Year Two –  Reading event in the garden – 2.30pm

13.6.22 – Trip to Cannon Hall Farm – Any problems with payment for the trip, please contact the school office.