KS1 – Newsletter – 31.1.25

Kung Hei fat choy!

We have had a fantastic week in Key Stage One, learning about and celebrating Chinese New Year. It began with Forest schools where we listened to the story of Chinese New Year around the firepit and acted it out. We talked about how each year is then named after an animal and what animal their birth year was named. As this year is the year of the snake, the children worked together to use natural materials to make the longest snake they could.

On Friday we spent the day focusing on Chinese New Year. We have been looking at the colour wheel and the prominent colours used to celebrate Chinese New Year and why. They then made their own dragon mask. We watched a brilliant video all about how families celebrate and the foods they eat etc.. We enjoyed the celebration in the hall trying other foods and seeing all the different crafts that have been made across school.

Special request – if you have any spare/ old socks that are black/ brown/ grey, please send them into school for a craft we are hoping to do.

We have been thinking about historical narrative in English this week and the features they must include. We have been talking about which things are facts and must always remain the same and which things are fiction and we can use to make a story more interesting. We had a go at writing an initial historical narrative including some of these features and also trying to add in connectives. Year One have been focusing on the /au/ and /aw/ sounds made in words like sauce and saw in phonics. Year Two have been learning how to spell words including /mb/ for example thumb.

In Maths, Year One have begun to look at addition again and build on their previous knowledge. They looked at systematic number bonds to 20, as well as addition counting on numberlines, adding two numbers using resources and word problems. One group have begun to look at the inverse and solving missing number problems. They focused on fact families and using prior knowledge. The other group have been introduced to money. They have been recognising and identifying the value of coins. They have also begun to know key facts about money eg there are 100 pennies are in a pound.

We have continued to look at seasonal changes and what happens with the weather during the different seasons. We watched a video about climate change and how the Earth is experiencing warmer and more changeable weather. We then created our own weather dials to show what the weather is doing.

We were looking at maps of the UK in Geography and focusing on where we actually live. We identified which part of the UK is England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. We then began to think about what each of the capital cities are. We then turned our attention to the waters that surround the UK and identified them and labelled each of these things on our own maps.

In RE, Year one were recapping the story of Noah/ Nur, recalling the story and acting it out with the ark and colouring pictures. They were also given an animal each and had to act as the animal, to find their partner (another animal of the same kind) to go onto the ark. Year Two began to learn about how in the Bible there are stories about Jesus performing miracles. First they heard about him turning water into wine and how he calmed a storm when he was out on a lake in a boat with his disciples.

Diary Dates:

4^th April : 2.30 – 3.00 – The Great Fire of London celebration event