On 1st July 2025 Team AC and JF visited The Botanical Gardens in Sheffield as part of their science study on plants. They looked round the garden and took part in a scavenger hunt for different plants and animals that could be found there. They consolidated their knowledge about the different types of plants and trees that we can see in the gardens. They found the trees that were evergreen and deciduous. They looked for the different parts of the plant. They also looked for tall trees and found out why some trees grow so tall. Later Team AC went into the green houses to find plants from different habitats and compared desert and tropical habitats. The children discovered why certain plants grew only in these habitats and how they had adapted to suit these very different conditions.

We have had a busy few weeks this half term!
Literacy - Over the past few weeks we have been busy learning about suffixes we know that by adding ing or ed to a word we can tell if something is in the past tense (it has happened before).
We have started our new book The Smeds and The Smoos by Julia Donaldson who is our chosen author this year. We love reading her books and we particularly enjoyed this one. It gave us lots to talk about. We predicted what we thought might happens and then read the book to see if we were right. We have drawn pictures of what we think a new planet will look like and we will be doing some written work about The Smeds and The Smoos when they visit the new planet.

Maths - We have been learning all about money and coins. We looked at all the different coins and decided that just because a coin is bigger it doesn't mean it has greater value. We worked in groups to imagine we were buying things from a shop and giving the correct coins using either one coin or different coins. We have practised counting in 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s to help us with counting out amounts of the same coin .

Science - we have continued our focus on plants looking at how plants grow from seeds and bulbs, what the different parts of the plants are called and what they are for. We enjoyed planting seeds and bulbs and we will continue to observe them to see what happens. We hope they will grow!

RE - we have thought about what it means to be a Christian and how we can use their ideas to help others in our community. We shared ideas and then wrote our own prayers to say what we are thankful for. We had lots of ideas and realised just how lucky we are.

Art - we have been studying and drawing plants and flowers as part of our artwork this term. We also had a go at mixing colours to create a  colour wheel and learnt about primary and secondary colours. We also learnt some facts about our artist of the term 'Van Gogh' and tried our hand at drawing some of the sunflowers he loved to paint. We will be using different materials to create our own sunflower pictures over the next few weeks.

PE and Sports Celebration - this week saw our annual sports celebrations at Park Street and Year 1s in Team AC had a wonderful time! The children all took part with smiles on their faces no matter where they came in the race. They were just happy to be taking part and enjoying being fit and active with lots of grown ups cheering them on! We even managed a grown ups race so well done to all those who took part. Very well organised by Mr Smith and a wonderful celebration of sport for all the children - well done Team AC!

Last week in Team AC we celebrated the 80th anniversary of VE day. On Wednesday 7th May the day before VE day we dressed in our red, white and blue to celebrate the end of the war in Europe 80 years ago. The children watched videos and news clips of that time. We looked at old photographs and learnt about why this day was so important to us in the UK and around Europe. The children thought about what life might have been like during the war and then what is was like to have been a child on VE day. We used this for our literacy work to think of and write questions to ask the children of that time. 
Later we made bunting and hats using the colours red, white and blue, while listening to the music of that time, ready for our picnic with all the rest of the school. We had a wonderful time chatting, singing and playing games on the school field. What a lovely way to celebrate such an important event.

What a busy couple of weeks we have had in Team AC
Literacy - we completed our writing about our 'Wild Things' based on the book by Maurice Sendak. The children drew their own 'wild things' and wrote about all the wild things that they got up to! The children worked hard to remember capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. They also included suffix ed words and the joining word and in their sentences.
This week we have started a new unit of writing based on the book 'Mr Wolf's Week' By Colin Hawkins. The children loved joining in with reading the book and learning songs about the days of the week ready for our new writing task.
Maths - we have continued to look at first, then, now equation and number stories using addition and subtraction
Reading - the children are working extremely hard to learn all their RWI letter sounds to help read their words more fluently and speedily.
Science - we continued to learn all about materials focusing on using the correct vocabulary to describe materials. This week we looked particularly at how things change over time. We did an experiment to find out what would happen if we cut an apple and what changes would occur if we left it for a week. We'll continue to observe the apple and see if we made the right predictions. 
History - we had a wonderful history enrichment day on Thursday 20th when a visitor came to work with us and tell us all about Florence Nightingale and why she is such a significant person. We did lots of hands on activities and dressed up as Victorians. We asked and answered lots of questions and really got a feel for what life would have been like at this time.

Art - we made our 'Mothers Day' cards for those special women in our lives to say thank you for all they do for us.
PSHE - One Life - this week we looked at stereotypes and learnt what a stereotype is. We decided it didn't matter who you were or what you looked like we are all different we are all equal. We then thought about what type of jobs we would like when we were older and talked about the facts that who we are and what we look like shouldn't stop us from trying to achieve our goals. 

This week has seen Team AC learning all about why we have special times of the year and how we celebrate them. The children found out that Shrove Tuesday happens every year on the day before Ash Wednesday; a day which marks the start of Lent. Lent is a period of 40 days during which people who participate give up their favourite, most indulgent foods, such as eggs, butter, fats and sugar. We learnt that this is also called Pancake Day and people traditionally take part in pancake races. Not to be left out Team AC decided to hold their own pancake day races. We had lots of fun whilst learning about this special celebration. We also thought about things that we would be willing to do for Lent including not having crisps or chocolate every day, helping to tidy our rooms, beings kind to our brothers and sisters or not going on our tablet or PlayStation every day!
​What would you do for Lent?

In history we have been learning all about the lives of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. We have enjoyed learning all about why these people were famous and what they did to inspire others. We thought about how we can find out about people from the past and looked at some paintings and drawings from that time to help us find clues. Team AC were inspired to create paintings and drawings of our own. Here is some of our amazing artwork linked to history sources.
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​Florence Nightingale using watercolour paints

Mary Seacole using oil pastels

Literacy - this week we have started our new book 'Jim and the Beanstalk' which we have compared to the traditional story Jack and the Beanstalk. We predicted what we thought might happens before reading both versions of the story. We then discussed the characters and the plot deciding which parts are the same and which are different.
Maths - We have continued to look at odd and even numbers - we have done this by looking at the shapes made by cubes formations for 1 to 10 to compare which numbers are odd and which are even. 
History - This week Team AC read a book about Florence Nightingale and used what we had learnt to make our own fact files. We had lots to discuss and really enjoyed finding out about people from the past.
One Life - In our PSHE One Life work this week we thought about the word 'bullying' we talked about what it is and what it isn't. We used role play to help us understand what it is and what we can do if we think others are being bullied. We used the words bystander and upstander to help us know what to do to help!
Lunar New Year
We learnt about the Lunar New Year this week where we found out about how the years are named after different animals and how this came about. We found out that 2025 is the year of the snake! We learnt some facts about snakes and made our own colourful spiral snakes.