In Literacy, Year 1’s text driver for the next 3 weeks is ‘Jim and the Beanstalk’. We have been learning to use the conjunction ‘and’ to join 2 sentences together.

In Maths, Year 1’s have concluded their Geometry work – we have discussed and explored what makes a circle a circle, a triangle a triangle and a rectangle a rectangle.

Reception children have been working on comparison and using the language ‘more than’, ‘fewer than’ and ‘equal to’.

In Art with Mrs Fitchett we have been drawing and making pictures of Castles – we thought carefully as about the features of a castle and Miss Overton was super impressed to hear that the children had been using words such as 'battlements', 'drawbridge', 'towers'. 

Our story of the week this week was ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. Team EO have had another busy week engaging in lots of different, exciting learning activities. Our funky finger activity this week was finger football. We had to use our ‘Peter Pointer’ and ‘Toby Tall’ to run our player across the pitch and to ‘kick’ the ball into the nets to score points! This was a popular activity.

​In the painting area, we have had some wonderful paintings relating to our story, children have painted the wolf, flowers, Little Red Riding Hood and Grandma’s cottage! In the writing area, we have been writing wanted posters to warn others about the Big Bad Wolf! We have also had the opportunity to write lists of foods we would take to Grandma. We are having a huge focus on using Fred Fingers and Team EO staff would love to see children’s writing from home! In the construction area, we were challenged to make a maze for the small world characters to move through.

On Welly Walk, we pretended we were Little Red Riding Hood and that we were walking through the woods to Grandmas house. We were tasked with making a map from Little Red Riding Hoods House to Grandmas. We worked in pairs to draw our maps and we thought carefully about what things we might pass on our way to Granny’s house and included these on our maps. Check back later for photos of these!!

 ​This week we have been learning about the ‘Chinese New Year’ which is also known as the ‘Spring Festival’ in China as it marks the end of winter and beginning of Spring. We learnt that the Spring Festival happens in the months of January and February for 15 days! We know that red is seen to be a lucky colour and on New Years’ Day children wake up to a red envelope under their pillows with money and sweets enclosed. We have taken part in paper cutting which is a form of traditional art in China, we have made paper lanterns in our creative area and we have learnt how to say ‘hello’ (Nǐ hǎo) in Mandarin!

Our story of the week this week was ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff”. We have had a very busy week with our learning activities – in the construction area we were tasked with building a bridge over the river so that the ‘Three Billy Goats’ could try and cross the bridge. It was very tricky to get the Duplo to balance and hold, to create the bridge we had to work as a team and problem solve! In the painting area, we have been painting story scene pictures thinking carefully about what colours we need and which primary colours we needed to mix to make the colours we wanted! In the writing area, we have been drawing a picture from the story, our Reception children have been trying hard to write initial sounds and simple words and our Year 1 children have been working hard to ensure sentences have capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. We have been practising our number bonds to 5.

We have also been practising our drawing skills using the 'how to draw...' sheets! We have had some fantastic drawings.

In Science, we learnt about natural and man-made materials! In History, we learnt that castles were built to protect those inside from attack and we labelled the outside structures of castles such as; battlements, tower, arrow loops, portcullis, bailey, barbican, moat and drawbridge.

Our Year 1’s have worked hard to write their character descriptions for the Stepmother from ‘Snow White in New York’. We are trying hard to use the prefix ‘un’ in our sentences as well as the suffix ‘s’ and ‘ing’.

In Maths, Reception have been focusing on composition. We have learnt that we can represent 6 as ‘5 and a bit’ and that 5 and ‘2 more’ make 7. We have been looking at the quickest way to show these numbers on our fingers and how to represent them on a double die frame. Year 1 children have explored tangrams, tetromino and pentomino arrangements, made 3D models from cubes and have begun to explore 3D shapes such as: cube, cylinder, sphere and cone.

In Computing, the Year 1 children have used floor robots. We have spoke about what the buttons on a floor robot might do and then tried the buttons out. We have considered the direction command buttons, as well as the ‘clear memory’ and ‘run program’ buttons.

This term our artist is 'Henri Matisse'. 

Today, we learnt that Henri Matisse was born in France (we know that France is in the continent of Europe). Henri Matisse started out painting pictures but later in his life he had surgery and began using a wheelchair. It was after this that he began creating large paper collages. Team EO were very good at remembering that he called this "painting with scissors".  

Team EO have focused on one of his famous collages 'The Snail'.

With Mrs Fitchett guiding us we took part in the Eco-Reps sculpture competition. We used the recycling materials brought in from home to make our own sculpture of 'The Snail'!

We have also coloured some of our own 'snails' in, in the style of Henri Matisse - we are just working on finishing them check back later for pictures of these!

In Literacy, Year 1 children have learnt that the prefix ‘un’ changes a word into it’s opposite. We have tried hard to use the prefix ‘un’ in a sentence and we have been writing sentences to describe Snow White and the Reporter from Snow White in New York. We continue to work hard to ensure our sentences start with capital letters, have finger spaces throughout and full stops at the end!

​Year 1 children have begun work on their Geometry unit we have been composing pattern block images (looking at what smaller shapes we can see inside shapes) and continuing and developing patterns!

​Our story of the week this week was ‘The Gingerbread Man’. In the writing area children have been taking on the roles of the characters from the story and writing thought bubbles for what they would be thinking if they were that character - we have had some super writing! In the maths area, we have been consolidating our subitising skills – we have had to choose a gingerbread man with a dot arrangement on, say what number it is and then feed the gingerbread man to the fox! Children have had the opportunity to draw around a friend to make a big gingerbread man and label the body parts. Children have been using creative materials to create their own gingerbread man. In our funky finger area, we have been using tweezers to place loose parts on the gingerbread man to add the features! Most excitingly of all, we have baked our own gingerbread man!!

Reception children are working hard to write initial sounds in words and some children are developing confidence in writing simple words! Can you encourage your child to label the pictures they draw at home? They could write the initial sound in the word or use their Fred Fingers to sound the whole word out! 

​In Maths, Reception children have been learning about the composition of 5. We have used the song “5 Little Speckled Frogs” to support our learning. Can your child use the stem sentence ‘5 is made from…’ to tell you the different ways we can make 5?