We started the week listening to the story Handa’s Surprise. On Tuesday, we learnt that the country of Kenya is in the continent of Africa. We learnt what the Kenyan flag looks like and some of us chose to draw and colour the flag in our choosing time. We compared how Kenya is similar and different to England – such as Kenya only has 2 seasons (dry and wet) whereas we have 4. ​We also learnt that their hottest months are December-March and their cooler months are June and July but we know that December-March are the Winter months and June and July are Summer months in England. The children noticed how the capital city Nairobi has tall buildings just like London! We also learnt that in Kenya there are people from many different cultures just like here in England! We have watched several short videos all about Kenya including one of the National Parks, the Maasai Mara and here we learnt that you can go up into the sky in a hot air balloon to see all the wonderful sights and the African Big Five which are; the lion, leopard, buffalo, rhinoceros, and elephant. The hot air balloons inspired us to get creative and create our own – we have decorated a circle for the balloon, stuck 2 pipe cleaners onto the back of the balloon and at the bottom of the pipe cleaners we have attached a basket. They look fantastic and we plan to stick photos of ourselves in the baskets! In the funky finger area children have been practising fastening and unfastening buttons and zips on cardigans and jackets! In the painting area we have been using the block paints to create African sunsets – we have mixed different shades of orange using red and yellow, we have used black to add in the grass and trees and then we have cut out and stuck pictures of African animals onto our sunsets – they look amazing! Children have had the opportunity to sort pictures into those they think are in Kenya and those they think are in the UK.

Y1 children have learnt about features of a letter. They have planned their letter to their new class teacher (who we don’t have the name of yet!) and have begun to draft our letter we have addressed it as “Dear my new class teacher,”.

 Y1 children started the week using ‘purple pen’ to go through their assessments from last week. Then they have been practising and consolidating previously taught knowledge on counting forwards and backwards within 100 starting with any number.

​Reception children have learnt to name the 3D shapes – cube, cone, cylinder and sphere and know that they are solid shapes. They have also learnt that we use clocks to measure time and know that clocks have a minute and hour hand. Reception know that when the minute (big) hand points to 12 it is o’clock. They have really impressed me at how quickly they retained this information and how quickly they were able to show a given time on the clock! I am so proud of the children - just look at our big proud smiles as we make times to o'clock.

In Science, ​we learnt that a bulb is a short stem with leaves built up around it, that flowers on a tree are often called blossom and that fruit often grows on trees and to describe the life-cycle of a plant.

This week we have been learning about travel and transport. We started the week listening to the story ‘We All Go Travelling By’ before listening to and joining in with the song which we loved! This helped us to develop our understanding of different modes of transport. We have also learnt how to sign ‘car’, ‘train’, ‘plane’ and ‘bus’ and that depending on where we wanted to go on holiday then we would need different modes of transport. We also discussed how some countries are hot and some are cold and we thought carefully about what sort of clothes we would need to take to these countries.
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Our learning activities have included using the wooden blocks to make ramps to push the cars down – experimenting how to make them go slower and faster. In the home corner we have had holiday brochures and booking forms and we have been deciding where we would like to go on holiday! Our funky fingers activity this week has focused on strengthening our cutting skills as we have had to carefully cut along the patterned lines.

Here are some photos of us choosing our own learning!

Team EO love choosing their learning outside, here are some pictures of what we got up to this week:

Reception children have continued to consolidate previously taught maths knowledge. This week we have focused on partitioning 5. 

In PE,  the class have continued to work hard practising and getting ready for our Sports Day celebration on Thursday 13th July. 
Mr Smith was very impressed with us in our lesson on Friday! 
Keep up the good work Team EO!

In Literacy, the class began a new unit of writing based on our text driver ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ by Julia Donaldson. After sharing the text; the text, audience and purpose for writing was established. Children were clear that the focus for this unit of writing would be a letter to their new class teacher (we will find out in the coming weeks who this is) telling them all about themselves. 

In Maths, it has been assessment week and the children have worked hard to complete arithmetic and reasoning papers in small groups with myself.

Team EO were very excited to go on their very first school trip and despite the weather our spirits were not dampened. The children were very excited travelling to Whistlestop Valley – there was lots of discussion on the coach about familiar places and where the roads we were on took us!

Once there we enjoyed a quick snack in the café area before splitting to participate in our activities; park, miniature railway and the engine shed. In the engine shed we enjoyed learning about 'Fox' the narrow gauge steam engine and learnt that steam trains need coal to work. The lady showed us how the steam travels through the engine to make the wheel turn and we were all able to look inside and see what all the gauges and levers were for. 

Next, we headed back to the café picked up our dinners and boarded ‘Jay’ our diesel-engine train for the day. On our journey from Clayton West station to Shelley station we enjoyed working in our teams to complete our ‘I can spot…’ sheet. We also tried to identify the trees that run parallel to the train tracks by their leaves but this was rather tricky with the weather! When we arrived at Shelley station children were more than ready for their dinners and they eagerly tucked into them. After our dinner we watched the train get turned on the turn-table before boarding the train and returning to Clayton West.

Once back at Clayton West we had a spot of colouring before returning back to school. We are so very proud of the children and they should be very proud of themselves too!

Here is a selection of photos from our trip. We hope you enjoy looking at them.

 This week we have been learning how to take care of our environment. The children listened attentively to the stories ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley’ and ‘Dinosaurs and all that Rubbish’ which has helped us understand the importance of caring for our environment. The children have learnt lots of different ways that we can help save our environment and they have had the opportunity to create a poster to show off this knowledge.
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In Science, we have been learning to name common trees and identify them by their leaves, shape and colour. We carried this learning on during Welly Walk as we completed a leaf hunt around our Nature Reserve!
Before we went on Welly Walk the Rainbows shared pictures with us of the Nature Reserve and we were appalled to see how much litter was in our Nature Reserve being the thoughtful and caring team we are, we took litter pickers down and took it in turns to help tidy up our Nature Reserve! We also had lots of wonderful observational drawings.

In Literacy, Year 1’s have worked hard to plan and write their short narrative a sequel to ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’. The children are excited to send these off to Julia Donaldson!
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In Maths, Year 1 children have continued work on unitising and have started work on coin recognition. We have learnt to recognise a one-penny coin, a two-penny coin, a five-pence coin and a ten-pence coin. We now know that several pennies can have the same value as one coin. Reception children have been consolidating their understanding of numbers to 10.

In Computing our Year 1 children have been extremely busy!
Our first activity was called ‘Who am I?’, we had to listen carefully to hints that were read to us and think carefully about which tool was being described to use, then we had to cut and stick the correct tool onto the hint.
Next, we were introduced to the ‘undo’ button. We learnt that this tool allows us to remove some of the changes we have made to our document. Then we were introduced to the ‘redo’ button and learnt that if we undo something we can use this button to change it back to the way it was before. Finally, we went on the computers and used the toolbar to make changes to our posters – we were encouraged to use all of the different formatting tools and to use the ‘undo’ to remove changes if we didn’t think it had improved our writing then we saved our work.

 This week our focus on London and what it is like in a city. We started the week listening to the story “All Aboard the London Bus” by Patricia Toht. This book introduced us to England’s capital city and it’s well-known landmarks like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the London eye. We were then able to answer ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘where’ questions and what we had heard. The next day we were able to name some of the landmarks which we had seen in the book and learnt names about different landmarks. We then looked at aerial views of London and Wombwell and explored how they are similar and different. We discussed how London had lots of tall buildings and flats, how the streets were always busy and how London had an underground. We said this was different to Wombwell because Wombwell has housing estates and woods and it doesn’t have lots of skyscrapers!
We have had the opportunity to create our own London bus books about what is in London. We have had the opportunity to make Busby Guards and use the construction resources to build some of the landmarks we have learnt.

We have also enjoyed listening to "Paddington's Post' and "The Bear and the Piano".

Here are some photos of this weeks learning:

In Literacy, Year 1 children have started a new piece of work using ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’ by Julia Donaldson as our text driver. We started the week looking at the front cover, discussing what we could see and predicting what might happen. Next we listened carefully to the story and were able to answer questions about it. We have learnt about the many different reasons we use a capital letter. We have learnt what an exclamation mark is and when to use one! Year 1’s are looking forward to writing a sequel to the story next week!

Here are some photos of us working hard during 'Hold A Sentence':

​In Maths, Reception children have been focusing on deepening their understanding of mathematical relationships within numbers to 10, specifically focusing on doubles and odd/even numbers.

We made 'Even Tops' and 'Odd Blocks' models - here we are sorting them into 'Even Tops' - numbers that have doubles. and 'Odd Blocks'
- odd numbers, the ones with the ‘odd blocks’ that don't have doubles.

​Year 1 children have used their knowledge of subtraction facts with 10 to subtract within 20. They have been learning to count in 2’s, 10’s and 5’s.

Computing - Year 1's:
Today, we began by opening our saved document from our last lesson. We discussed our posters and that the title is important because it’s what attracts the reader and should encourage the reader to read the rest of the writing. We worked with our talk partners to think about which tools from the toolbar we could use to make our title stand out. Then we explored changing the text the different tools trying out lots of different variations and changing the font. 

We enjoyed welcoming you all back today and beginning our next learning journey "Off We Go!". I cannot quite believe that we are in the final half-term before the end of the year! We hope you all had a lovely holiday and are ready for an exciting and busy half-term ahead! 

This half-term we will be exploring what it is like in a city, learning how to care for the environment, looking at where we go on holidays and how we get there, we will explore the continent Africa more specifically the country of Kenya, we will look at what it is like at the seaside and in space and we will explore magical fantasy journeys! 

In Science, we will continue our learning on plants.

Our core book for the half-term is "A Bear Called Paddington" by Michael Bond.

I am looking forward to our final half-term together as a Team and I cannot wait to the wonderful work that you all produce!