We started the week listening to “The Smeds and The Smoos”. We know that in the sky we have the moon, stars, sun and planets. We learnt that a solar system is a group of planets and moons that travel around the sun. We have learnt that Earth is always spinning/rotating on it’s axis which is the Earth’s rotation, we know that this is what gives us day and night. We learnt that at the same time that the Earth is rotating that it is also orbiting the sun – we know that it takes a full year to complete one orbit. We know that as the Earth orbits the sun that it creates a pattern which happens over and over again which is what creates seasons. We have worked hard to try and recall the order of planets in our solar system from closest to the sun to further from the sun – they are; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. We have used this song to help us - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrlgH97v94.

We have also learnt about what it is like to be an astronaut in space using the story ‘If I Were an Astronaut’ which was read by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station. We then learnt about the following famous astronauts; Yuri Gagarin – first human to travel into outer space, Valentin Tereshkova – first woman to travel into outer space and orbit Earth, Neil Armstrong – first man to walk on the moon, Mae Jemison and Major Tim Peake – famous for spending 186 days in space!
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Our learning activities have included; labelling the parts of a rocket, writing a list of 10 things we would take to space in a rocket, designing our own alien, making our own rockets and spaceships, using the dough to make aliens, making a split pin astronaut and completing a “what’s in space?” jigsaw. We have also used black card and chalks to make our own ‘solar system’ pictures.

In Literacy, Year 1 children have been learning about acrostic poems and we have completed a shared write of an acrostic poem using the theme ‘Team EO’.
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In Maths, Reception children have been working hard to consolidate end of year expectations on number and numerical pattern and we have been recalling names and properties of shapes. Year 1 children have been comparing amounts of money using the < and > symbols and have been identifying o’clock times – we even made our own clocks!

​In Art, we have learnt how to make grey and make shades of colours. We know that to make grey we need to mix black and white. We know that to make a lighter shade of a colour we add white and to make a darker shade of a colour we add black!

We started the week listening to the story ‘The Train Ride’. We know that some countries are hot such as; Spain, Africa and Greece and we know that some countries are cold such as Russia, Arctic and Norway. We have recapped that there are 7 continents and we enjoyed singing the continents song. We listened carefully to the story “Where in the World Shall We Go”. We have also spent lots of time exploring how transport has changed over time and we have learnt about transport of the past such as the ‘Penny Farthing’. We have enjoyed listening to facts about different types of transport from the books ‘In the air’ and ‘On the road’. We have also been singing ‘We all go travelling by’ and ‘Up, up, up’.
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Our learning activities this week have included; writing a list about what we would pack in our suitcase, writing a sentence about each of the transport pictures, building a ramp and pushing cars down it, junk modelling different types of vehicles, identifying vehicles of past and present and using the small world train, cars and people. Our home corner was turned into a travel agents and we enjoyed looking at holiday brochures and booking each other’s holidays!

On Monday afternoon we held our PSGT auditions – the children were so brave and it was lovely to see their auditions. Team EO staff are super proud of them all! Well done to our winning group ‘Roar’ who will perform in the final on the last day of school.

​On Tuesday morning, we split into year groups and enjoyed a 45 minute session each on the balance bikes from the ‘Schools Active Travel’ team. We learnt how to correctly wear our helmet and how to sit correctly on the bike with our legs astride. We practised passing others safely and enjoyed going around the course and over the ramps! It was a very good exercise for our legs!

In Literacy, our Year 1 children have been working on consolidating end of year expectations through handwriting, hold a sentence and writing sentences about where they would like to travel.
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In Maths, our Reception children have been solving addition and subtraction problems based on a range of stories such as “Harry and his bucketful of dinosaurs” and “Mr Grumpy’s Outing”. Our Year 1 children have been calculating the total value of coins in a set of 5p coins and a set of 10p coins.

​In PE, we have practised our Sports Day races before our Sports Celebration!

 On Friday, we had our trip to Tropical World!

The morning consisted of us making our way through different habitats and observing different animals! We started in the Butterfly House and as we started to venture through the canopies we spotted a cabinet full of cocoons and several butterflies that had just hatched and were drying their wings for their flight. As we moved through the Butterfly House we spotted very large Koi Carps and then a Morelet's crocodile - which was as still as a log! We also observed lots of brightly coloured butterflies fluttering through the canopies!

Next, we entered the aquarium and we saw lots of different types of fish including a stingray which came up close to the glass to say good morning!

Then, we moved into the waterfall house and we saw crested partridges, tortoises and cherry shrimps to name a few animals.

We then went to Creature Corner and saw a range of insects, lizards and snakes. 

Next, we entered the Rainforest here we enjoyed watching the Marmosets but we couldn't spot the porcupine!

Then, we entered the Desert and loved watching the meerkat and seeing the spiky cacti.

The creature cavern was next on our tour and our eyes had to adjust to the low light levels - here we saw the beaded lizard, hedgehog tenrecs, Scorpion, cockroaches and a tarantula.

We then went back into the aquarium and saw the hermit crab, red rainbow fish and many other fish and coral.

Finally, we headed out through the Butterfly House and saw terrapin turtles! 

It was then dinner time - we headed over to our education room and enjoyed our delicious dinners (we were very hungry after our that exploring!).

In the afternoon, we had an exciting and engaging workshop based on different habitats.
We were introduced to Mango the Meerkat and were told we needed to help him find his family! So we jumped aboard our aeroplanes and started by flying to the continent of South America to a country called 'Brazil'. Here we entered the Rainforest and learnt about different animals that live here such as; the dart frog and tamarin - we decided that these animals were not part of Mangos family so we had to jump back aboard our plane!

We had to travel for hours on the plane all the way to the coral reef in Australia! We learnt that sea is very water warm and that coral is actually an animal not a plant! We moved around like lots of sea creatures such as; fish, jellyfish, crabs and sharks. We also spoke about litter and how it makes animals poorly. Then we completed an activity as a team where we had to sort animals and litter out from the ocean. To complete our learning on the coral reef we played a game of fish snap - we had to look carefully at the photo of the fish we had been given and look for a friend with the same fish. We agreed that none of these animals looked like Mangos family - so back on the plane we went!

We took off and landed in England in a woodland area. Team EO confidently named the 4 seasons and could discuss what the woods looked like in Summer compared to Autumn. Then we named lots of different woodland animals and moved around like them. For our activity we had to sort lots of different creatures - some of us sorted them based on the type of creature they were, how many legs they had and if they had wings or not. We discussed the body parts of a meerkat and sung 'head, shoulders, knees and toes'. Next we looked at a dragon fly and thought about whether they had the same body parts as a meerkat. We learnt a new song about insect body parts to the tune of 'head, shoulders, knees and toes'. We spoke about how humans and meerkats have a skeleton on the inside of their bodies but insects don't on the inside but do on the outside we know it is called an 'exoskeleton'. We decided that the animals in the woodland were not part of Mangos family!

We took off on our plane for the final time and landed in Africa in the Kalahari Desert. Team EO noticed that there we no trees and that there was lots of sand. We know that in the desert it is very hot, hardly ever rains but can be very windy. We spoke about how plants need water to survive and that because it hardly ever rains in the desert that trees and plants can not survive. We spoke about animals we might find their such as a camel and snake and how we will find meerkats in the desert - we had found Mangos family!

Next, we learnt about how meerkats are adapted to live in the desert.

• Tail - helps them to stand upright to see what is around them
• Claws - to dig for food and to comb fur
• Eyes - dark fur to protect from sun like sunglass
• Ears - can close them to stop sand getting  in!

Our final activity of our workshop was to invent our own animal - we had to think of the features of different animals and merge them together!

The children were a true credit to Park Street and their grown-ups at home. They listened to all instructions, carried out them out sensibly, stayed together as a team and had lots of fun. All adults who supported us on the trip commented on the children's behaviour and how proud of them they were! I am so proud of the Sunshines and they should be very proud of themselves too. 

​What a lovely day we had!

Our learning question this week has been “What’s it like in Kenya?’. We started the week listening carefully to the story ‘Mama Panyas Pancakes’. We have learnt that Kenya is a country on the eastern coast of the continent of Africa. We know that Kenya lies on the Equator. We learnt that there are two official languages in Kenya these are English and Swahili. We practised saying ‘hello’ in Swahili which is ’Habari’. We learnt that the capital of Kenya is Nairobi and it has the Nairobi river flowing through it - just like the River Thames flows through London! We learnt that it has just 2 seasons – dry and wet and we spoke about how this is different to England. We learnt about the landscapes and the animals that we would find in Kenya! We have also enjoyed listening and learning the call and response song ‘Che Che Kule’. We have watched clips of the wildlife in Kenya and learnt how people can go on holidays there and go on Safari’s in jeeps and hot air balloons – we thought this was really exciting!
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Our learning activities have included; using the watercolour paints to paint an African sunset and then carefully cutting and sticking an animal shadow on to it, creating our own stories using the safari animals, carefully attaching pieces together to create a hot air balloon, looking at pictures to compare a Kenyan landscape to a UK landscape and creating repeating patterns by threading cotton reals onto thread.

As part of our learning on Kenya, we learnt that they have lots of market stall. We looked at a fruit stall and identified what fruits we could see for sale. Miss Crookes kindly brought in some pineapple (a fruit grown and sold in Kenya) for us all to try!

Team EO have also enjoyed making the most of the warmer weather - we have spoke lots about how to keep ourselves safe such as; wearing suncream , wearing sunhats, drinking lots of water and not running around too much!

Here we are choosing our own learning outside!

​In Maths, our Year 1 children have been completing Maths assessments in small groups – they have used the manipulatives to help them solve the problems and have really blown me away! Our Reception children have been subitising numbers to 5, identifying doubles and not doubles, recalled number bonds to 5, recalled subtraction facts from 5 and explored how the numbers 6, 7 and 8 are composed!

​In Science, we carried out our inquiry on ‘classifying’. We know that when we classify we make observations to name, sort and organise items. Our big question was ‘How would you classify these animals based on what they eat?’. We recapped on the meanings of carnivores, herbivores and omnivores before using a Venn diagram to sort animals into the correct categories based on what they eat.

On Tuesday afternoon, our Y1 children met up with Team CH to celebrate their amazing progress this year in their reading journey! The adults explained to the Y1 children that we were super proud of their commitment to reading and were really impressed with how hard they had worked and the progress that they had all made. As a treat Mr Holmes had bought the children some ice-cream and a cone and Mrs Godany added in a chocolate finger!
The children enjoyed spending time together eating their ice-cream we had a year group photo and spent time playing 'tiggy scarecrow'!

Well done Year 1's we are so proud of you and a massive thank you to Mr Holmes and Mrs Godany for supplying the treats!

On Wednesday afternoon, we had a lovely afternoon on the school field taking part in our EYFS Penalty Shootout – we had fun taking shots against Mr Wordsworth and Miss Crookes and cheering our friends on from the touch line!

Prior to this we learnt that there are 24 teams currently competing the Euros 2024 and that 2 of these teams are from the United Kingdom. We discussed how everyone on the same team has to wear the same colour kit so they can recognise who is on their team and we spoke about some people enjoy watching the football matches and put flags up in their homes. Team EO were very good at pretending they had scored a goal and celebrating! Before taking our penalties we enjoyed watching some previous penalty shootouts from Soccer Aid!

Here are some action shots from our penalty shootout!

Our learning question this week has been ‘What’s it like at the seaside’. We started the week listening to the story “Lucy and Tom At the Seaside”. We have also enjoyed listening to a Bluey story ‘The Beach’. We know that the seaside is called the ‘seaside’ because the sea is beside the beach. We have discussed things that we can see at the seaside and what we might do there. We have also discussed how seaside holidays were different in the past to now. We have also learnt that the season is Summer and we know that in Summer the days are longer, the weather is warmer and we can wear Summer clothes!
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Our learning activities have included; writing a beach bag list, writing ‘I can see’ sentences about the seaside, making an aeroplane/boat, using the watercolour paints to create a seaside picture and we have been carefully tearing and sticking tissue paper to decorate our own beach ball! In our dough area we have enjoyed using ice cream scoops, pots and spoons to serve ice-cream!

Our Reception have been working super hard in their handwriting to ensure they are forming letters correctly, starting and finishing in the correct place! We continue to write a short sentence at the end using 'hold a sentence'.

Our Year 1 children have worked extremely hard to write their sequel to 'The Smeds and The Smoos'! We finished them off today and we are looking forward to putting them in the envelopes to send off to Julia Donaldson next week!

In Maths, our Year 1 children have really impressed with their understanding of money! We have recognised and explained the value of 2p, 5p and 10p coins, explained that a single coin can be worth several pennies, used knowledge of the value of coins to solve problems and calculated the total value of the coins in a set of 2p coins .

Reception children have been exploring odd and even numbers. We explored this with a group of children moving around and when the grown-up said stop they had to get in a pair – we know that if someone doesn’t have a partner (cannot make a pair) then the number is odd. We have listened to the story ‘One Odd Day’ where there was only odd numbers in the story and created odd blobby creatures! 

​In Science, we carried out our inquiry on ‘comparative and fair testing’. Our big question is ‘Do cress seeds grow quicker inside or outside?’. We have made predictions about where we think they will grow quicker and worked as a team to plant cress seeds – we have put one lot on our windowsill inside and the other in our outside area. We cannot wait to see which starts to show signs of growth first!

Our learning question this week has been ‘What is it like in city?’. We started the week listening to the story “All Aboard the London Bus” by Patricia Toht – we know that in London they have big red buses called ‘London buses’. This book introduced us to England’s capital city and it’s well-known landmarks like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the London eye. This week we have also thought about special places and how everyone has a different one.

Our learning activities this week have included; making a London mini book about what we can see in London, using the ‘how to draw…’ step by step instructions to draw a bus, make a red London bus, make a busby solider and choosing a London landmark and drawing it. We have also enjoyed having the Beebots and made them move by inputting directions – we have begun to use the direction words; forwards, backwards, left and right.
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Our Talk through Stories of the week this week has been ‘Tiddler’.

In Maths, our Reception have solved first, then, now addition stories and first, then, now subtraction stories. 

​Our Year 1 children have count efficiently in groups of five, count in groups 2,5 and 10 and explained the value of a 1p coin in pence.

Our Reception children have also continued to access handwriting where we have practised letter formation and hold a sentence.
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In Literacy, Year 1’s started the week using regular past and present tense by adding the suffixes ‘ed’ and ‘ing’ to words, we have practised forming capital letters and saying the names of the letter and the sounds they make. We have spent the past two days putting a plan together for our sequel to ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’ – we are very excited to write it next week!

​In Science, we have learnt the terms omnivore, herbivore and carnivore. We know that the arrows on a food chain shows the direction that energy travels and we have learnt some food chains.

​In PE, we practised the sprint race, relay race and egg and spoon race!

Our Reception children have been accessing their new RWI groups – they have made some excellent progress and we are very proud of them! We have been doing daily handwriting and hold a sentence! In our handwriting we have been working hard to sit at the table correctly - bums to the back of chairs, feet flat on floor and tummy near table. We have also been working hard to use our "perfect pencil grip" which is the tripod grip. 

Look at our amazing writing - I can see the progress the children have made in just one week!

​In Literacy, our Year 1 children have started a new unit of work our text driver is “The Smeds and the Smoos”. Our text is a short narrative, audience is Julia Donaldson and our purpose is to write a short sequel to the story. We started the week by exploring the front cover and making predictions together using a class thought board, attentively listened to the story and answered questions about it. We have learnt that capital letters don’t just come at the start of the sentence – we know that capital letters are used for the names of people, places and days of the week and for the personal pronoun ‘I’. We ended the week learning about an exclamation mark – we know it is a different type of punctation that comes at the end of the sentence to show shouting and excitement!

In Maths, our Reception children have explored numbers 11-20 and how they are composed, practised quick recall of number bonds to 5, recognised the pattern of the counting system and looked at composition to 5.

​Our Year 1 children have measured one object with different non-standard measures and recorded outcomes, measured items using individual cm cubes and counted efficiently in groups of 2 and 10!

In Science, we continued our learning on ‘Living Things and their Habitats’ – this week we learnt a microhabitat is a small habitat specific to minibeast within larger habitats, named the following minibeasts; caterpillar, spider, woodlouse, beetle, worm, slug, water boatman and pond skater, that an insect has 6 legs and a spider has 8. That a spider is an arachnid and that worms and slugs are not insects!

In PE, we began our Athletic unit and practised our sprinting. Miss Overton said ‘on your marks’ - we had to approach the start line and places one foot just behind the line with the other foot approximately 50 centimetres behind with both feet facing straight forward.  The opposite arm to the front leg is then held forwards ready to drive backwards on ‘go’. On the command ‘go’, we had to drive one arm backwards and the back-leg forwards, driving the foot to the ground as quickly as possible. We then practised side stepping and finished with practising our relay race!