Our topic in Bumble Bee Class this term was ‘Into the Woods’! We have enjoyed exploring the outdoors through our forest school sessions and immersing ourselves in our story books.

We started with the traditional tale ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, using the Nick Sharratt pop-up book to base our learning on. We let our imagination run wild again with Drawing Club, exploring the characters, the setting, and how Goldilocks could apologise to the three bears! We enjoyed retelling the story using the story spoons in our story basket. 

Our next story of the half term was the much-loved classic, ‘The Gruffalo’, by Julia Donaldson. We explored and acted out the story, writing descriptions for each of the characters. Year 1 worked hard to use adjectives, verbs and conjunctions to describe the characters. Reception used their super phonics skills to write about the Gruffalo’s features. We then used our imagination to come up with our own scary monsters with descriptive features! Year 1 also innovated a character from the story, so that they could rewrite their own version of the Gruffalo and publish it into a book!  

Following on from our Gruffalo learning, we got to visit Twycross Zoo! There we got to go through the butterfly forest, spot the owls high in the trees, and meet the Gruffalo!! We also got to see lots of funny monkeys, a tiger, meerkats and giraffes! We wrote about our visit too, explaining all the animals we got to see.

      

After that, we moved onto the story ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Waddell. We started by exploring the story, including identifying the different parts and answering questions about the text. Year 1 then moved on to compare fiction and non-fiction texts, identifying the features of non-fiction texts, and thinking about how we could write our own fact file about owls! We learnt lots of interesting facts about owls – did you know they can turn their head nearly 180 degrees?!

In maths, Year 1 have been working hard on multiplication and division, and fractions. We have used Numberblocks to help us to understand arrays, and to count in 2s, 5s and 10s. We now know that an array has rows and columns, and these can also help us when grouping (dividing). We have learnt all about how to find and recognise halves and quarters – this was especially handy when the Gruffalo came to visit!

Reception have explored numbers up to 20, using the ten frames and the numicon to help them make the numbers, using 10 and some more. They have also begun to use and understand part-whole models, including finding the whole and splitting it into parts.

In music, we have been busy learning how to play the ocarinas! We have been able to take these home and practise, and we are beginning to learn the nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. This learning will continue next half term too. We have also been busy doing music with Mrs Toghill, finding the beat in the Big Bear Funk!   

In art we have been learning about 3D art, including rolling, curving and folding paper. Through this, we have explored tower pictures, 3D art with paper, and then applied this to make our own ‘Tree of Life’ art work.  Don’t they look great?!

      

Our PSHE this term has been all about our own health and wellbeing. This has included being independent (getting dressed etc.), thinking about washing our hands properly, road safety, sun safety, allergy awareness and healthy eating.