This week in Year 1...

This week we have been celebrating World Space Week! 🌍

On Monday, we received a special letter from Captain Star, an astronaut living on the International Space Station! The children were so excited to hear from her and have been inspired to become astronauts in training themselves.

We began by thinking about and sharing what we already know about space. We then thought about what we wanted to find out about space and the children had some fantastic questions! We have been reading non-fiction texts, doing our own research and watching videos in attempt to answer our questions.

What can your child tell you about space? Can they remember how many planets there are and any of their names?

Throughout the week, we have been learning what it’s like in space — how astronauts eat, sleep and move in zero gravity.

We enjoyed reading Whatever Next! by Jill Murphy, where a bear travels to the moon. After reading, the children thought about what they would pack for their own trip to the moon and did some wonderful writing about what they would take. Ask your child what they chose to pack! You may like to re-read the story to your child - Here is a link to the text on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za-g9y0_Y1s

The children have also been busy designing and making their own rockets and creating a range of space-themed art. WOW! We definitely have some budding artists and future astronauts in Year 1!

We've also been blown away with their reading and their application of known sounds in Phonics! The children have been working hard to segment and blend a range of words sent from outer space!

On Thursday, we had a special visitor to launch our next book focus ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley’ by Sarah Roberts. Two representatives from the Final Straw Foundation visited to tell us all about plastic and its impact on our seas, oceans and animals. It was fascinating! Then as detectives we sieved through buckets of sand to find plastic and non-plastic treasures. These were sorted by size and material. We finished our session by listening to the story about Stanley, the plastic bag, a making our Ocean Defender Pledge!

Thank you, as always for your continued support! It makes a huge difference!

Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you all again on Monday.

The Year One Team