Year 1

This term we have been focusing on the theme ‘Where we are in time and place’. We have been looking at castles, and their role over the years. We spent our provocation day at the beginning of the term inquiring into different kings and queens, which we will continue learning about next term, building castles and looking at artifacts from a long time ago.

Year 1 have had such a fantastic time designing, building and evaluating castles. Part of our learning this term has linked to what materials we could use to make the castles. So we decided to investigate which of the materials we could use, and how we could stick these together. The children all found this very exciting! We tested sellotape, masking tape, PVA glue, and so many other things, to see which would be the best to hold together our castles. After our experiments and designs, we made the castles, looking at sticking, gluing and cutting to create the strongest fortress.

As well as our focus on castles, we also looked at fairytales. We read ‘The Princess and the Pea’ and then followed this learning by reading the story from the Pea’s point of view in the story ‘The Very Smart Pea and the Princess to be’. Year one had a fantastic time exploring these books, and seeing their teachers being Queens for the afternoon. We spent time imagining what it would be like to be the Pea, hidden under the 20 mattresses and featherbeds, and then we had a go at writing the story, as if we were the Pea.

As well as all of this wonderful learning, we have also had time to learn and practice our Christmas Nativity, which the children had an amazing time performing. We have had lots of fun singing ‘The Angel Gabriel’ and ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’. The show was fantastic and all of the children were so excited to see their parents and carers enjoy what they had been doing as well. We were lucky enough to do one of our Christmas shows in front of parents and carers, and were deeply saddened that we could not do the second show in the same way. We hope that you enjoyed the show if you were able to come to the first showing, and we hope you enjoy the video when it is sent!

Merry Christmas and a happy new year! We cannot wait to see all of you bright and shiny after the break!