Year 1/2 (Hedgehogs) Terms 1, 2 & 3
Welcome to Year 1/2 - The Hedgehogs!
Keep watching our class page as we will be filling it with exciting class news, photographs and video clips of things we’ve done during our lessons!
Myself and the rest of the team would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas, we hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating with loved ones. We would also like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you for all of the wonderful cards and gifts we have received!
Christmas card making in progress, we hope you like the design!
Movie night in progress!
A few extra shots of us all individually in our costumes!
Hopefully by now you will have all had the link to watch our Nativity performance (we missed you all very much) the children all did so well and we are really proud of each and everyone! We just wanted to share a few extra photographs that we took last week in/after our dress rehearsal.
Sorry we have been a little bit quiet here on the website it is because we have had assessment week and also we have been in full swing with our Nativity rehersals. We are looking forward to performing (filming) on Monday and Tuesday. Today we have had lots of fun celebrating Christmas Jumper Day and having our class Christmas dinner!
The Hedgehogs have been look a symmetry and have really enjoyed using the mirrors as a mathematical aid to help them.
We spent some time developing our measuring skills ensuring that we could use a ruler (cm) to measure accurately.
Today we celebrated our Harvest Festival.
As part of our RE work we have looked at the meaning of Harvest and looked at way Christians show their thanks to God.
A little snap shot of some of our time work. This is a skill that many children found difficult so it could be something to continue to work on at home.
As part of our Geography work we spent time researching the big five and also the Maasai Mara Tribe.
Meet the Hedgehog Tribe! This week we have learnt all about the Maasai Mara and we have created our own version of a traditional tribal collar and took part in a jumping dance competition.
We have developed our money based skills during Maths.
We have worked on our art skills this week and have created the most amazing safari sunset pictures! I think I have a class full of little artists!
As part of our work on Creation we have written our own Creation poems to celebrate and Thank God.
We have looked at the Creation canvas in great detail and then created our own Creation styled artwork.
Could I please ask everyone to make sure that they have a pair of welly boots in school (which are labelled) as we want to use the field for as long as possible and can only do this if all members of the Hedgehog class have boots in school. Could you also make sure that children bring a coat/rain jacket with them into school as again we still aim to get outside for some fresh air even if there are a few rain drops!
So our Geography topic this term is all about Kenya and safari. In class we have completed a variety of task so far from detailed map where children identified the capital city (Nairobi), cities (Mombasa and Kisumu), Mount Kenya, Lake Victoria, The Indian Ocean and the equator line. We then moved onto thinking about what questions we might like to research during this unit of work and then went onto creating a mini fact file containing some of our research so far.
We have also spent some time working on 10 more and 10 less, using a number square really helped us with this task.
Our current English project is based around traditional tales and we have focused our investigation skills on Little Red Riding Hood. We have already sequenced the story events and retold the story in our own words. Now we have spent some time on looking at the key characters and have completed some detailed character description work using adjectives!
We have spent some of our Maths lessons focussing on place value. We now know how to partition a number into tens and ones and can use the base 10's to aid us. We have also used our place value skills to help us order a set of numbers into size order.
The votes are in and Mrs Blackwell is pleased to announce that our new Year 1/2 School Council members are ... ... ... ... ...
Year 1: Lauren and Seb
Year 2: Eva and Teddy
This is our resident pheasant (who the class have named Cheeky), he spends the majority of the day outside our classroom pecking on the window! As we had been looking at objects from nature the class asked if we could spend a lesson drawing this handsome bird.
Some of our amazing artwork!
We have been working on our observational skill by drawing objects from nature.
As part of our Geography study on European countries we tasted some French food.
As part of our work on instructions, we spent time writing a set of commands about how to make a ham sandwich.
This week we have been Identifying fractions.
We have been busy following a set of commands to make a Chinese lantern. We all thought this was good fun!
We have also started a new Geography topic which is called Passport to the world with a focus on Europe. We started off by getting out an atlas and doing some investigational map work!
In Maths year 1’s have been working on counting in steps of 2, 5 and 10’s and the year 2’s have taken their learning to the next level by working on the 2,5 and 10 times tables!
We have started a new unit of work in a English this week which is based on commands/instructions. We started off the unit by seeing if we could follow some written commands and then we learnt about imperative verbs!
We just wanted to say a massive thank you for all of our lovely gifts and the Key Stage 1 team wish you and your families all a very happy Christmas.
Christmas dinner!
Christingle candle making which helps us to remember that Jesus is the light of the world.
Today we have been discussing the importance of washing our hands, we carried out an investigation to see if we could wash of the green glitter germs!
As part of our science work we are looking at ways we can keep our bodies healthy and one of those ways is doing regular exercise!
This week we have looked at the pop artist Andy Warhol. We also had some parents come to visit us in our classroom and they also helped with making our pop art portraits! This display looks fantastic!!!
We have continued our Picasso work and he has inspired us to create our own abstract faces. Here are just a few examples
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We were really lucky to have a visit from Kent Music School who taught us all about different instruments and how music is used in film!
RAFFLE TICKET CHALLENGE!
1 raffle ticket will be awarded to any Hedgehog who writes down 3 of their own similie sentences, we have spent a lesson working on these in class so hopefully you will already have some good ideas. I have also included the similie writing mat if you need a little bit of extra help.
Some examples from our lesson:
- The little boy ran as quickly as a orange fox running in the woods.
- The puppy was as cute as a fluffy teddybear which sits on the end of a child's bed.
- The tree was a tall as a giraffe standing on the African grassland.
We have started to work on our measuring skills by using a ruler (cm) to measure different items from our classroom.
Our new History topic will be all about investigating the Gunpowder Plot, who was involved and what happened. You will find below the knowledge organiser for this unit of work below, it would be really helpful if you could continue learning this information at home!
We have started on our senses poetry work this week and will be continuing with this next week as well. We have looked at the five senses and then used adjectives to help us describe different items we can use each sense to identify.
Some of Mrs Blackwell's favourite examples:
quiet, soft whispers
delicious, sweet candyfloss
tall, bright yellow giraffes
tiny, fluffy black kittens
crunchy, salty peanuts
loud, bellowing music
spicy, hot chilli
This week we have focused on developing our time telling skills, Year 1's have been working on o'clock and half past times and Year 2's have been working on o'clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to times.
We have used the practical clocks to investigate different times, looked at the the difference between the minute and hour hand, identified the times that clock faces displayed, made a timetable showing our daily events at school and played a time game in our table groups.
Some of us have found the concept of telling the time to be quite a tricky task so it would be really helpful if you could carry on developing these skills at home.
We have now sadly finished our Geography unit of work 'An Island Home' so we had to say a sad goodbye to Katie Morag! The Hedgehogs finished off the unit by having a quiz to see how much new information they had learnt, the results were impressive!
This week we pretended that we had been on holiday to visit Katie Morag on the Isle of Struay! We thought about all of the amazing adventures we could have had from going on a boat trip around the island to see the seals to taking part in the hill race on the Five Sisters to baking bread with Neilly Beag to playing pooh sticks on the Red Burn Bridge with Katie and Liam. We then wrote a postcard to a friend at home, these are going to form a new display in our classroom.
House point challenge time!
As we have spent some time looking at Tartan this week as part of our island home work. We looked at the pattern of Tartan that is on Katie Morag's kilt, we then found out that different clans/family names have their own Tartan design. Can you research to see if your family has its own design and bring this in on Monday?
Sadly the Blackwell family don't seem to have their own Tartan design. However, below is the Tartan design for the Jackson clan!
As part of our RE lessons we have learnt about what a parable is and we now know that they are a type of story that can be found in the Bible which has a hidden meaning to help teach Christians a life lesson. We have read the parable of the Lost Son, the Son asked his Father for his inheritance earlier and then travelled far away. The Son then made some bad choices, he gambled away most of his money and spent the rest on wine and because of this sinned against God. Then a famine hit the land and the Son was desperate for food so he decided to go back to his home and apologise to his Father. When he returned his Father showed him love and compassion and because the Son was truly sorry his Father forgave him for the mistakes he had made.
We have looked carefully at the hidden meaning of this parable and are trying to apply the values of love, compassion and showing forgiveness to our own lives.
This week we have carried on focusing on money in our Math's lessons, we have completed lots of practical work and then followed these activities up with a written based task. We have investigated using coins to find different ways of making the same amount that we had in our piggy bank.
For example:
My piggy bank has 50p inside and when I shake it I know there is more than 1 single coin. Here are some ways
10p+10p+10p+10p+10p=50p
20p+20p+10p=50p
20p+20p+5p+5p=50p
We then moved onto looking at the concept of giving change when buying an item in a shop, once agin we would in a practical way before we wrote down our change amounts.
Some of us have found the concept of working with money to be quite a tricky task so it would be really helpful if you could carry on developing these skills at home.
We are starting to look at money and ways we can make amounts using different coins. Today we pretended we were buying items from a shop, we selected two items we wanted to buy, then added up the two amounts to find the total cost and paid for the items exactly.
A few pictures of us discussing, collecting and recording our data for our eye colour investigation.
House point challenge time!
Please find children's username and password for the Letterland website in their reading/contact books. We are using Letterland to help support our phonics teaching here in school and wanted to give the children access to some of these resources to aid their home learning.
We used a picture of Katie Morag standing in her bedroom for a writing stimulus this week, we completed some shared writing as a class and then added some of our own independent sentences.
The Hedgehogs took on the role of a teacher this week and edited my work to check for mistakes, this is a key skill for our year groups. It was a task that everyone seemed to enjoy and is a skill we will be developing further.
Katie Morag spends lots of her time watching the seals in Kiloran Bay and lots of class members asked if we could carry out some research. We used the computers to find facts and then wrote some of them up. Have a read you might learn something new!
In maths we have looked at how to balance a number by finding two calculations that equal the same given amount. Year 2’s we’re working with a range of numbers and Year 1’s used their knowledge of number bonds to 10.
Class debate time! As a class we had to think about what it would be like to like on the Isle of Struay with Katie Morag, we came up with ideas for and against.
We have now started to look at the five senses, the class discussed these and then we went on a senses hunt! Next week we start to carry out mini science investigations, keep watching for the results of these!
During maths this week the Year one’s have been adding 10 to a given number and the Year two’s have been adding and subtracting 10.
We have started our new Science topic which is all about the human body. We have spent time looking at parts of the body and their functions.
This week as part of our Geography work we have been looking at human and physical features.
Our current Geography unit of work is called An Island Home. We will be theming our work around the character Katie Morag who lives on the Isle of Struay (which is based on the Isle of Coll in Scotland.) We will undertake a variety of tasks from identifying human and physical features, creating our own island maps, looking a modes of transport and the jobs people do on the island and even researching animals that can be found on the island. The list goes on!
The votes are in and Mrs Blackwell is pleased to announce that our new Year 1/2 School Council members are ... ... ... ... ...
Although many of you will already know me, we are offering you an opportunity to come into the classroom and discover what happens within the Hedgehog class and what the expectations of Year 1 and 2 are.
(Friday 13th September - 2.45-3.10)
Welcome back, the KS1 team all hope you had a lovely summer break and are now looking forward to seeing what the Hedgehogs can achieve this academic year!
2019-2020
The classroom is all ready for the new Hedgehog class!
Please note the content below is for the previous academic year 2018-2019 - we are currently waiting to archieve this material.
So after running our back to basic letter formation course we would like to share some writing transformations! Please look at the before and after!
These are the posters we use here in our classroom, you may like to look at them or display them at home.
Please see Mr Hygate’s class page to see photographs from our whole school Team Robots and the Meanies project.
Today we spent the day learning about how to stay safe when online!
Miss Chapman's literacy group have created their own version of round and round the village poem.
Our class poem - Round and round Stowting:
Round and round Stowting.
Round and round Stowting.
Round and round Stowting.
Like we always do.
Cycling down the steep hills of Stowting,
Cycling down the steep hills of Stowting,
Cycling down the steep hills of Stowting,
Like we always do.
Crawling through the bushes of Stowting,
Crawling through the bushes of Stowting,
Crawling through the bushes of Stowting,
Like we always do.
Dropping down the Fireman’s pole in Stowting,
Dropping down the Fireman’s pole in Stowting,
Dropping down the Fireman’s pole in Stowting,
Like we always do.
Driving through the streets of Stowting,
Driving through the streets of Stowting,
Driving through the streets of Stowting,
Like we always do.
Gliding through the air of Stowting,
Gliding through the air of Stowting,
Gliding through the air of Stowting,
Like we always do.
Great fun was had this week at the Infant games!
Quick reminder: If you are the parent of a Year 1 child, we would like to invite you to attend an information session regarding the statutory test your child will have to sit this June. In order to make this session available to all Year 1 parents, we will be offering a morning and an afternoon session which will take place this Thursday. The session will only be half an hour to forty-five minutes and will be held at 8.30am and again at 3.00pm.
We look forward to seeing you all.
Mrs Uden & Mrs Jackson
We are going to be having a class focus on using cursive handwriting and it would be especially helpful if you would work on this at home with your child. You will find useful resources in the Phonics & Handwriting section of our website that can be downloaded and used. Thank you in advance for your commitment to your child's learning.
We had a visitor from the fire services and learnt some important safety tips.
We have completed some practical based money work using different coins to buy various items from Miss Chapman's shop!
Space artwork in the making!
In Science, this afternoon, Hedgehog’s made some space art work pictures! We all had lots of fun creating the background by blending pastels and then we coloured and sorted a set of the planets! Mrs Jackson was really proud of how hard we worked on this task!
We carried on our letter writing task, we created a class checklist of all the key features we needed to include in our letter writing!
Using our class text ‘Dear Greenpeace’ this week we have pretended that an animal has come to live in our garden, we then wrote a letter (pretending we were from Greenpeace) explaining why we wouldn’t have seen our animal in the garden.
This week we have been focusing on our problem solving skills. We have been trying to identify missing numbers in calculations, here are some examples of our workings out!
We have learnt a simple rhyme to help us remember the name and order of the planets in our Solar System. We also know that Pluto is now not considered to be a planet!
In the story Emily thinks she has a blue whale living in the pond in her garden, so today we have spent some time researching facts about blue whales!
Our current English work is all about letter writing, we are using the story Dear Greenpeace as our stimulus. First we had to find out what the charity Greenpeace actually does to help the environment.
Some super shots from Prickly Hay!
Christmas crafts
Could we possible have all required costumes in on Monday 3rd December. Thank you for this in advance!
We had great fun playing tag rugby this week!!!!!! Could parents just make sure that all Hedgehogs have the correct PE kit in school (plus a bag to put muddy shoes in) and that children can put this kit on independently.
Year 1’s also have their first lesson on odd and even numbers!
Year 1 spent a lesson learning a song and then ordering the days of the week correctly.
Year 2 have been working really hard on halving both even and odd numbers. They have also been focusing on using neat, clear workings out! Here are a few examples of their work.
Science show! Today the Hedgehogs were really lucky as we got to visit the Rabbit's Science Fair.The Rabbits taught us a little bit about magnets by creating some amazing games for us to play! (Have a look at the Rabbit's webpage for some photographs!)
Don’t forget to wear your Pudsey or Blush ears to school on Friday to celebrate Children In Need 2018! Also bring in some loose change to help us decorate our Pudsey face with coins!
Our amazing Inter Faith Week visit from Imam Hasan and Rabbi Cohen!
Our new classroom display which shows off our Rangoli pattern artwork and Diwali research.
We have spent some of our lesson time researching what the festival Diwali is and looked at why Hindu's celebrate.
Here are some of the facts we discovered:
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Diwali is an important Hindu festival, it is the Hindu festival of light.
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Hindu’s celebrate because it is the start of their new year.
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The word Diwali means row of lighted lamps.
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The festival celebrates the Goddess Lakshmi.
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Hindu’s light diva lamps.
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The festival means it is time for: cleaning the house, decorating the house with lights, buying new clothes, exchanging gifts, having a family meal and creating Rangoli patterns.
We then moved onto designing a Rangoli pattern.
Rangoli Patterns
During Diwali, Hindus draw bright Rangoli patterns on the floor by the front door to encourage the goddess Lakshmi to enter their homes. Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth and is said to bring good fortune. Rangoli patterns are traditionally drawn using rice grains, flour, sand or chalk and designs are usually taken from nature or are pattern based.
We have been looking at time this week in maths, year 1’s have been working on identifying o’clock and half past times and year 2’s have been looking at quarter past and quarter to times.
Here are some photographs of our shoeboxes we created for our Safari Geography project. These were amazing!
The Hedgehog's have been working hard on their keep fit skills! How many bright red faces can you see?
A few snaps from today's habitat walk!
We are hoping to go on a habitat walk around the local area on Friday morning which links to our current Science unit of work. Please could you ensure that your child has a pair of wellington boots and a rain coat in school!
We spent lots of time researching safari animals, we found out some really interesting facts!
Pictures of the most amazing safari sunsets! What fabulous artisits you are Hedgehogs!
Here are a few examples of some parts of our independent story writing. We created our own version of the Little Red Riding Hood traditional tale.
We now have our own class wellie boot rack!
Mrs Uden has asked if all parents could now provide their child with a pair of boots that can be kept here in school, please could you also ensure that these are clearly labelled with your child's name.
Many thanks for doing this in advance.
Next week we will be completing some more art based work. We are going to be creating a safari sunset picture, we need to find out how to make a silhouette and find out how to mix watercolour paints. Watch out for some finished examples next week!
Meet the Hedgehog tribe!
The Maasai Tribe love music and dance, both are very special in the Maasai culture. They sing lots of songs together, wear lots of beaded jewellery and wear their best clothes. The Maasai Tribe perform a special dance, called the jumping dance.
We are currently making our own version of a Maasai collar so watch out for the photographs!
I’m so exited to see the safari in a shoebox projects next week, i’ve already had a few sent in and it’s causing great excitement!!!
We are looking at mini beasts in Science and we have created a new habitat for these creatures!
We spent two lessons working on character descriptive writing!
Today the Hedgehog’s have created a working wall with all the questions that they would like to research for our topic 🇰🇪
Our current Literacy project is based traditional tales and today we have been working on our story retelling skills! Here are 2 fantastic pieces of year 2 work!
The Hedgehog class have been working hard on their Geographical skills this week!
We have been using an atlas to help us locate where the United Kingdom and Africa are placed on a world map.
We then looked at a more detailed map of Kenya and located Nairobi (the capital city), Kisumu and Mombasa (other cities), Mount Kenya (a mountain), lake Victoria (a water source) and also the Indian Ocean. We then created our own version of a map of Kenya and even used a key, Mrs Jackson was very impressed!
Our new Geography topic is all about going on safari whilst in Kenya!
Today we spoke about needing a passport, then we made our plane tickets and boarding passes, after that we boarded our flight on Kenyan Airways and travelled to Kenya! The Hedgehogs have now arrived at their destination and are waiting to explore!
The votes are in and Mrs Jackson is pleased to announce that our new Year 1/2 School Council members are ... ... ... ... ...
Year 1: Hector and Bonnie
Year 2: Bertie and Seren
