Term 1

What a fantastic first term we have had at school. In just a few weeks we have done so much! Our theme has been ‘What makes me special?' Throughout the term we have been talking about our similarities and differences, how we change as we get older, and how we differ in our likes and dislikes. By sharing our family photographs and ones when we were babies we gained a better understanding of the huge changes that have already occurred in such a short space of time!

We were lucky to have a visit form a grandparent who came in to talk about what school was like when he was growing up and how things in daily life were the same/different. We asked lots of questions and found out that school was very different!

At the start of the term we took a close look at ‘What makes me Me! Noticed that our features are all unique and different and celebrated this by having a go at creating a self-portrait, mixing our skin colours using the primary colours of red, blue and yellow and a bit of white.

As we are outside each and every day exploring and working we have noticed that the natural world is starting to change around us. We have looked closely for signs of autumn and observed first-hand the effects this is having in our local environment. We have also collected lots of natural resources to create an autumn table top and used leaves conkers acorns fir cones etc. to help us with lots of maths and creative activities.  

We were then challenged to mix autumn colours using the three primary colours of red yellow and blue, recording all the colours we mixed on pumpkin shaped paper.

It was wonderful to invite significant male relatives into class and join in with some of the activities we do. We got them to explore and engage in our indoor and outdoor activities during ‘COOL time’ (where we Choose Our Own Learning) and encouraged them to take part in Dough Disco which we do to develop our fine motor skills.

Our artist for this term was the Japanese abstract artist Yayoi Kusama who was known as the ‘Queen of polka dots.’ Using our fingers we have created some stunning pictures of our own inspired by her work. We particularly liked her pumpkin themed pieces so used them for inspiration.

We have also linked art with literacy this term. Inspired by the story Lucy’s Picture by Nicola Moon the children created textured collage pictures. Lucy made a collage so that her grandfather could ‘see’ the picture through his sense of touch as he is visually impaired.

We explored the importance of all our senses and then tested which senses would be most effective in solving a problem. Mrs Blench mixed up the slat and sugar and needed help to find out which was which. We went through all the senses to see which sense was most useful in solving the problem, They looked th same, had no smell,made no noise and did not feel much different from each other . When we tasted though there was no doubt which was the sugar and which was the salt!

In PE we have been doing some Cosmic Yoga and Squiggle While you Wriggle which has been a great success. They have helped us to develop our small and large motor movements in a range of different ways!