Friday 29th June

In English we have finished our 'life cycle of a butterfly' books and we are all very impressed! As they are information books we ensured that we included lots of detailed information, as well as remembering the 'non-negotiables' that we remember for all our writing. 

During the weekend your child might like to investigate the life cycle of a different mini beast and we would love to share their findings in school. Here is a good place to start researching:  

https://www.dkfindout.com/uk/animals-and-nature/insects

This week in maths we have been learning about time. After telling the time to o’clock and half past we learnt to tell quarter past times. We had to read clock times, draw the minute and hour hands on the clock and say what the time will be in one hour or what it was one hour ago. You may like to help your child tell the time at home, talk about the long hand being the minute hand and the short hand being the hour hand.  All week the children have been telling us when the class clock says o’clock, half past and quarter past times. You may like to encourage them to do this at home too! Follow the links below with your child.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zcmdwxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TA5z_DE204 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIgzCOZNT6o Later in the week we went outside and timed ourselves doing some activities including star jumps, hopping and writing our names.  We estimated first, then timed ourselves and then recorded the time.  After we compared our times with each other and talked about who was slower or faster.

On Friday we read the story the ‘Tortoise and the Hare’, we looked at who was faster and who was slower and talked about whether the quickest animal won and why. We noticed that the faster time is less time and the slower time is more. We compared times of animals and people in races and made our own time comparison sentences. http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/hickoryDickory/

This week in science we looked at another microhabitat.  We did a tree shake to find out which mini-beasts live in a tree.  We predicted first and then went outside to find out.  We found spiders, ants, aphids, and other tiny minibeasts living in the tree.  We collected our data and then made a block graph showing our results.  After we used the block graph to ask questions like which minibeast was the most/least common, how many spiders did we see and how many minibeasts did we see altogether.

In art this week we used our plans to create our own clay minibeasts.  We used a range of techniques to make them including rolling, flattening, coiling, pinching and marking with tools.  Next week we will be painting our minibeasts.

We hope you have a fantastic weekend in the sunshine! 
Year One Team

Friday 22nd June

This week in maths we have been learning about time.  We began by thinking about how time was measured, we came up with days, months, years and even decades! We have learnt two songs to help us remember the order of the days of the week and months of the year. You may like to ask your child to sing the songs to you.  We ordered the days of the week and then wrote our own sentences using the words today, tomorrow, yesterday, before and after. Next we ordered the months of the year and identified which month our birthday was  in and said which number month it was and which season it is in. You may like to talk about the days of the week and months of the year at home using these words.

Later in the week we talked about the units of measuring time, seconds, minutes and hours. We then went on to tell the time to o’clock and half past.
We had to read clock times, draw the minute and hour hands on the clock and say what the time will be in one hour or what it was one hour ago. 
You may like to help your child tell the time at home, talk about the long hand being the minute hand and the short hand being the hour hand. 
You may like to follow the links below with your child.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zcmdwxs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TA5z_DE204

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIgzCOZNT6o

This week in English we have been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly as we are planning to make a non-fiction information book. First we used a variety of sources to discover factual information about the life cycle and then we wrote sentences in pairs on white boards about the interesting facts we had learnt. The next day we wrote our sentences in our neatest handwriting for our display.

We have now started writing our lifecycle books and we are remembering our ‘non-negotiables’ that we have to include for all writing. Please ask your child what these are. We then thought about what we need to remember when we are writing this genre of book. Please ask your child what is special about non-fiction information texts. We thought about which page we should write first and we decided we would start with the eggs. (We had a debate about which comes first – the chicken or the egg?!) We have drawn detailed diagrams and written interesting facts about the eggs and the caterpillar. Please ask your child what they can remember and what they plan to write about the chrysalis and the butterfly stages. Here are some lovey videos about the lifecycle of butterfly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AUeM8MbaIk  
https://www.dkfindout.com/uk/animals-and-nature/insects/butterfly-life-cycle/

Don’t forget it is the Rothamstead Festival of Ideas this weekend. It is open from 11-5 so you might like to go after the summer fair! 

This week in science we went on a mini-beast hunt around the school grounds.  We visited the allotment, the ‘Bumps and Hollows’, the Robin Hood Trail and the playground.  We found spiders and ants on the bark of trees, woodlice under rocks and worms in the soil. We talked about all the different micro habitats mini-beast live in and that they chose the micro-habitat because it provides shelter and food.  Your child may like to go on a mini-beast hunt around the local park or in a garden.  They could even take photos of what they found and bring them into school.

We had had lots of fun at sports day on Friday as we hope you did too. We enjoyed the range of activities and loved watching the toddler and adult races!

We also had a sporty morning today too! Daniel Lewis (who is a triple jumper) came to visit as part of the Sports For Schools scheme. We enjoyed a very active circuit and an inspiring assembly. He encouraged us to persevere, practise and eat healthily. Have a look at a video about Sports For Schools here: http://youtu.be/XDNoRdH2adI

We hope you have a good weekend -  see you at the summer fair and Rothamstead! 

Year One Team