Friday 6th September

Welcome back! We hope you had a fantastic Summer break. It was lovely to see how excited  the children were to be in school on Tuesday. This week we have spent lots of time getting to know the children, doing ChIL and learning about what it means to be in Year One. Many of the children have been given classroom responsibilities such as chair stacking, table tidying and water bottle monitors. If your child has not yet been given a responsibility and would like one do not worry, we will be changing these throughout the year.

This year, we have changed our approach to handwriting as a school and we will be learning cursive. At the moment, we are not joining letters, we are teaching the children pre-cursive in order for them to be able to form the letters accurately before joining. Pre cursive letters have a lead-in to join to and a flick to join from. The font that this blog is written in is pre-cursive. Many schools already write in cursive as there is evidence it supports the development of children's spelling amongst other things. There will be more information about letter formation the new Year One progress books when you receive them. 

We have spent lots of time outside playing games and keeping active this week:

On Wednesday the children were taken to the library to remind them how to change their books and to spend some time sharing books with friends. Each child has had the opportunity to change their book so please do read with your child this weekend.

We have also recapped our Crabtree rules:
We follow instructions quickly

When one person speaks we listen

We stay focused

Be kind and honest

Keep our school clean and safe.

We took photos of the children role playing what each rule looks like and these will be displayed around the classroom to remind the children. See if your child can tell you which rule each photo is showing: 

In maths ChIL the children enjoyed playing maths games with friends. A particular favourite was dominos, you might like to play this at home with your child at the weekend.

In Art we have been exploring the concept of abstract art this week in year one, looking at how colour, shape and colour mixing can be used to create effects.

We have been looking at the Russian artist Wassily Kandinski and discovering some key facts about his life and his artistic influences. We have been discussing primary colours and exploring what happens when we mix combinations of them together to create alternative colours and shades. The children then used their creativity to practise mixing colours and recreating patterns on their paper in the style of Kandinski. We talked about the images of Kandinski’s work and what we liked or disliked about it with a focus on techniques and the use of colours chosen. We learnt about the meaning of abstract and how we could relate this to our art picture paintings.

The children finished Friday afternoon with an outdoor art ChIL, they used pencils, pen and paint on large pieces of paper to explore their creativity.

Next week we will be trying to impress the learning power puppets in many of our activities. Our learning power puppets are:
Tina Teamwork
Ravi Resourcefulness
Thelma Thinking
Percy Perseverance
Happy Healthy Handa
 Fabio Focus

You might like to have with your child at the weekend about what sort of learning behaviours each learning power puppet would like to see.

This year we are planning to do a lot more with the allotment. The children spent some time outside discussing what we might grow in the allotment and how we would keep it healthy. You might like to think about growing some herbs or vegetables at home either in the house, on a windowsill or the garden if you have one.

The new Progress Books will be with you soon, we advise that you hold on to your child’s Reception Progress Book as there is still lots of useful information in there.

Have a lovely weekend,

The Year One Team