Today was such a bright and sunny autumn day that we decided to take our maths learning outside. We worked in small groups to solve addition and subtraction sums then used our answers to find a secret symbol code.

The children in Year 1 are so excited about Bonfire night! Today we designed and decorated our own bonfire cupcakes using red and orange icing sugar and chocolate sticks. The children then wrapped up warm and enjoyed their cupcakes around a fire in our wildlife area.

In Year 1 we have been planning and debugging programs for Barry the Beebot who visited our classrooms. We carefully planned Barry’s route to make sure he didn’t bump into any walls. We then programmed Barry to follow directions. If we found that we needed to change the route we quickly did this, this is called debugging!

Year 1 have been reading the story of ‘The Hodgeheg’ and used this as inspiration for a giant autumnal artwork. Whilst out looking for signs of the changing seasons the children noticed that lots of the leaves were beginning to turn brown like a Hedgehog. We decided to see if we could make our very own hedgehogs by gathering lots of fallen leaves and placing them within a chalk outline. The children enjoyed gathering the leaves, and made lots of fantastic comments and observations on the shapes and colours of the leaves they found!

In Year 1 the children are becoming increasingly independent in their work. In order to help develop the skills required to work independently we have been practising cutting skills with the aim of improving our dexterity with scissors. The children loved the challenge of cutting along the wavy lines, and it didn’t take long before they were crafting some lovely crowns out of the pieces of paper they had left.

In our Numeracy lessons the children have recently been learning about how a whole can be made out of different parts. We enjoyed using our part whole models to practise and develop the skills necessary to begin addition by combining and counting two parts to find the whole.

After reading Julia Donaldson’s Gruffalo stories the children in Year 1 heard that the Big Bad Mouse had been spotted near our school! With great enthusiasm they employed their problem solving and team work skills to devise a trap that could catch the Big Bad Mouse without getting too close. Mr. Raine and Miss Smith were both very impressed at the skills the children used to create their traps, which included tying knots, balancing boxes on sticks as well as lots of communication and team work. Although none of the children managed to catch the Big Bad Mouse, we were pleased to hear that he was spotted leaving the area shortly afterwards!

Class 3 had a fantastic time learning French greetings in their Lingotots session. They had lots of fun using puppets and voiles during the session and listened to a wonderful story in French! Merci Joanna!