Totally ROAR-SOME! 

Welcome back! Happy 2025! I hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas and new year! I am glad to get back to routine now as I definitely got to that point where I didn’t know what day of the week it was! Although a chilly start to the term, the children have all been in good spirits this week and always manage to keep a smile on their faces. “A day where you witness at least one child’s smile is always a day well spent.” Well I love my days when I’m in school and I consider myself lucky to have 30 smiles each morning. Our Dinosaur topic has been thriving already with us all completing some dinosaur art and some lovely descriptive writing this week! 

In English, we have been using the books ‘There’s a T-Rex in town’ and ‘There’s a Stegosaurus on the stairs’ by Ruth Symons to find out facts about dinosaurs, make comparisons and speak in full sentences. We re-visited what a connective is and we used the words “and”, “but” and “because” to extend our sentences in our writing books. Next week, we will be thinking about the sequence of our school day and what it would be like if a dinosaur was coming to our school. We will then be exploring the features of an invitation and discussing how we could persuade a T-Rex or a Stegosaurus to visit us. Finally, we will be using our dinosaur facts from last week to write an invitation to persuade them to come to our school.

In maths, we have been practising reading, writing and ordering numbers to 50. We have also been finding 1 more and 1 less of numbers to 50. Next week, we will be learning about the place value in different numbers. We will use a range of apparatus to build, and then draw numbers from 20-50. We will spend lots of time talking about how the numbers are built using the appropriate vocabulary of tens and ones.  

Just a few reminders:

• Please make sure all your child’s belongings are labelled. Things do go missing and I’m convinced there is a black hole somewhere in the school that sucks them in and they never come back. 
• Please send your child’s water bottle and book bag into school every day.
• Our Year 1 PE day is on a Monday for Hedgehogs and Tuesday for Bumblebees.
• Reading books in school are changed once a week and this will be every Monday. The books will be collected in in the morning and a new one will be issued that same afternoon.
• Library book change will be on a Friday.

Dates: 

Tuesday 21st January – Dinosaur to school day (see Google Classroom homework)

Tuesday 28th January – Face to Face Parents Evening

Wednesday 29th January – Virtual Parents Evening

Thursday 6th February – Keeping safe online workshops

Friday 14th February – TAFF Disco

Monday 17th February – Friday 21st February – Half Term

Thursday 6th March – World Book Day

Wednesday 2nd April – Giant in School Day

Friday 4th April – Last day of term

We like to think of ourselves as a friendly and approachable team and if there is anything you have concerns about, please let us know and we will do our best to help.  

Have a lovely weekend and see you next week!

Mrs Ford and the Year 1 team.