Stomp Stomp ROAR!

The children are noticeably more settled this week after the Christmas break. It does usually take a week or two to get back into the swing of things and picking up the same old routine. I’m sure some of them have grown a few inches too! We are absolutely loving our Dinosaur topic. So far, we have talked about the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras and we have been comparing what we think the world looked like during those periods. It is hard to explain to the children how long ago it actually was that dinosaurs roamed the earth! Even looking at timelines doesn’t do it justice. We have created some dinosaur artwork which have really brightened up the classrooms. We spent some time at the end of this week learning about Mary Anning and the positive impact she had on society. The children loved learning about how she discovered many fossils and even full dinosaur skeletons in Lyme Regis.

In English, we have been thinking about the sequence of our school day and what it would be like if a dinosaur was coming to our school. We explored the features of an invitation and discussed how we could persuade a T-Rex or a Stegosaurus to visit us. We used our dinosaur facts from last week to write an invitation to persuade them to come to our school. Next week, we will spend Tuesday with our dinosaurs in school day as well as recapping last weeks learning, some drama activities and lots of discussion. We will then spend Thursday writing a diary entry about our fun day. The children will be reminded about writing events in chronological order and encouraged to include some of their own feelings.

In maths, we have been learning about the place value in different numbers. We have been using a range of apparatus to build, and then draw numbers from 20-50. We spent lots of time talking about how the numbers are built using the vocabulary of tens and ones. Next week, we will continue with place value. We will be using coins to show 10ps and 1ps to make amounts up to 50p. We will then create a maths poster by picking a number between 20-50 and showing it in various ways such as using diennes, coins, cherry diagrams, number sentences, number lines etc. We will finish the week with some reasoning.

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.