Class 1

Early Years

Class I - 2023-24

We are really enjoying reading Julia Donaldson books. lots of learning through play has been inspired by The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child

This week we have been learning about the celebration of Diwali . We have had a go at making our own Diya lamps and rangoli patterns. We really enjoyed dressing up to role play the story of Rama and Sita.

Our learning during the first week back after the holidays was based around Fireworks. The children created brilliant dances in PE; did very messy firework painting then used their phonics to describe the sounds the fireworks make.

Our Last day before the half term holiday was a Well-being day in school. FSU enjoyed doing the daily mile with class 5.

Our Key text this week had been Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. We used our growing phonics skills to label some amazing character drawings.

In preparation for Walk to School Day, we have been learning about The Green Cross Code and how to keep ourselves safe near roads.

This week our key text has been Owl Babies by Martin Wadell. We have read it, used puppets to retell the story; sequenced the pictures into a story map and have created the cutest babies by printing. We also talked about where we thought Mummy Owl might of been.

This week we have been using the book The Colour Monster to explore a range of different emotions, linked to different colours. We finished the week with a special colour day where we came to school in our brightest most colourful clothes.

This week we have been exploring our different senses.

We played "Simon Says" and sang "head, shoulders knees and toes" to help us think about all of the different body parts we have. We created our own body outlines and had a go at labelling the different parts. We even looked at some more difficult parts such as wrist, ankle and elbow.

We have been learning about ourselves during our first week. This has including looking at our faces and talking about our features. the children enjoyed looking in the mirror at themselves to what what they looked like and then used their cutting and colouring skills to create their own self portraits.

Welcome to our new Reception Children!

Class 1 - 2022-2023

Thank you to everyone who came along to support our FSU sports day.

What great fun we had as we celebrated the end of our pirate topic with a fantastic dress up day!

This week we started our new topic "Pirates" We have been singing sea shanties, sailing a pirate ship in our role play area, painting the most fantastic pirates and then writing amazing descriptions about them.

During the last week before half term we used the book Handa's Suprise as our main focus. We looked at Nigera on a map and made Nigeran flags. We really enjoyed playing drums along to African beats!

This week our main text has been What the ladybird heard. We wrote some amazing wanted posters for Lanky Len and Hefty Hugh and designed some simple maps to help us find our way around. Thursday morning's highlight was setting the class butterflies free.

This week our learning has all been about fruit and vegetables. We made vegetable soup which all the children said was yummy and wrote instructions to remind us how we did it.

In RE we have been learning about how Jesus came back to life on Easter Sunday. We explored the area outside school to see what signs of New Life we could find.

This week we have been looking at the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. The children enjoyed measuring the Giant's feet in a range of ways including using their feet and hands to measure.

We have started to look at Growing in class this week to get our garden ready in our outdoor area now the weather is nicer. We started by planting a seed, we looked at how to do it properly and the children did a great job of following the instructions on how best to plant a seed. We then had a go at writing some clear detailed instructions on what someone needs to do to plant a seed.

We had lots of fun learning about The Very Hungry Caterpillar this week. We made our own caterpillars using paper chains, used balloons to paint a caterpillar, completed repeating patterns with caterpillars, decorated our own butterflies, looked at the lifecycle of a butterfly and did some great writing retelling the story in our own words. We have been lucky enough to have some caterpillars bought for our class by a very kind parent. We have been observing them closely to see what changes happen to them as they grow.

After returning to school after the Easter holidays we had noticed that the weather had changed quite a lot. We looked at the seasons and which one we are in now which is Spring. We talked about the differences we have seen and felt from Winter to Spring and one thing we had all noticed was that the plants are growing again and the trees have leaves/buds on them. The children did their own observational painting of a blossom tree which we are lucky enough to have a few of in our school grounds.

Have a fantastic Easter everyone!

We have been thinking the First Easter in class this week and how what happened to Jesus is why we still celebrate Easter now. We have had lots of activities around crosses as we learned that Jesus unfortunately died on the cross on Good Friday. The reception children did some fantastic writing about the Easter story and enjoyed trying hot cross buns as a special snack.

One of the first signs of Spring that we see as we come towards Easter are lots of daffodils growing. We decided to look a bit more closely at the flower and did some labelling of the different parts and some observational paintings of daffodils.

We have had a great first week learning about Easter. We had lots of egg and chick activities including painting chicks, designing and painting our own eggs and making chicks with playdough, feathers and sticks. The children enjoyed hiding little messages in plastic eggs for other children to find in the shredded paper.

We had a visit from a guide dog today! His name was Burley and his owner was called Helen. They came to school to talk to us about the amazing job that guide dogs do to look after and help people who can't see very well. The children found out lots about guide dogs and what they should do if they see a guide dog. We did an activity in pairs where one person closed their eyes and the other had to be a guide dog and guide them around, the children did a great job of guiding their friends around. The best part was getting to give Burley a stroke, he was really fluffy. Thank you Helen and Burley for visiting us!

We looked closely at our oral health this week. We talked about who helps us to look after our teeth and what we need to do keep our teeth healthy. We practiced brushing our teeth for the whole 2 minutes and sorted foods into healthy and unhealthy for our teeth.

The children did some wonderful writing this week about what they wanted to be when they grow up. We had lots of aspiring firefighters after finding out about their job. We even had some scientists too!

We had some special visitors this week! Some of the firefighters who work at Ripon Fire Station took time out of their busy day to come and talk to us about their amazing job. The children had a fantastic time exploring the fire engine and listening to the loud siren. Thank you Ripon fire station for giving us a WOW moment to start our learning on people who help us, the children even wrote their own letters to show how thankful they were!

We had a fantastic day celebrating World Book Day 2023!

This week we have looking at 'Supertato.' We made our own super potato adding some different resources and materials to our potatoes to make it look like a superhero. We created our own masks and wrote some wanted posters for the villain in the story, The Evil Pea!

We had some special visitors in class this week, some stick insects. The children were keen to learn all about them and some were even brave enough to hold them.

We has lots of fun celebrating pancake day, the children did some great flipping and enjoyed eating the pancakes too!

We have had a fantastic start to our 'Superhero' topic this half term. The children created their own superheroes and did some great paintings of them. They then did some writing about them telling us what they were called and what their super power is. Making capes was a firm favourite with everyone and the children enjoyed flying out to their parents/carers at the end of the day.

We have been doing gymnastics with Mrs Collins this half term. The children have enjoyed learning lots of skills that make them a champion gymnast. They showed bravery and courage when using the wall bars.

This week we looked at the story 'The Gingerbread Man.' We enjoyed making gingerbread men, eating them and doing some recount writing of how we ate the gingerbread man using words like first, next, then and finally. The children did an investigation this week where they had to create a boat using different junk materials that could be used by the gingerbread man to get across the river. We worked out that plastic was better because it is waterproof but cardboard goes soggy in the water.

We were focusing on the traditional tale 'Little Red Riding Hood' this week. We enjoyed roleplaying the story in our very own cottage in the classroom, writing speech bubbles for little red riding hood and the big bad wolf and baking cakes for Granny. The reception children were able to practice their cutting and maths skills with their cakes as they were challenged to cut the cakes exactly in half, making sure it was fair by both parts being the same size.

Celebrating Lunar New Year 2023

We had a great week learning about the Traditional Tale 'The Three Little Pigs'. The children enjoyed lots of different activities including role playing the story using masks. We designed and built our own houses thinking about what our house needed to be so the big bad wolf couldn't blow it down. The children also did some fab writing when making wanted posters for the Big Bad Wolf!

Polar bears were the next animals we explored. We found out that they live in the Arctic which is at the top of the Earth. We learned lots of other interesting facts about them including that they can measure up to 3m long and they are really good swimmers. The children used an interesting painting technique to make their polar bears look furry and wrote some great facts they had learned.

This week we have been learning about animals that like to live in cold places. We explored penguins closely and found out a lot of them live in the Antarctic which is at the bottom of the Earth. We used our fine motor skills to cut out shapes to create a penguin, labelled different parts of the penguin and followed detailed instructions to make a penguin using a toilet roll!

We did a science investigation to finish our week. We thought about different ways that we could melt ice to help us with the challenge of getting all the penguins free that had been frozen in the ice! The children came up with some great ideas and then worked together in teams to try and get their penguins free using salt, warm water and some different utensils.

We have had a great first week back learning about the season of Winter. We talked about how the weather had changed and what we need to do to keep ourselves warm. We thought about different winter clothes we might wear and had a go at labelling them. We also did lots of fun maths, phonics and creative activities all based around winter.

We had a fantastic time at our FSU Christmas Party. The children enjoyed playing lots of different games, having party food and having a dancing competition. We were very proud of how grown up the children were about prizes and how happy they were for their friends if they won even if they didn't. Well done nursery and reception children!

We had a forest school session this week with Mrs Goss. The children did fantastic listening when learning new rules and instructions. They had a great time making dens, making reindeer food, playing on the rope swing, exploring the mud kitchen and toasting marshmallows.

The children had great fun learning the basic skills of skipping and having a go at using a skipping rope in their Skip 2 B Fit session.