It has been great to see the children's engagement with our Great Fire of London topic continue this week. Not only have they shown amazing creativity but excellent fact recall too! We have continued with Great Fire of London drama and music with Mrs Smith, worked on the next sections of our Great Fire of London dance in PE and have extended this learning into our continuous provision such as through making models of the boats that the people would have used to escape the fire out of stickle bricks. The excitement was at it's highest when we had an arrival of real flour to our Pudding Lane bakery role play area (which may explain why your children may have been slightly dusty on their return home)! Take a look at some of the photos from these activities: 

In Maths this week we have continued to focus on measures, particularly capacity and volume. We very much enjoyed the practical learning and became experts at using the key vocabulary to compare such as greater, less, most, least, full, nearly full, half full, nearly empty and empty.

In Science this week we focused on two different areas- deciduous and evergreen trees and growing our tomato plants. We went out to the back field to observe the trees that we have and used our scientist detective skills to identify whether the tree was a deciduous or evergreen tree by looking at their leaves. 

With our tomato plants, we learnt how to transfer them from their pots into grow bags which gave us a great opportunity to look at the roots of the plant. We have been checking our plants each day and remembering to water them too. 

​It was great to have Danny Taylor in school with us this week to lead Archery sessions with Year 1 Evenlode Class and also for staff training. Danny is 7 times National Champion in Archery and it was great to learn from a true expert. We are looking forward to Danny coming back into school over the next few weeks to lead sessions with Years 2-6. Take a look at some of the photos from the Year 1 session and the staff training.

It was great to see everyone again after the Easter break and we have had a lovely first week back. 

There has been some excellent team work, sharing and creativity in our continuous provision this week. The Garden Centre role play area has been a real hit too! Take a look at some of the activities that we chose: 
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In Maths this week we have been focusing on measuring mass. We have enjoyed using non-standard units such as blocks to measure and compare the mass of objects in the classroom. One object that we measured had a mass of over 100 blocks! We worked hard on using the key vocabulary heavier, lighter, equal and balanced.

In Science this term we are continuing our learning about plants with a particular focus on growing plants. Our tomato plants have arrived and we are working as a team to help them to grow healthily. 

It was great to continue our outdoor learning at Forest School this week. The sun was shining and lots of fun was had. 

We have started our work on our topic for this term-The Great Fire of London. There has been lots of excitement about the new topic and we have started our Great Fire of London Dance in PE. It was great to see so much creativity and confidence as we started to choreograph and perform our routines. 

There was a big surprise in Year 1 Evenlode Class this week as the children received their Easter eggs from the Dunelm Oxford competition. The children thoroughly deserved a treat for working so hard and adapting so well to the changes that they have faced throughout the Covid 19 pandemic. A big thank you to Dunelm Oxford for making our children so happy, what a great way to support the local community. 

It has been brilliant to see all of the children working so hard since we could all return to school and our classroom is most certainly a happier place when it is filled with our wonderful children. This was really clear during our Australia themed day this week. We had lots of fun bringing together the learning in our topic this term. A very big Appleton thank you goes to Rebekah who organised and resourced the activities for our day. Although it was not the same without having Rebekah on site with us, her awesome Aussie nature shone through in all that we did. It was great to see our children getting into the Aussie spirit, take a look at some of the awesome outfits:

We began our day by learning a song about Australian animals called 'Cuddly Koalas'. This was a song that Miss Leggett remembered singing from when she was a Rainbow and a Brownie! ​

We then did a collage activity where we used red, black and yellow/ gold paper to create an Aboriginal flag. We learnt that the colours represented different things: red=earth/ land, black=the people, yellow= the sun. It was great to see everyone being Steadfast Squirrels and really working hard to carefully put their flags together. We think that they look great!

We were very excited to be able to use our tapping sticks which we had decorated a couple of weeks ago. These are the links to the songs that we used so that you can have a try at home:
Tapping on my Sticks www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G6ax4AFKTY
Give me a Home Among the Gum Trees www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLWzPQmd5sc 

We had a big surprise when we listened to a story that Rebekah had written for us all about Evenlode Class Explorers Digging to Australia. We listened carefully and realised that the story included all of our names and had photos of us too. We were all super excited about this. Rebekah had very kindly printed a book for each of us to keep too, what a special memory of our bonza Australia Day!

We had another fantastic morning doing our outdoor learning at Forest School this week. Some of the highlights were measuring worms (linking nicely to our maths work in class) and discovering a tiger slug which was then named Blossom. 

In Maths this week we have been exploring measuring using standard and non-standard units including using cm. 

In RE this week, we have been continuing our work on the big question: why is Easter important to Christians? We focused on the symbols of Easter and the meaning behind them. We decorated our own egg and used a symbol of the cross to complete it. 

We have continued our focus on the story 'What We'll Build' by Oliver Jeffers by thinking about places that feel like home. We discussed the differences between a house and a home and what it meant for somewhere to feel like home. We drew pictures and wrote about the places that we had chosen and it was great to see this learning extended into our continuous provision as children built models of the places that they had chosen. 

In PE, we have continued our Boing games for Interhouse and it was great to see excellent team work this week in our Treasure Chests game. The children had remembered their previous learning about how to throw and catch effectively and it has been great to see their independence in PE really come on. Well done Year 1!

In our Australia Topic work this week, we learnt more about Aboriginal symbols and dot painting. We then used our learning to choose how we were going to decorate our tapping sticks ready for our class Australia Day in a couple of weeks time. Take a look at our eye-catching designs:

We were very excited to have our first Forest School session of Year 1 this week. Take a look at what we got up to:

It has been absolutely fantastic to have everyone back together in school again. It was great to see so many happy, excited faces and we enjoyed being back with our friends. 

Our main focus this week was the book 'What We'll Build' by Oliver Jeffers. We began by sharing our perfect classroom designs which was part of our remote learning challenge. Take a look at some of the brilliant designs:

Then we worked in small groups to design and make our own models. We could design and make anything that we wanted to by using junk modelling, Lego, Duplo and other construction resources. We spent the whole day working on this activity and it was great to see everyone working well in their teams, sharing, supporting each other and creating some fantastic models. Take a look at what we made: 

Part of the story focuses on tools and what we can build using them. We were very excited to have been able to finally finish our moving vehicles which we started before the school closure. We used a saw to cut the dowel to make the axles then added wheels. Take a look at our finished vehicles: 

We began our unit of work on Poems to Perform by listening to the Rhythm of Life by Michael Rosen.  We discussed the repeated phrases and rhythm of the poem. We then had a try at learning the poem. We created actions to accompany the words. We were really impressed with the performance after learning the poem in a short space of time. 

In Science, we completed our investigation to find the material that would be best suited to repair a hole in the bucket. We used the 'Hole in my bucket' song to think more about the problem, planned what we were going to do as a class and then worked in teams to do the investigation. After the practical testing, we wrote a letter to Henry to explain our results.

In Jigsaw sharing assembly, we showed the rest of the school our gingerbread people which we had created during the 'Celebrating Difference' unit of work. We made a part of the person each week and had a focus for the ideas for each part such as identifying similarities and differences between ourselves and others.

We thoroughly enjoyed all of the Christmas fun in Year 1 this week including Christmas jumper day and the Christmas crafts provided by the Friends of Appleton School. Thank you to everyone who helped to make these activities so special.