Knowledge and Understanding of the World - Light and Dark

To develop understanding of light and dark we put up a dark tent in class.  The children were able to experience near total darkness and then discuss how it made them feel.

Together we then made a list of different sources of light and drew and labelled them.  We even looked at old sources of light used in the past such as oil lamps.



Then we planned a shoe box investigation.  We cut a hole into the side of a shoe box and predicted whether we would see the object inside better with the lid on the box, lid half on the box or with the lid off the box.  We then carried out the investigation and recorded what we found with words and pictures.

Show and Tell - Mr Binx

On Friday Amelia brought into her cat Mr Binx into school for show and tell.  She told us all about him and answered lots of our questions. Mr Binx is a type of cat called a Sphinx which means he was born without any fur.  We stroked him and even without fur he was very soft!
Because Mr Binx has no fur he wears a jumper to keep him warm.

Physical Development

This week we have been exploring a new way of travelling in our gymnastic lessons - crawling soldiers.  We enjoyed putting the new way of travelling into our sequences that we have been practising.  We created sequences on the floor and then on apparatus.

Mathematical Development - Weighing

 This week the children have enjoyed using weighing scales to investigate and compare the weights of classroom objects. First we made predictions about which object would be the heaviest then we weighed them to find out.

Next, we tried to estimate how many cubes each object weighed.  It was very tricky! Then we weighed each object and recorded how many cubes it weighed in our books.

Knowledge and Understanding of the World - Aerial Views

The children have enjoyed working on 'Birds Eye Views' - thinking about the view from above.  They each designed their own room in the dolls house and then used the class camera to take a photo of it from above.  The children then used their photo to help them to draw a floor plan of their room.  We also learnt about the importance of a 'key' when drawing maps and plans.

We took photos from above of our room designs

We looked at examples of plans and keys and created our own class plan



Birds

Over the last fortnight the RSPB has been holding its annual 'Big Bird Watch'.  In Year 1 we have taken this opportunity to study birds within our theme.  The children have enjoyed finding out about the different birds they may see around the school or in their own garden, as well as finding out about owls.

                                     Making feeders

                                                           
                                                        Junk model birds

The children decided that they would encourage more birds into the school grounds by making feeders to help the birds find food.  We hung the feeders around the school and then took our binoculars we had made and went 'bird spotting'.  We didn't see as many birds as we had hoped although we did see a robin, gulls, sparrows, blackbirds and starlings.