Welcome to Class 1 Activities 2022-23
Week 5 Highlights
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
This week has been jam packed with lots of exciting events 🤩 On Monday, we marked the start of Wimbledon with a tennis festival led by Mr Beveridge & our sports leaders 🎾
On Tuesday, we held a Superhero event in school with other schools from around Durham. The carousel wolf activities were super fun and we had lots of fun dancing to the music as we moved around the school field 🦸🏻♀️ 🦸🏼♂️
We also performed our end of year performance of; The Enormous Turnip. The children looked fantastic in their costumes and I am sure you will all agree, pulled off an amazing show 👩🌾 *We are trying to get the video uploaded but the IT technician is having trouble so we will try to get this resolved as soon as possible.
Week 4 Highlights
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have had so much fun practising cooking skills on the fire. We toasted marshmallows on the fire and made them into delicious S’mores 🍡
Week 3 Highlights
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we celebrated SPORTS DAY in school, we were sad that we were unable to welcome our friends and family to the event but took part in it in school and had just as much fun! Green team were this year’s winners – well done to everyone who took part 😁
We also went on our trip to Hamsterley Forest which was so much fun! We took part in the Zog trail and found lots of clues that led us to the Gruffalo!
Week 2 Highlights
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
This week we had a visit from the amazing Author; Adam Bushnell. It was great to hear some of the stories he has wrote and we enjoyed making characters for our own stories too 😁
We practised our races for Sports Day and had lots of fun working as part of our team for the afternoon in PE 🏃♀️
In numeracy we have started to look at time measures; seasons, months and days of the week. Here is the link to the song we have been singing along to daily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwWzDTf0yBc
Week 1 Highlights
UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.
This week we were thrilled to come back to school after the half term holidays to catch the final butterflies hatching from their chrysalides 🦋 We found a beautiful new habitat for them outside on the yard with lots of wild flowers for them to fly amongst 🌸🌼
Our new topic, chosen by the children is ‘Down on the Farm’ and our new role play area will be a farm shop & café 🐮🐷🐥🐴
We took part in a football event on Friday, raising money and awareness for Soccer Aid. The children had lots of fun on the school field – and even more fun watching the ‘children vs. teachers’ final game of the day ⚽️
Remote Learning – 5.6.23
Hello and welcome back to the final Summer Term!
Today I have provided some remote learning activities for you to do at home with your child;
For Phonics, it would be great if you could watch the link below and encourage your child to join as if in a lesson in class.
The link is:
https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/6775Tp7F/vkmf1iHB
It would be also be good if you could spend some time 1:1 with your child reading their sound cards, green cards or reading book. Please record any comments in their reading log and encourage ‘Fred Talk – read the word’ if they are blending sounds together to read words. To build fluency please remember to get your child to read back the full sentence without sounding out – this will support their memory at sentence level too 🙂
In Literacy, we will be drawing pictures of our half term holiday. You could start by showing your child photos or talking about what you have done at home.
After this, encourage your child to make marks, draw pictures, write words or sentences about the holiday highlights.
For Numeracy, we are looking at doubling numbers and writing the number sentence for this. You can use any objects or toys around your home and double the quantity using lots of maths language:
“If I have 2 toys and I double it (add 2 more). How many will I have altogether? Double 2 is? 2+2=4”
For an extra challenge you could encourage your child to write the number sentence down on paper with the correct mathematical symbols.
I have attached a link to the doubles song that we listen to daily in class:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYWclXKzOJo
In Science, we are looking at life cycles and how many different species change from birth. I have attached a video below to share with the children. They could talk about their favourite animal and their life cycle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDDDwfvVUe4
If you have any questions, I am in all day, so please do not hesitate to contact me 🙂
Our Sixth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have had lots of end of term fun 🤩
We have taken home our bean plants that we have carefully been taking care of – it would be great if you could continue to share the growth of them at home too 🌱 We completed our final balance ability session with coach Darren 🚲 He was very impressed with our listening skills, balancing and coordination 😊 We were very excited to see that our caterpillars had all moved into their chrysalides, meaning they could be moved into the net in preparation for them to become butterflies 🐛 🦋 Finally, well done to everyone who completed the reading challenge! You are little superstars. Have a fantastic half term 😊
Our Fifth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have been working extremely hard with the balance ability coaches to perfect our gross motor skills and coordination in order to improve our movement when riding a bike 🚲 Darren was really impressed with how well we responded to the sessions and thinks many of the children will be ready for pedals adding to the balance bikes soon. We have 5 riders with pedals too which is FANTASTIC 🤩
We have observed our caterpillars change into their chrysalides this week which has been amazing to watch – we are now waiting for them to turn into butterflies 🐛🦋
Our bean seeds have started to grow too and I am very proud of the care and attention the children have given to them, remembering each day to water them 🌱
In Literacy, we have been looking at ‘The Cautious Caterpillar’ and writing about the feelings of the characters in different parts of the story. In Numeracy, we have continued our number bonds work and are beginning to recall numbers bonds to 10 as well as 5.
Our Fourth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
This week we have have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar 🐛
We have 5 new additions to the classroom at the moment as we observe the lifecycle of a caterpillar to a butterfly. Each day the children get excited to see how much food they have eaten and how much they have grown 🦋
In Numeracy, we have been working on rapid recall of number bonds to 5 and their written number sentence (e.g 3+2=5) and beginning number bonds to 10 (e.g 2+8=10).
Finally, in Science we have been planting seeds and over the coming weeks we will be observing the growth process as they grow into bean plant. The children chose their own type of bean to plant; climbing beans, broad beans, French beans and runner beans and are working hard to water it each day 🫘
Our Third Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.
This week our learning has been focused on the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III, throughout the curriculum in different subjects, assemblies and after-school clubs. It has been a fantastic build up to the King’s coronation ceremony which took place on Saturday 6th May 2023, 11am at Westminster Abbey in London.
On Friday 5th May 2023 the children and staff were invited to come into school wearing red, white and blue clothing to mark this amazing event that will be wrote in the History books for many years to come. We had a mini street party and took part in a special ‘run through’ of a coronation service 🇬🇧
We have had lots of fun celebrating our wonderful country and the British Values we keep, have a wonderful long weekend 🤩
Our Second Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have enjoyed engaging in our new topic, MINIBEASTS! We visited Washington Wetlands Centre and took part in a Minibeast hunt; focusing on the different habitats that they in. It was interesting to see the pond bugs that we had collect in our trays on the special camera. It was great to see so many different types of ducks too – our favourite was the Ed Sheeran with an orange fluffy head. We watched the otters being fed and talked about how we can play a part in protecting endangered species in the wild. In the afternoon, we saw the flamingos being fed lunch and found our fun facts about their colour changing life cycle.
Welcome back & First Week Highlights 👋🏼
UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.
Welcome back, I hope you have all had a wonderful Easter break! As we start the new term the children have chosen to learn about the topic ‘Minibeasts’. The children are so excited to find out about all things that wriggle, fly and crawl 🐜 🐛 🐞
Spring 2
Our Fifth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have enjoyed lots of Easter fun and celebrated the end of our castles topic 🌟
We…
* planned and designed our egg to enter in the whole school Easter egg competition – all were fantastic and everyone received a prize for taking part,
* made Easter cards with little finger and thumb prints to create bunnies and chicks 🐥
* made crowns and cakes for our medieval banquet 🏰
* took part in a hattastic day raising money for brain tumours 🧠
* attempted to track down the Easter bunny (or at least we tried) only finding his chocolate-y treats 🐰
Have a wonderful Easter break! 🥚🤩
Our Fourth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have had enjoyed lots of role play in the Castle. We have been looking at different foods that may have been on the table during a medieval banquet 🍗 as well as the different roles and jobs within castles from long ago 🏰
In science, we have been nature detectives finding bugs in different habitats on our field now that spring has sprung 🐜 🐛 🐞
We have been exploring the celebrations that happen at Easter and in PE we have been finalising our Dance routine that we have been learning this half term 🤩
Science Day
Today we had a fantastic afternoon, taking part in a science experiment, investigation or activity. Each class had a teacher from another class teaching a fun activity, all to do with ‘connections’.
Class 1 became Nature Detectives with Miss Grimes and had to find lots of different mini beasts. We named as many different bugs as we could, before going outside and seeing which ones we could find on the school grounds. We all described one of the bugs and discussed the similarities and differences between them. We loved using different equipment to explore various habitats.
Maths Day
Class 1 were learning all about one more and one less and showing me how they can count to 8! Each of the children were given a certain amount of objects and had to tell me one more or one less. It was lovely to see the progress the children have made so far!
Our Third Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
This week we have enjoyed looking at different castles through the ages and how they have changed over the years. We found out that Castles needed to have very thick walls to protect the people inside of it! We also found out that building a castle on top of a hill, with water around it is a good way to protect it!
We had great fun on our Bear Hunt at Maiden Castles; we learned actions to create a bear dance, participated in a carousel of activities focusing on our fundamental movement skills and as a grand finale went on a bear hunt and found THE BEAR!!
Red Nose day was so exciting – we took part in a whole school skipping afternoon focusing on jumping skills with the big rope 🤩
Our Second Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.
This week we have so many exciting things to share with you all 🤩 In Literacy, we have been looking at setting the scene for stories based around fairytale castles 🏰 In numeracy, we have started our new focus on odd and even numbers 🔢
We have celebrated International Woman’s Day, this year we held an assembly that focused on how we can challenge gender stereotypes through career-related learning, giving ALL children the inspiration and support to pursue their dreams #EmbracingEquity 🙅🏻♀️
We had lots of fun on our school trip to the Seven Stories in Newcastle (a firm favourite highlight for many was the bus there and back 😂). We played the important role of detectives and had to find the nursery rhyme thief in the castle gallery. We took part in a carousel of activities to unveil the clues that solved the royal mystery, having lots of fun along the way 🕵️♀️🕵️♂️
As part of our ongoing work for Fairtrade Fortnight 2023, we have worked hard to identify the logo which is found on Fairtrade products and learned about how these products allow farmers around the world to be paid a fair price for their hard work when growing crops such as bananas🍌
We had a visit from Martin and the firefighters, who talked about the importance of fire safety and even let us climb into the fire engine and try on some protective clothing that they use at work 🔥
Finally, we were surprised by a fantastic covering of snow today ❄️ We had lots of fun making Frosty the Snowman, making snow angels and exploring the effects of freezing and melting ☃️
Our First Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have enjoyed interacting with our friends from school again and have had lots of fun choosing our new topic of learning and designing our role play area.
In Numeracy, we have been focusing on number bonds up to 5 and working hard to recall these as quickly and accurately as possible. In Literacy, we have begun our new focus on Fictional Fairytale texts which have Castle settings in them – we can’t wait to visit the Seven Stories next week!
We also took part in an whole school games competition with the Durham Sports Partnership – it was lots of fun 🙂
‘Skip into Spring’
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
We have launched our half term of skipping challenges in Class 1 and have been focusing on perfecting our 2 feet to 2 feet jumping. We started off low and were jumping over the wriggling rope before working hard to listen to the click and jumping high over the rope. It was great to see so many children taking their PE session out onto the yard with our sports leaders 🙂
World Book Day – Thursday 2nd March 2023
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
Today we celebrated World Book Day and all of the children came to school dressed as their favourite book character, bringing along their favourite book. We had lots of fun finding the hidden character form the fairy tales.
Welcome back 👋🏼
UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.
Welcome back, I hope you have all had a wonderful half term! As we start the new term the children have chosen to learn about the topic ‘Castles’. The children are so excited to take their learning through different ages of castles and learning some wonderful traditional tales along the way!
Spring 1
Our Sixth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have had so much fun celebrating the end of our Space topic. We have created a wonderful piece of art work using different materials to achieve the most amazing solar system 👩🚀
At Forest schools, we were creating dens for our woodland friends and as an end of term treat we walked the long way home and stopped at the local park right next to our school. We had so much fun 🤩
Our highlight of the week was the springtime disco and Stay ‘n’ Play. It was so exciting to show you our classroom, play with our toys and friends as well as making delicious alien cheesecakes! 👽
Have a wonderful half term everyone 🌟
Our Fifth Week Highlights…
E-Safety Coffee Morning
Mental Health Week
Our Fourth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
This week we have been looking at addition and subtraction by taking or adding 1 to a group of objects. We are also looking at the composition of numbers and what they are made of so we can identify quantities and numerals quickly by just looking at a group of objects. 🔢
In PE we have been perfecting our balances in Gymnastics and beginning to move onto rolls. We are focusing on log rolls, egg rolls and progressing onto forward rolls. 🤸🏼
We had lots of fun developing our teamwork skills during Commando Joe’s on Friday as we need to rescue the Teddy from Space and help the stars shine brighter to find our way home. We worked very well in groups of 5 to effectively communicate and work as a team on this mission – well done class 1 & the Class 5 COJO leaders! 👏🏼
Our Third Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 14: Children and young people are free to be of any or no religion.
This week we have been busy celebrating the festival of Chinese New Year. We had fun exploring the Forest again and it looked different to the previous week – there was no frost or snow 🙂 We began our computing work with beebot and were fantastic at giving directions and programming him around the space mat.
Chung Hei Fat Choi 🧧🥠🥢
Today we celebrated Chinese New Year with our friends in class 2, we made Chinese lanterns, created a handprint bunny card, looked at the story of the great race and zodiac calendar as well as tasted some delicious Chinese food and watch a video about a Chinese street celebration 🤩🥢🥠🧧
Our Second Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
This week we have began our forest schools journey. We started with a fresh and frosty walk to and from our site and explored the boundary and where we can and can’t play. We introduced our fire circle and listened to the story of how to keep ourselves safe in the woodland.
We completed our role play rocket in Art & DT and have had lots of fun looking at famous astronauts from around the world 🌎
We have also had lots of fun in the snow ❄️ We tried to build a snowman but it ended up a miniature snow mouse instead ☃️
Our First Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Children have the right to relax, play and take part in a range of cultural activities.
This week we have been settling back into school routines. We had a fantastic morning with scientist, Professor Brainstorm who showed us lots of magical science experiments 🧪
We had our first gymnastics session with Mr Beveridge and will be focusing on making shapes with our body and balancing 🤸♀️
In Art/DT we designed and created our new role play rocket 🚀
Big well done to all of the children watching the phonics videos and who are regularly reading their picture cards or sound cards or green words or ditty sheets (depending upon their phonics groupings) this is having an amazing impact on them in class 😊
Welcome back 👋🏼
UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.
Welcome back, I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year! As we start the new term the children have chosen to learn about the topic ‘Space’. The children are so excited to take their learning all the way around the solar system!
Autumn 2
Dib & Dab’s Christmas Panto
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
Christingle
UNCRC Article 14: Children and young people are free to be of any or no religion.
Today we shared our Christingle service in school with Rev.Michael from the local Church. Here are the highlights of the service for you to watch from home…
Merry Christmas to you and all of your family!
Our Seventh Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an education.
This week we have had so much Christmas fun! We have had Christmas lunch with all of our friend’s and teacher’s, a Christmas Disco with a surprise visitor, took part in an Elf run for charity, performed an icy science experiment, created Christmas cards, calendars and a tree decoration for our family as well as had some cheeky elves visit the entire school causing mischief throughout our final days 🙂
Our Sixth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
This week we have enjoyed exploring our topic even further by looking at Polar climates and how different animals survive there. We have compared this to the climate of our country and talked about how different animals live in different parts of the world.
We have looked in detail at the Christmas Story and discussed why Christmas is so important to many Christians today.
Christmas Counts – Our Nativity
Today Class 1, 2 and 3 performed the show; ‘Christmas Counts’ to our family and friends. We have all worked incredibly hard to learn our lines, perform the songs as well as remembering when to come on and off the stage. We hope you all enjoyed the show as much as we did 🙂
Our Fifth Week Highlights…
This week we have stepped into the Christmas Cheer as we saw the month change from November to December! We saw our first frost on the field and did little science experiment to see what happened to the ice and frosted leaves when we brought them indoors with us. ❄️ Also in science we have been adding to our seasonal change chart as lots of things have changed since we updated it in Autumn – I can tell the children are going to love learning all about Winter 🌨
Our big focus this week has been The Nativity as we started rehearsing it in the school hall in preparation for the play on Thursday 🌟
We have also been creative in Art making Arctic background by colour mixing and collage polar bears for our new classroom display 🖼
One of our special school traditions took place this week too, our classroom changed and we helped decorate them to mark the 1st December … as well as our whole school tree in the hall. Every child and adult had to add a bauble whilst dancing to festive music 🎼 We had so much fun, especially when the lights got turned down and we all listened to the traditional poem ‘Twas the Night before Christmas’ before the great unveiling of the light switch on 🎄Special memories with our school family!
Our Fourth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.
This week we have been reading the story ‘The Emperor’s Egg’ and thinking about words to describe the story setting. We are going to be creating our own story settings next week ❄️🗻
In numeracy we have been looking at language that give clues as to what calculation we need to do. For example the word altogether is linked to addition and the phrase how many are left links to subtraction ➕➖🟰
We have also had the first of our ORAL HYGIENE visits this week and in the first session we have been learning how we can look after our teeth. We talked about
🔵 Foods that are good as snacks,
🟢 Foods that are not good snacks with lots of sugar in (therefore these should be kept to only eaten at mealtimes)
🟣 Brushing our teeth twice a day,
🟡 Going to the dentist.
The children loved dressing up as the dental nurse, dentist and patient – I can see some future careers in dental hygiene in Class 1 🦷🪥
Our Third Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.
This week has been super busy but super exciting 🎉
We started the week choosing 6 flags at random from those taking part in the football World Cup ⚽️ Class 1 will be following; Portugal, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Tunisia and Ghana throughout the tournament and the class with the winning team will receive a treat! As part of our understanding of the world and geography work we will be focusing on one of these teams and researching the food, animals, special buildings and culture there. The children in class 1 voted and their favourite flag was GHANA 🇬🇭
This week has also been Safeguarding week – Class 1’s theme has been ‘My body is mine’ and we have looked at personal space and parts of our body that should be private.
We have celebrated UK Parliamentary Week and ended with a coffee morning on Friday. We focused on the capital city; London, the Prime Minister and 10 Downing Street 🇬🇧
Finally, we had lots of fun raising awareness and money for the amazing charity; Children in Need. We participated in a SPOTacular event in the hall with classes 2&3 and the sports leaders to celebrate. The activities all had a spotty twist… connect 4, twister, pointillism Pudsey art, dominos and a teacher’s special edition of Spot the difference. The children had so much fun and altogether we raised a wonderful £121.00 🔴🟢🟠🔵🟡🟣
- World Nursery Rhyme Week
World Nursery Rhyme Week starts NOW and we are delighted to confirm we are taking part. The initiative, launched in 2013, promotes the importance of nursery rhymes in early childhood development and education with a particular focus on how nursery rhymes boost early language and literacy skills. We have a number of activities planned throughout the week but we would also love you to join in at home too. Each day we will send the lyrics to the nursery rhyme home so you can sing along with us 🙂
For more info and links to each of the songs of the week please click below:
https://www.worldnurseryrhymeweek.com/
https://www.worldnurseryrhymeweek.com/sing-with-piccolo-main/
Our Second Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Children and young people should be entitled to education.
In Art we have been painting handprint poppies to display at the front of the school and we all participated in our whole school Remembrance Assembly 🙂 In PE we have started our new fundamental movement game and have been learning about the effects of exercise on our bodies and the importance of warming up and cooling down.
- Remembrance Day Service “Lest we Forget”
UNCRC Article 38 – war and armed conflicts.
Across the week all of the children in school have been learning about the importance of Remembrance Day. Today we held our annual Remembrance Day Service in the school hall, we talked about the importance of the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month and why we wear poppies on this day to remember those that gave their lives to make the world a better place for us before holding a minutes silence to pay our respect.
Class 2
Our First Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an education.
This week we have enjoyed looking at lots of different celebrations; Halloween, Bonfire night and Diwali 🪔🎆🎃
We have also observed so huge changes to our school field as the leaves have turned from green to brown and covered the floor making the prettiest of pictures 🍁🍂🏯
Welcome back 👋🏼
UNCRC Article 12: Children should have the right to an opinion as long as it doesn’t affect others.
This half term the children have chosen ‘Polar Explorers’ as their new topic of learning. This has developed from their love of winter, animals around the world and explorers! Check out our new role play area in Class 1 ❄️
Autumn 1
Our Seventh Week Highlights…
A visit from Hospital Nurse, Louise
UNCRC Article 24: Children and young people should be entitled to as good as possible healthcare.
As part of our first topic of the year, ‘Marvellous Me’ we had a visit from Nurse Louise who works in a big hospital in Newcastle. We listened as she told us how nurses help people all around the world and showed us how to use some of her important equipment. She needed help from a team of Doctors, Nurses and Healthcare Assistants and we stepped into the role very well! Using stethoscopes, checking blood pressure and even watching Nurse Louise do Retinal examinations (ophthalmoscopy).
Our favourite part was getting a bandage of our own when stepping into the role of poorly patients in the hospital waiting room! Thank you so much for a great morning Nurse Louise 🙂
Harvest Festival 2022
UNCRC Article 14: Children and young people are free to be of any or no religion.
We enjoyed our Harvest Festival this afternoon, led by Rev. Michael at our local Church.
We learned about the importance of Harvest, Harvest around as well as the importance of Harvest to the Christian Faith. The children shared of favourite Harvest songs, poems and readings as part of the service.
Many thanks to all those who have donated food, the Durham Food Bank. It was really great to see so many parents, carers and wider family supporting their children and the school.
Our Sixth Week Highlights…
This week we have learned the sounds “g / o / c” in phonics and have been trying really hard to identify the initial sounds in words as well as sounding out and blending to read them! 🐸 We are very proud of ourselves! In Numeracy, we have been using vocabulary linking to different shapes when constructing our own homes out of wooden blocks.
Other things we have enjoyed this week are:
– Practising the Harvest Festival songs ready Tuesday at church – we had so much fun designing our very own big red combine harvester… more so hiding in the huge box that Mrs Morton brought in!
– In Geography we have been talking about our home and the place in which we live,
– PE with coach Darren we learned 2 new games that focused on controlling the ball around the obstacles,
– In Computing we have been editing our faces with silly effects to make the colour change and our features,
– Having the opportunity to visit the travelling book club in the school hall 🎉
Our Fifth Week Highlights…
This week we have continued our hard work in phonics, learning the new sounds n, p and i as well as trying really hard to figure out the words Fred the frog is trying to say when talking in his “language” m – a – t ….. mat 🐸
In numeracy, we have been looking at positional language when talking about where different objects are. We found it super fun to hide Barnaby bear in different places around the classroom… especially when he was UNDER the table or BEHIND the computer! 🐻
Today was WORLD SMILE DAY 😃 In class 1 we love to do everything with a smile on our face and today was definitely a day of giggles, cheesy grins and happy smiles!
Things we have also enjoyed this week:
* Fundamental movement with coach Darren – especially when working as a team to roll a soft balls to hit a target 🎯
* Music – especially signing along with the ukulele and playing some instruments ourselves 🎸
* Reading the story Elmer in celebration of Black History Month and discussing how we are all unique and marvellous regardless of our differences 🐘
* Practising our Harvest Festival songs ready for church on the 18th October 🚜
* Working with class 2 to set out a new bird feeder outside our classroom window 🐦
*Not forgetting playing with our friends and putting all of our learning into practise in our different classroom areas!
Our Fourth Week Highlights…
This week we have been learning about our UNCRC Rights Respecting ethos in school and picked 3 UNCRC Articles for our class charter.
The UNCRC consists of 54 articles that set out children’s rights and how governments should work together to make them available to all children. The children in class 1 thought it was important that all children had the opportunity to go to school (28), to have clean water to drink (24) and to play (31); these making up our class charter. We had lots of fun signing our charter with a name collage 😊
For more information on the UNCRC click here: https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-do/childrens-rights/united-nations-convention-of-the-rights-of-the-child
This week we have also; learned 3️⃣ new sounds (s, d, t), been focusing on our accuracy when counting objects 1 by 1, practised ball control in PE with Darren, talked about our family and the special people who help us at home and continued with baseline activities to show our new teacher’s how fantastic we are 😁
Our Third Week Highlights…
This week in Class 1 we have been talking about the things that make us U N I Q U E … using mirrors we looked at the different features on our faces that make us all magnificent as well as different to one another 🤩 We then painted self portraits for our classroom display 🖼
We started phonics this week too, learning the first two sounds /m/ and /a/, it has been great to see so many of you practising the formation of these sounds at home in the Red books.
In PE this week we started our fundamental movement skills with Darren and he was very impressed with how we could all move in time to the music 🎶
Our Second Week Highlights…
This week we have worked hard to settle into our new classroom and whole school routines. We are all very good at choosing our lunch in the dinner hall and Mrs Morton is proud that we are eating most, if not all, of it up. 🤩
We had our first Music lesson this week, where we sang songs with actions and looked at different instruments, we also had our first PE lesson looking at different fundamental skills. We started with throwing and will move onto catching, rolling, kicking and balancing 🎶 🏐
To launch our new topic of Marvellous Me, we had award winning Author and Illustrator Liz Million in school who worked with us to draw our very own self portraits – Mrs Morton was blown away by our artwork and has made our very own art gallery in our classroom. 🖼
We have made lots of new friends and are now confident to play with one another in our indoor and outdoor areas and ask all of the adults who work with us for help if we need it 😊
LIZ MILLION!
On Monday 12th September 2022, an exciting and motivating Illustrator and Author called Liz Million spent the day working with all of our children in the school.
We looked at faces and how our expressions can tell others how we feel. We found it super funny that some of the faces looked silly when they changed expressions 🙂
A thoroughly enjoyable day was experienced by all and our newly developed drawing skills will continue to grow!
Our First Week Highlights…
We have had so much fun this week learning our new classroom routines – remember to check ClassDojo weekly for your child’s individual best bits and to share their weekend news 🙂
Welcome
All of the children have had a fabulous first week settling into their new classroom, making new friends and learning through play. Our first topic of the year is ‘Marvellous Me!’, where will be celebrating each and every child’s uniqueness alongside learning about our families and people who help us in the local community.
Welcome to Class 1 Class Activities 2021-2022
Summer 2
END OF YEAR 2022!
Thank you to each and every one of you for all of your support throughout this year, it had been a pleasure watching your children grown and learn 🙂
As one final party, we invited our families in to have an end of term picnic to celebrate all of our hard work throughout the year. It was a day to remember 🙂
This week we celebrated the final week of school before the summer holidays. We had lots of fun at our Medieval banquet; baking biscuits, making crowns, threading bracelets and most of all eating a feast!
Sixth week highlights…
This week we have enjoyed lots of fun activities celebrating the end year at school 😊
To start the week we had an amazing afternoon with ‘The History Bloke’ who took us back to 1950’s England. He had lots of props to help us visualise what life was like back then compared to now.
We watched class 5 perform their amazing panto; Cinderella Rockafella and all joined in with the horayyyys and the booooos!
Our school was venue for the Multiskills Festival in Durham. We had lots of superhero fun as we moved around the carousel of activities led by our Sports Leaders and the Durham Sports Partnership.
To end the week we celebrated with Rockstar Day – for all of our numeracy work across the year and the rest of the schools Times Tables work.
Fifth week highlights…
This week we performed our end of year show and had so much fun singing and dancing in front of all our parents and careers – we hoped you enjoyed it as much as we did 🤩
Our science this half term has been looking at life cycles and how things can change as they grow and develop… so we were so excited when our 21 day experiment finally ended and we saw the hatching of our very own chicks 🐣 9 new editions to the class means even more cuddles 🥰
Fourth week highlights…
This week we have begun practising for our end of year performance ‘The Enormous Turnip’ the children have enjoyed singing the songs and learning when to come on stage. 🤩
In literacy we have been looking at the text Jack and the beanstalk and planning different settings and version of the story using our imagination.
The children had lots of fun on class swap day meeting their new teachers and friends too!
Third week highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Every child has the right to an education.
This week we have had lots of fun and taken part in some fantastic events in school 🤩
On Tuesday, we took part in our first sport’s day at Nettlesworth Primary school and it was excellent that our parents could come along and watch us again this year. 🏆🏃♀️🏃
On Wednesday, we had our end of year trip to Hamsterley Forest. The children really enjoyed hunting for the Gruffalo and looking for Zog in the sky. Not forgetting the play parks and a picnic lunch which is always super fun 🌳
In Literacy, we have been looking at different versions of the same fairytales and in numeracy we have been been adding and subtracting. Finally, on Friday we took part in a whole school golf festival organised by our sports leaders 🏌🏼
Second week highlights…
UNCRC Article 29: Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full.
This week we watched a live performance from a Brass Band in our school hall which was super cool! 🎺
At the Forest we practised some more cooking skills and worked in teams to make a den. 🌳
In numeracy we have been using different objects to measure different things in class and in Literacy we have been writing sentences independently linking to our new topic “In a land far away”.
We have also been remembering to turn our chicken eggs in the incubator 3️⃣ times a day so that hopefully in 21 days we will have some chicks in class 1. The children have really enjoyed their science work of life cycles this term 🥚
Football Superstar
Huge well done to Nolan, who has won a fantastic trophy for his football efforts this season! We are so proud of you – keep it up ⚽️
First week highlights…
- Paul Cookson – Poet Visit
UNCRC Article 31: Every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
Today the children had a visit from the amazing poet and author (and totally awesome ukulelist); Paul Cookson. He delivered an amazing workshop to the whole school with some hilarious poems! The children (and the staff!) loved taking part in the actions and words. There was so much laughter and love for poetry created at Nettlesworth today!
After the assembly, each class had the chance to take part in a workshop with him and with his creative help we managed to make a class poem! Well done everyone and thanks you Paul 🪕📖
- National Fieldwork Week
UNCRC Article 28: Every child has the right to an education.
Where are the best places to play in our community?
As part of National Fieldwork week, we decided to look around our local community to find the safest and most enjoyable place to play in our village. We put the question to the children and they wrote a list of 4 places that they thought would be good to explore; Nettlesworth Park, The Community Centre, The Forest & Kimblesworth Park.
We used a large map to navigate our way around the village to the different places we suggested and when we got back to school we recorded our opinions in a pictograms, tally chart and bar chart. The pace with the most votes (11) was Kimblesworth Park and here are some of the reasons why:
* It has a big fence around it and a gate so we are safe when playing,
* This park isn’t near a busy road,
* It’s got lots of things to play on and a basketball court and a big field for picnics,
* It has bins and not much litter on the floor.
Great work class 1 🗺
Welcome back 👋🏼
I hope you have all had a wonderful half term and are ready for the final half term of this academic year. Our New topic chosen by the children this half term is ‘Castles’ and we just can’t wait to get in role in our new areas!
Summer 1
Jubilee Picnic with Parents 🇬🇧
UNCRC Article 31: Every child has the right to to participate freely in cultural life.
Class 1 have has so much fun today celebrating; 70 years of the wonderful, Queen Elizabeth II. We hosted a picnic with the whole school and their families this afternoon. In true British weather style the weather was wet and then broke out onto glorious sunshine. Despite this the afternoon was filled with laughter, dancing and eating soggy sandwiches!
Thank you to everyone who came along and made the day a huge success – it was great to share such an important event with the whole community ! 🇬🇧
Fifth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Every child has the right to an education.
This week we have had so much fun continuing our jubilee celebrations. We are very proud of our display work in school and out the front of the school on the fence 🇬🇧
We have enjoyed our last session of Bike ability with Darren and the progress we have made is fantastic 🚲
To end the half term we had a wonderful time at the Queen’s jubilee picnic (in true British weather style 🌧☀️☔️)
Fourth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
This week we have been focusing on the Queen’s jubilee across most subjects 👑
In literacy we have been writing sentences about the Queen and the city of London. This linked closely to our work in Geography – we have been looking at London landmarks and other countries that our Queen works with in the Commonwealth 🇬🇧
In music we have been learning the National Anthem and in Art we have been finger painting flags to display outside of the school and jubilee picnic next week 🧑🎨
It has also been National skipping week and Class 1 have really enjoyed working in small groups to learn the rope game ‘Big Bounce’.
Third Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 29: Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full.
What an exciting, busy week we have had in class – We have started reading our new literacy book; Superworm and in numeracy we are spotting odds and evens.
We took part in a PE event outside on the field led by our Year 4 sports leaders, it was so much fun and we all worked well in a team 😊 Our third week of bike ability saw 3 more children progress to pedals and all children are now lifting their feet for a couple of seconds to glide! 🚲
Forest schools this week involved a fire 🔥 The children were confidently able to follow the fire safety rules and take the ‘respect’ position when toasting their marshmallows 🍡
Finally, in Art we are stepping into the role of Artists as we are recreating the fabulous work of Yvonne Coomber… the children are amazing at us sweeping their brushes when painting with watercolours 🧑🎨
Second Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Every child has the right to an education.
Our new role play area is a mini beast investigation lab and the children have had lots of fun being minibeast explorers looking to find exciting and new minibeasts. We have been writing sentence and looking at features of our natural world this week as well as comparing them to old photos of the local area too.
In numeracy, we have been measuring the length of different bugs and creatures and ordering them appropriately. It has been great to see so many children excited to take part in our second week of Bike Ability with Darren – the progress is fantastic!
Finally, In science, we are looking at life cycles of mini-beasts that change when growing. We have some mealworms and can’t wait to see them change into beetles!
Crazy Creatures
UNCRC Article 31: Leisure, Play and Culture
Today we had the Crazy Creatures North East team in to work with the children in handling different animals. Class 1 particularly enjoyed the minibeasts and the scaled creatures the most 🙂
First Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28 – Every child has the right to an education.
I hope you have all had a wonderful Easter Break – it is lovely to see so many of you sharing photos of what your children have been up to over the holidays as we share this news at the beginning of every week in our speaking and listening circle time.
This week we have had so much fun seeing our friends again, all of the children are so excited to be back in school and to see on another again. We have had our Forest schools revamped over the holidays so we are hoping it stays this way for our term of campfire cooking 🏕
Darren started his first session of Bike Ability this week and he was very impressed with all of the children, they listened extremely well and we already have some confident riders which is fantastic, this will continue each Thursday morning 🚲
Welcome Back!
Good Morning and Welcome back to Class 1 for our final full term of this academic year! I hope you have all had a Easter half term break!
Spring 2
Sixth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Every child has the right to an education.
And just like that term number 2 has come to an end, looking back at all of your children’s hard work has made me very proud. We have so many confident reader’s now, lots of eager writer’s and many speedy mathematicians… but most of all we have a wonderful group of happy and inquisitive children who have made such great friends 😊
To end the term we have been investigating 2d shapes in maths, writing about our favourite part of the farm topic, creating Easter eggs and cards, computing with beebot as well as finding some time to hunt for chocolate-y treats that a certain furry friend dropped as he hopped across our school field! 🐰
A truly EGG-cellent week Class 1, have an EGG-stra special break 🤩
Easter EGG- straveganzaaaa
UNCRC Article 31: Leisure, Play and Culture.
Today was our Easter Egg Competition – it was so nice to welcome you into the school to see our wonderful designs and hard work. Class 1 had a theme of ‘Down at the Farm’ and I was wowed by all of their entries 🤩 We got to work planning our farmyard animals on paper before crating our masterpieces on eggs, here are some photos of us hard at work 😁
All of the children won an Easter Egg for taking part in the competition, here are our runners up and winner from Class 1 (judged by Class 2 children):
1st Place: Sebastian Buttle with Horsey 🐎
2nd Place: Thomas Longstaff with Percy Pig 🐖
3rd Place: Nolan Aspinall with Super Cow 🐄
Fifth Week Highlights…
This week we have been looking at characters in stories and using describing words to tell others what they are like. We used adjectives like “hardworking, kind and helpful” for the Little Red Hen and adjectives like “grumpy, lazy and greedy” for the dog. 🐔 🐶
We made bread just like the Little Red Hen in the book we are reading and it tasted delicious! We were so good at following the instructions 🍞
In numeracy we have been looking at measurements and how to weigh different ingredients when following recipes. ⚖️
In PE this week we have put all of our throwing skills together to begin a team game and we had the opportunity to work with a skipping coach who showed us how to skip 🤩
Happy Mother’s Day 2022
Happy Mother’s Day from your little ray’s of sunshine ☀️🥰
Fourth Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 28: Every child has the right to an education.
Spring has been a huge focus this week and the weather has been glorious too! In science we have been nature detectives, spotting signs that Spring has Sprung. This continued at the farm, where we saw lots of new life! We fed baby lambs from bottles, held baby chicks and watched the newborn piglets feed from their mammy. We also had a tractor drive around the farm to see the other animals and because we were so good at listening and following instructions we had some time at the end to play on the soft play 🐮🐷🐥
In Literacy, we have been looking at the story the Little Red Hen and using the vocabulary beginning, middle and end to organise the different events that happened in it 🐔
We have been getting our BAKE ON this week, in preparation for the Big Hatty Bake Off on Friday to support Brain Tumour Awareness. We had lots of fun baking and even more fun revealing the cake in a whole school assembly and tasting everyone else’s! We were all winners in the end and had ice lolly treats for prizes. 🍰🧁👩🍳🧑🏽🍳
Third Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Leisure, Play and Culture.
This week we have been enjoying the Farm role play area and exploring different animals and their young in preparation for our visit to Hall Hill Farm next week 🐮🐷🐥
In French, we have been learning how to say “My name is…” when asked the question: “comment tu t’appelles?”. We were so good at answering “je m’appelle” and their name 🇫🇷
We dressed in Blue and Yellow on Wednesday to show support for the Ukraine and painted some amazing artwork, displayed both inside and outside of the school. Thank you for everyone who donated, we raised £125🌻🇺🇦
Today we took part in Red Nose Day; dressing at the rare multicoloured nose in order to raise money and awareness about the wonderful charity – Comic Relief. We have raised £93 🦸🏼♂️ 🦸🏻♀️ we spent the afternoon involved in cheerleading workshops before the teachers dressed up as superhero’s as a surprise and performed their own routine to the whole school… we found it super-silly 😂
Second Week Highlights…
- Dental Hygiene
Today we stepped into the roles of; dentist, dental nurse and the patient and performed an oral checkup. We looked at different food and drinks that are good / bad for our teeth and were surprised to see how much sugar is in some of our favourite foods! 😳
Building on our knowledge that we brush our teeth twice a day (morning and night) we found out that the most important time to brush our teeth is before we go to bed. We then learned a new song that we can sing when brushing our teeth 🦷
We have all picked our own toothbrush and have been given some toothpaste to take home to share all of our dental hygiene tips with our parents. We have also decided to make a display in the corridor so that all of the school can see how important it is to keep our teeth clean and healthy 😁
- Fairtrade Fortnight
UNCRC Article 27 – Every child has the right to a good standard of living and governments must help to provide this.
Over the past 2 weeks we have been learning lots of new things linking to our UNCRC Rights Respecting work and Fairtrade Schools Award. Every year we celebrate Fairtrade fortnight and this year we have focused on ‘Pablo – the Super Banana’.🍌
We have tracked his location right from the banana farm in Columbia to our supermarket shelves, closely looking at the bananas that make the farmers happy by treating them fairly; (Fairtrade bananas) and the bananas that make the farmers sad; by not giving the farmers, who do the hardest work, a fair price. The children were shocked that this meant the farmers and their families didn’t have the same UNCRC rights as they have here at Nettlesworth Primary School.
We have set a challenge for the next time we are shopping and will look out for the ‘Super Sticker’ on different products so that together we can make a difference to the wider community all around the world! This started on Thursday afternoon when we visited our in school Fairtade Shop – we had lots of fun picking the different products to take home 🙂
Check out the links below to see what we have been working on – especially the super cool song that we have learned 🙂
- Maths Day
UNCRC Article 28 – Every child has the right to an education.
Mr Graham and the staff organised us an exciting afternoon of activities to get our mathematician heads into. It was lots of fun and all of the school shared the afternoon with a different class teacher. We had so much fun taking part in a whole school Maths Day. Mr Beveridge even joined in the fun and helped deliver Active Maths with Mrs Morton and Miss Milburn.
Mr Graham worked with the youngest children in the school. They used concrete objects to solve different numerical patterns…. their favourite being the addition with haribos!
- Support for the Ukraine
UNCRC Article 38 (war and armed conflicts)
In Art this week we have been showing our support for everyone in the Ukraine – we painted their flag and added sequin poppy’s on. In Mini Makers a club Class 1 have painted sunflowers too and put them outside the school 🌻🇺🇦
First Week Highlights…
UNCRC Article 31: Leisure, Play and Culture
- Science Day – Growth
Today we celebrated Science Week by taking part in a whole school planting project that we could take home to watch grow. The children chose their own seeds to plant and have learned about all of the things needed to help it grow.
Across the afternoon, teachers swapped classrooms to deliver different aspects of growth with the children; Class 1 worked with Miss Grimes and had a fantastic afternoon! 🪴
- World Book Day 2022
Today we celebrated the 25th anniversary of World Book Day! This year’s theme was marked by the message: “You are a reader.” All of our children were encouraged to to dress as their favourite book characters and bring along their favourite story to share.
It was great to see our oldest children enjoy sharing stories with our youngest children …. And we had a surprise visit from one of our favourite Superheroes! 🕸📚
