This week, Year 1 had a fantastic time diving into the book Puffin Peter by Petr Horáček. The children were captivated by the adventures of Peter, a little puffin searching for his friend.

As part of our lesson, the children practiced their neatest writing by describing puffins—focusing on their black and white feathers, their bright beaks, and their ability to swim and fly! The class also made wonderful predictions about what might happen next in the story, using clues from the pictures and text.

To add more fun, the children put themselves in the characters' shoes, imagining what Peter and the other animals might say. We had some brilliant ideas, with lots of creative dialogue shared with the class.

It was a brilliant way to bring the story to life while practicing our reading, writing, and predicting skills!

We've really been enjoying our new top for this half term 'Animals.' We began our art lesson by naming as many animals we could think of that live in the sea. How many sea creatures can you name? 

We then used oil pastels to create drawings of different sea creatures. I wonder if you can spot a Jellyfish, Turtle, Pufferfish, Clownfish, Starfish or even a Blue Whale in our artisic creations! 

Today in English we were following instructions. We were following instructions on how to make Cress Heads! We had to make sure our cotton wool was wet and that we added enough seeds into our pot. At the end we drew a face on our pot so when the cress grows it looks like green hair! We are excited to look tomorrow and see if any have started to grow. 

Wow, what an exciting start to the school year! You've already done something so important—your "Helping Hands" activity! Let's talk about what that means and why it's so special.

What is a Helping Hand?

A helping hand is someone who you can trust, someone who cares about you and is always ready to help. These people make sure you feel safe, happy, and loved. During our activity, each of you thought about trusted adults you see in your school day and wrote their names on your very own Helping Hand for the class display. Great job!

Maybe you could spend some time with your adults talking about who your trusted adults are in Year 1! Think about:

-     Your teacher

-     Your teaching assistant

-     Other teachers and adults in the year group

Knowing who you can talk to when you're feeling unsure or need help is very important. Trusted adults are there to help us when:

• We have a problem.
• We're feeling sad, scared, or confused.
• We just need to talk to someone.

Remember, it’s okay to ask for help! Whether it's something big or small, your helping hands are always there for you.

Keep up the great work, Year 1 - you’ve already shown how thoughtful and caring you are!

Today we were very lucky to have the Skipping Ninja come into school. At the beginning of the day, we went up and the Skipping Ninja gave us a demonstration of his amazing skills. We were all very impressed!

We then went for a special skipping workshop. We completed different types of skips and exercise with the Skipping Ninja and managed to do all of this to music. Finally, we played a game similar to musical statues where we had to skip when the music was on a freeze when it stopped. 

All the children were talking about how great their time with the Skipping Ninja was and are excited about doing more skipping!

We had a great Science Day doing lots of science related activities. We started by having Ethan, a STEM ambassador, coming to talk to us about climate change and things we can do to help.

We then looked at the book 'Greta and the Giants' and talked about the importance of trees and how they help us. We discussed how cutting down lots of trees can cause climate change and how it impacts us and other animals.

We then looked at the scientist Dr Angie Burnett who is a plant biologist. We found out this meant that she completes experiments with plants, such as seeing the best environment for them to grow. We then had our own seed to plant which we will watch germinate and then put into soil and continue to watch it grow.

Finally, we looked at the author and illustrator Eric Carle. We used collage to create our own flower picture making sure to include the different parts of a flower.  

We had great fun on our STEM Discovery Centre trip. We took part in lots in exciting activities including making our own rockets and launching them outside, watching some cool magic tricks that were actually science and learning about the Mars rover. 

We first learnt about the different parts of the rocket, including the nose cone and tail fins. We had to make sure we included these on our rocket we made. Once we had created our rocket, we went outside and launched them using air, some of them nearly went on the roof!

We had time in the exploration room which lots of interesting things to look at and use, including a robotic arm which we loved. At the end of the day we had a magic show, our favourite experiment was when the flame heated up the gas inside and caused the lid to fly of in a flame.

Our favourite part of the day was making slime! We learnt about the reaction between the materials and how slime is a liquid because it takes the shape of what it is in. We had good fun playing with our slime once we had made it too!

Today we had our second session with Stevenage FC. We have started to look at our 'A, B, Cs'. Today we began looking at 'B' which stands for balance. We started by recapping parts of our body and then balancing on different parts of our body. For example we might have had to balance on two hands and one foot. We then worked in pairs to get across the stepping stones, making sure we stood still balancing when there was the call 'danger'.

This week we have be writing the story of Little Red and the Very Hungry Lion. Everybody has done an amazing job and we have been wowed by the super writing! 

In our stories we included sentences using 'and' and 'because. We also included exclamation sentences such as 'What tatty hair you have!' We have been writing in our neatest handwriting and remembering our punctuation. 

Everybody has loved learning about this story which is a twist on the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood. It has sparked our imaginations and we have been reading other alternative stories as we have loved it so much!

We have had an awesome day celebrating World Book Day. We started by sharing the character we came as today and talking about the books they were from. 

The book we looked at as a class today was 'The Jolly Postman or Other People's Letters'. We have been learning about all the traditional tales and fairytales in English this half term. We came across lots of the characters we knew, including the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, the bears from Goldilocks and the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. 

We had a closer look at the letter the witch received. It was a poster about all the witch supplies she might need. We knew that these were so she could make her potions. There were lots of ingredients at the front to make our own potions with! We had super fun adding different things to our potion bottles to make a variety of amazing potions, including flying potions, evil milkshakes and crystal spells. Once we finished making them we then wrote a set of instructions on how to make our potions. 

After that, we looked at the Jolly Postman's journey that day. We drew him a map so he would know where to go to post the letters. We used directional language to help tell the Jolly Postman where to go on his journey.

Finally, we thought about the letters he would have to post and thought about the most efficient way to deliver them. We decided to that he should deliver them in order so that he is not running around everywhere! We had to help him by ordering the house numbers on the envelope so that he could get home in time for tea.