Autumn Term 2

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Leaf Sculptures

Over the last two weeks, we have been creating our own leaf sculptures. We learnt how to roll out and shape clay and use different instruments to create different patterns within our leaf designs. Once our clay sculptures were dry, we used acyrlic paints to paint them in our chosen colours. We will be putting a little tealight in the middle to turn them into candle holders.

Wonderful Weather Forecasts

In Science last week, we were learning about different types of weather and how the weather changes from Summer into Autumn. We became weather experts for the afternoon and created our own weather forecasts for the UK. We stood at the front of the class to perform our weather forecasts in pairs. Miss Johnson was blown away with how confident we all were! We also remembered the different countries that make up the United Kingdom, connecting our Science to our Topic work.

Land Art

In Art this week, we have explored different forms of sculpture. We learnt that sculpture is a form of art and it is 3D, so it isn't flat like drawings and paintings. We focused on an artist, called Andy Goldsworthy, who likes to create pieces of land art. Land art is art that is a part of the landscape, made using natural materials, and is left to disappear naturally. After collecting lots of natural objects from our playground and around the village, we created our own pieces of land art. We hope you like our masterpieces.

Geography

This week in Topic, we learnt about the Queen and why she is important to the United Kingdom. We learnt about her 6 royal residences around the UK. We were amazed at how grand they were. Did you know Buckingham palace has 775 rooms? After exploring pictures of the residences, we used Google Maps to locate where they all are in the United Kingdom. We worked well together in our teams and we successfully placed all 6 residences in the correct place on our maps. 

Autumn Leaves

In Art this week, we were thinking about the colours of Autumn and discussing how leaves change colour during the Autumn season. We used our knowledge of Autumn colours, to create a leaf collage using tissue paper to create our own Autumn leaves. We learnt that collage is a piece of art which is created by sticking different materials together to create a layered effect.

PE

This term in PE Year 1 are developing bat and ball skills. Today, we have been learning how to hold and use a tennis racquet, how to control a racquet and bean bag when moving in different ways and how to aim when we are batting something.  

Nature Art

The focus of our Art work this half term is Nature. Today, we learnt about what nature is and identified lots of objects that are part of nature. We also learnt about symmetry and how some objects in nature can be symmetrical. We used this to create some mirror image observational drawings of natural objects. We had to concentrate on getting the right shapes and lines to make it look as close to the object as we could.

Marvellous Maps

Our new Topic is all about the United Kingdom. To start our topic, we looked at a globe and discussed the shape and features of our planet. We then focused on the seven continents and 5 oceans, naming and identifying them on a world map. We learnt two catchy songs to help us remember their names. Take a look below. We enjoyed using the atlas independently to label our own world map.

AUTUMN TERM 1

Art Morning

We have been showing off our creative skills for our termly art morning, learning all about Oscar-Claude Monet and his impressionist artwork. We were amazed at the colours he used in his paintings and how beautiful his gardens were. We then used Monet's style to create our own version of his painting 'The Water Lily Pond'. We used our fingerprints and an array of colours to create an impressionist painting of his gardens, crafting the iconic bridge using masking tape.

Forest School Fun

Year 1 have been thoroughly enjoying their time down in Forest School on a Monday afternoon with Mrs Ellis. They have explored nature and wildlife, climbed trees, made dens, played in the mud kitchen and even set fire to a Tudor House to link to our Great Fire of London topic. A massive thank you to Mrs Ellis for taking the time to take us to Forest School each week.

Sketching St. Paul's Cathedral

We developed our ideas about St. Paul's Cathedral using drawing, imagination and communication. We observed paintings and drawings of the old cathedral before using our skills of line, shape and pattern to sketch our interpretation of St. Paul's Cathedral before the fire burnt it down.

Our Great Fire of London Artwork

Over the last few weeks, we have been learning new drawing and painting skills in our Art lessons. We have learnt about primary and secondary colours and how we mixed red and yellow to create orange. We have also been investigating how to create different lines and shapes using a variety of art materials, such as oil pastels, wax crayons, felt tip pens, etc. We have been focusing on the lines and shapes that flames make and how to draw the shapes of houses from 1666. We have also enjoyed learning new art vocabulary and their definitions. We have learnt words like hue, tone, shade, tint and texture. We then used all of our new skills to create a scene from the Great Fire of London. Take a look at our masterpieces above.

Maths

Over the last few weeks, we have been working on Place Value in Maths. The Year 1s have been focusing on the place value of numbers within 10 and the Year 2s have been focusing on numbers within 100. The children have been representing numbers using a variety of resources and comparing and ordering numbers using inequality signs and on a number line.

Baking Bread

As a hook to our new topic on the Great Fire of London and for our new English unit on Instruction writing, we followed a recipe to bake our own bread rolls. We had to listen carefully to instructions in order to bake safely and hygienically. We collected vocabulary associated with recipes and instructions, such as adverbs of time and imperative verbs. We also used our senses to describe the bread rolls at each stage of the recipe. Whilst we waited for our turn to become a baker, we used our play-doh to experimented making different shaped bread rolls. We had lots of fun trying to copy the images. The plait was extremely challenging! Our classroom smelt like a bakery all day.

The History Man

As an introduction to our new topic on the Great Fire of London, the fabulous Mr Cadle, aka 'The History Man' visited us in school to bring our topic to life. He came dressed as a typical man from the 17th Century and he brought an array of artefacts and objects with him to show us what life was like in 1666 and how the fire started, spread and was finally extinguished. He is incredibly knowledgeable and it was a fantastic day for all. Mrs Jackson even got to ignite some gunpowder on our playground to show us how they used it to blow up the houses to stop the fire spreading. Watch the exciting video below. 

We would like to say a massive thank you to Mr Cadle for sharing all of his knowledge and artefacts with us.