Lent Term

'Where will you explore?'

Children will be thinking about where in the world they would like to explore and what they would like to find out and see. This will support their learning in both Geography and History where they will be learning about hot and cold places and famous explorers. We want all children to see their own potential, and believe that all children should have dreams, no matter how far they need to travel to accomplish them!

We enjoyed a visit from Alex Foulkes today. She read us a bit of her new book and led a question and answer session just for Year 1 and 2. We think she managed to convince Miss Evans that we need a copy of her book ‘Ministry of Mischief’.

Today, we acted out the story of the conversion of Saint Paul. We thought about what kind of person he was and how he changed after being healed by Ananias and after being baptised. 

We listened to the story of St Valentine and wrote some prayers of reflection. 

Today, we made 3D shapes out of card and tested them to see how strong they were. We taped the card together and placed books on top of the shapes, we found that the cylinder could hold the most books before falling over. We used this experiment to decide what shapes we were going to use to construct Baby Bear’s chair.

Today, we used iPads to create digital art in the style of David Hockney. We were shocked to discover just how much you could do on an iPad!

We were tasked to complete a geography group work task before the Easter holidays. We decided to make giant world maps. This helped us to recap our prior learning about continents and oceans, and to demonstrate our new learning about the equator and how it affects the climate of different places. 

Check out our abstract landscapes! 🎨

We welcomed our grown ups in today for our Lent Term learn with me session. We showed them our sewing skills when making our pouches in DT. We had already been through the planning and designing process, so just had the assembling to do! We had some help from our grown ups, but we had a fab time and they look great! Thank you to all of the grown ups who were able to attend and help. 

In science, we are learning about animals including humans. We have been learning about what things animals and humans need to stay healthy and also how living things change over time. Today, we thought about the physical changes to humans throughout their lives. We investigated the question ‘Do our feet get bigger as we get older?’ by measuring our feet with cubes. We found that no, this is not always the case as some of the older children in the class has smaller feet than children that were younger than them. We discussed that our feet grow while we are young, so they will be bigger now than they were when we were babies, but this is different for everyone, not always do older people have bigger feet.

Today, we started our maths learning about grouping and sharing. We used cubes to represent bigger numbers and split them up into smaller, equal groups. Using manipulatives (things we can move and use) really helped us to see the grouping take place and understand how this works. 

We had a fab time in our enrichment today. We got to learn some circus skills and have a go with some circus equipment. Look how much fun we had!

Today, we held a class liturgy with a Christmas theme. Although you may think Christmas ends in the Advent term, we actually learn about Christmas in January as we are so busy learning about Advent in December! We listened to the gospel story of the Maji travelling to Bethlehem, following the star. We then considered how we would let the light of Jesus into our hearts and actions this Christmas season. We then made some star prayers by putting our names on paper stars, folding the corners into the centre and then placing them into water; when they unfold, this is when we think about how Jesus appears and shines through us.

Today, we used our foundation journals in geography for the first time. The purpose of journals is to collect our thoughts about a lesson and add to our memory bank of information. Today, we were considering where we get our weather information from and what this looks like. We recorded this in our journals to allow us to look back at them in the future.

Today, we finished our double page spreads all about our new focus artist, David Hockney. We decorated our pages in pop-art style and added some pictures and facts!

We have started our new money unit in maths this week. We have been using our knowledge of place value and counting in 2s, 5s and 10s to help us count amounts. Here you can see us practicing recognising coins and putting them in value order!

Today, we carried out an experiment in science. We have been learning about basic needs in our science topic - animals including humans. Today we focussed on the basic need of exercise and we learnt all about what happens to our body when we exercise. We then tried some different exercises and determined which was the hardest by finding out which one made our heart beat the quickest. We were all very tired after a fun lesson!