Stanningley Primary School

Well done to year 1 on their first sports day! Great resilience and perseverance. Excellent team spirit from everyone too.

Today the children enjoyed a hot but fun packed day at Harlow Carr. The children were extremely well behaved and were a credit to the school. In the morning they took park in a workshop all about seasons. They explored the grounds with Cal, who worked for RHS and showed us different types of trees and plants. We thought about what might be different in the different seasons and how the plants and trees would change. In the afternoon, the children were free to explore the grounds. They were fabulous at finding the many hidden playgrounds and they loved exploring them!

To celebrate 70 years of our Queen all the children came dressed in red, white and blue. They looked amazing. During the day, we thought about what rules we might have if we were queen for a day. The children did a great job of writing these. At lunchtime the whole school enjoyed a special picnic lunch in the playground. All year 1 turned up in their own crowns! They looked amazing. In the afternoon the children enjoyed lots of q1ueen activities from bookmark making to portrait sketching. It was a celebration to remember!

The children all looked so grown up today dressed in their denim! Thank you all for your support. The children learnt a little about how dementia can change the pathways in the brain, we looked at how messages are carried in the brain in a normal person. We linked lots of different brain cells together. Then we learnt how if a person is suffering with dementia, these pathways will not pass the messages along, meaning the person will forget things and will often repeat things. The children were very mature when discussing this!

We have used Van Goghs painting of 'Sunflowers' to have a go at sketching our own! We have some budding artists in our class!!

This week we have been looking at Vincent Van Gogh. We have found out about his life and researched him. We have asked questions about his painting 'Sunflowers'. We have used our sketch books to experiment with different pencils to create lines. We have used different thickness of pencils. What do you think?

Year one have taken over one of the beds in the school playground. The children each chose a vegetable they would like to grow, these started as either a seed or a bulb. We planted them into pots to start them growing. When they were strong enough, the children prepared and cleared the bed, before planting their own established vegetables. Now the children are enjoying taking care of them and watering them, they are enjoying watching them grow!

After discussing capacity we carried out an experiment to see which container holds the most cupfuls. We talked about even though a cylinder looks taller it doesn't mean it will hold the most cupfuls. Children had lots of fun getting wet and being independent. Excellent team work by everyone!

As part of our PSHE & Mindmate we have been discussing what makes us the same and different. We talked about what can be similar to each other and how we may differ. Children organised themselves into groups to show how they may be the same or different. They organised themselves by hair colour, eye colour, what they are wearing and by gender.

The children learnt today that Christians will normally attend church on a Sunday to complete their prayer and worship, but they may attend on other days for special occasions. They learnt that in Mosque prayers happen more frequently. The children looked at how people of a Muslim faith would need to prepare for prayer – by removing their shoes, washing their hands and covering their heads. Zak and Moheen helped us by telling us their experiences of Mosque. After, the children learnt that an important part of celebrating can be sharing food. We looked at the loaf of bread and found that bread appears in a lot of the stories Jesus told. The children all sat in a circle and together we said the Lord’s prayer. Imaan, Moheen and Zak were amazing and told us some prayers in Arabic. We all then ate the bread together and enjoyed the special moment as a class.

The children enjoyed learning how to use a ruler and how to measure using standard units of measure. They learnt about centimetres, millimetres and metres. The children enjoying trying to find things that would measure with their ruler. They had to make sure they were measuring accurately and when writing their measurements they had to use the CM units. After the children were challenged to find things more or less than 10cm and make a note of what they were.

Here are our decorated egg competition winners - Zoe, Heidi and Emily. Well done girls.

We are so proud of all the children!

It has been a wet day but the children have LOVED it!! Well done everyone.

We are very proud of the children today. They have persevered and all have ridden a bike with pedals!

The children had a great 1st day building their confidence on the balance bikes.

Today the children were invited to take part in THE LITTLE SING, an event organised by Artforms, our music service provider. The children were taken on a musical journey under the sea, they sang songs, danced and played instruments. The children behaved fabulously and were a credit to the school.

We have looked at the balance scales today and found items which are heavier or lighter than a wooden block. Tomorrow we will be looking at weighing items using cubes.

To start off healthy week we have visited our school kitchen to discuss food hygiene. We have asked Shelley lots of questions and had a nosey in the kitchen!

The children all looked amazing today. Each child dressed in something red and donated one pound to Red Nose Day. Some even bought noses and pens to raise extra money. We had a lovely morning creating artwork only using red and having a dance to the Red Nose Day theme song!

The children enjoyed consolidating their learning today, by making their own collage of a plant and labelling it. The children were able to remember most of the key parts of a plant, creating some lovely designs, which they then labelled. The children tried to label the roots, stem, leaves, flower, petal and seeds if they had them.

Children have been giving each other directions to use the trimtrail and directed them around the playground. They have used terminology such as left, right, forwards, backwards, up down, turn. Can they practise this at home?

The children enjoyed seeing how much their seeds had grown (or not!). We took apart one of the seeds to see all the different parts of the plant. The children were able to spot the leaves, roots and stem. The children looked at images of trees and identified the key parts of them before labelling their picture. Afterwards the children had the opportunity to look closely at the seeds with magnifying glasses, then to choose a seed to make an observational drawing.

The children used cubes to measure a range of classroom objects. After, they were given a challenge to put all the objects in order from shortest to longest. The children were able to use a good starting point to make sure their measuring was accurate and they used the language of shorter, longer, smaller and taller to arrange their objects.

Today the children had a visit from the author Steve Webb. The children were lucky enough to hear the stories as told by the author himself! The children learnt how Steve would edit and improve his writing and drawings over and over until he was happy with them, much like we do with our purple pens. Some of the children chose to buy the books and were lucky enough to get them signed by him. Back in the classroom, the children used Steve’s book, Tanka Tanka Skunk, to create their own stories. They were proud of the animals and they used these to hear the beats within words.

The children have had an amazing day! We have had lots of different book characters coming coming into school. Children all went home with a free book and book voucher! We have had lots of potato entries and well done to our 3 winners!

Today the children found out or science topic next half term will be planting. We looked at a selection of seeds such as carrot, cucumber, sunflower and bean seeds. The children each chose and planted their own seed, in a hope that they will be able to see their seed starting to grow after the holidays.

Today the children had many challenges to apply their learning about 3d shapes. The first was to create a necklace using the exact same 3d shapes as their partner. They had to hide their string from their partner and only describe the shape and colour they had used. The results were brilliant with lots of brilliant vocabulary used. The second activity was to make your own 3d shapes from the polygons. They were a bit tricky, but we used our strong fine motor skills to create some shapes. The final activity was to copy a 3d shape model, then count and name the shapes used. The children loved this and then went on to design and draw their own models!

In science today the children were given a special challenge. Batman asked them which material he should use to design his boat. The children had 5 materials and they conducted an experiment to say which material would be best. The children put the same amount of water on each material and watched to see if the material held the water. The children made a judgment after the water had been on the material for one minute. We used a timer and a syringe to keep this test fair. The children found the best material was a plastic tub, because it was waterproof and it did not absorb the water, but that it was also strong enough to hold it too!

Today the children have really enjoyed creating their own Supertato and Veggie Villian. They designed their characters yesterday and today have made them. We hope you love them as much as we do! Mrs Brewer came to see them today as well, and was very impressed at how individual they were. Well done class one for a fab day!

We have been using equipment to help us to add 2 numbers together but remembering to make 10 first.

Today the whole school had the opportunity to take part in an interactive concert held by the folk band Maia. The musicians bought in many instruments including a full drum kit, banjo, guitar and double bass!! Year one children had the opportunity to learn about the instruments and to take part in their performances with singing, dancing and rhythms.

Today the children visited St Thomas’ Church to learn all about the celebrations that take place there. The children learnt how the font is used in baptism. They looked at the ointment and the water used. The children went on to learn about weddings, having the opportunity to look at the register used. Finally the children learnt about funerals and how the coffin would be placed on the alter while loved ones celebrated their life. As the children learnt about the celebrations, they collected stickers in their book to show their learning. To finish off our wonderful trip, the children all had the opportunity to play the church organ. We were lucky enough to be able to sing along to ‘Give Me Joy In My Heart’ while Noah played for us!

Today we went on our Autumn walk in school. In science we learn about how each season is different and today we began looking at Autumn. We collected Autumn treasures and looked at what happened to the trees and weather in this season. We learnt the days are shorter, it is darker for longer and most of the trees start to loose their leaves. We found lots of leaves that had started to turn black as they were dying. After we started our season book which we will add to throughout the year.

This week the children have been testing their senses. We completed a mini experiment to test our smell, taste, touch hearing and looking. The children identified which body part they thought was associated with each sense. After the tests we revisited this to see if we were right. The children matched items to adjectives to describe their touch and they blind tasted sweet, salty and sour tastes to test their taste. The children played Kim's game to see how good their sight was and we spoke very quietly to test our hearing. We also had a class competition to see who could make the smelliest sock - which Mrs Brier and Callum from year 2 were lucky enough to judge this.

Today was mental health awareness day. The children all looked amazing in their rainbow outfits – thank you for all your contributions. This is such an important issue, especially considering all that people have been forced to deal with over the last few years. Today in class we thought carefully about the voices or thoughts we might hear in our head. We learn how these are normal and everyone has thoughts. Sometimes some thoughts can be useful and others not. We used the film ‘Inside Out’ to explain this. We looked at the different characters and how they conveyed different emotions. We had lots of thought bubbles that we enjoyed popping!! We read the thoughts and looked at which character would be helpful in sorting that problem and which would not be! The children were so mature and sensible. We also learnt about what we can do if we have a problem. In PSHE we have been learning about our ‘trusted adults’ who we can talk to. We looked at how emotions can build up and result in an explosion … we used a fizzy bottle of pop, which we shook every time we added in another emotion. In the end, the bottle exploded when we opened it, just like our emotions can do! We talked about what we have in place at school to help us. Specifically, in our classroom we have our worry box and our emotional register.

This week we have been visited by the Road Safety team. The children really enjoyed discussing road safety with ‘Amazing Amber’ as well as giving her instruction to cross the road. The children learnt the road safety code THINK, STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, THINK. We were very impressed with how the children listened so we reached the top of our class treat yesterday and so the children enjoyed some extra time on the trim-trail outside. Well done everyone.

The children have enjoyed using the different resources in the classroom to show us what they know. They are able to choose their own resources and we are encouraging them to explain 'how they know'. We use lots of visual representations of numbers like tens frames to count an amount quickly.

In science we have started thinking about our topic, our bodies. We began by labelling Reuben's body parts as a class. Reuben was fabulous and stayed so still while the children added their labels. After, we broke into groups and took turns labelling each other. The children were fabulous at identifying and trying to spell the different body parts.

The children have settled really well into their new environment and they are quickly learning their new routines. It is lovely to see them accessing all the provision inside and outside the classroom.