Stanningley Primary School

In DT we have been designing and making our own bear shelters. The children needed to create a strong frame and join all the parts together. They then needed to attach the material to provide shelter for their bears. The were evaluating and improving continually as they went along and their end designs were amazing!

Today, the children from year 1 went on a 'Bear Hunt' around Leeds City Centre. The children found the bear that they decorated. Stan is in Thomas Sabo in the Victoria Quarter and we think he was very happy to see us all again! We then went on to spot other bears across the city before a quick lunch stop and catching the bus back to school. The children behaved brilliantly and were a credit to the school!

On Wednesday 28th June it was the SPS sports day! We were so incredibly proud of all the year 1 children for their effort and determination. Every child in school took part in every race and they had so much fun too! Thank you to all the adults for their support in the adults races - the children LOVED seeing you all get involved!

This term our topic is all about BEARS! We all learnt our addresses so we could make our own address labels for our bears in case they got lost on the picnic! We set off with our sandwiches and bears. We went on the bus to Pudsey Park where we met a very special bear... Pudsey Bear! We will be learning about him in history. We will learn why he is important to our local area and how he was created. We explored some more of the park and we even had a play in the playground! It was a lovely trip and all the bears (and children) were very well behaved!

On the week beginning 19th June, each class was given a present. It was a copy of 'Journey' by Aaron Becker. The children made predictions about what they thought the story might mean. They thought about the feelings of the characters and discussed the importance of the 'red crayon' the girl was carrying. The children quickly realised there were no words in this book so they had to be detectives and look carefully at the pictures to decide what was going on. The children had MANY class discussions and they quickly spotted the girl was lonely in the story. The children then took to the playground and drew their own images using their own magic chalk. They worked together with a partner to create an image together.

The children visited St Thomas’ Church. They took part in 4 different activities that taught them about weddings, funerals, baptism and belonging. The children learnt in a wedding two people make life long promises to each other and they sign the register. The children learnt in a baptism the child will be bless with an oil and water. Finally the child will have a candle lit and they will keep them to remind them they belong to the church. The children learnt how a funeral remembers people who have died. In the service people may laugh and cry and they remember their loved ones. Finally the children learnt that God (the shepherd) thinks of all his followers as his sheep and that he cares for everyone equally. The children created a picture full of sheep that will be displayed in the church.

Today Farah came to speak to us about the mosque. We learned that her children go for 2 hours everyday. Before they go, they clean themselves and change their clothes. They each have prayer beads and they take a prayer mat. The girls cover their hair with a scarf and the boys wear a cap. She showed us how she would use an open hand to pray and how she would say Amen to end a prayer. Farah explained how families will often share food at the mosque after prayers and at special times of the year.

The children explored the capacity vocabulary using the sand and water in the outdoor provision. They used words such as full, empty, nearly full and nearly empty. The children explored how many scoops was needed to fill a container. They used spoons, cups and spades. The children worked together to fill containers and counted how many of each was needed to fill the container.

They did it! Mrs Hayward and Gaz completed the first Rob Burrow Marathon in Leeds this weekend. They were raising money for Leeds Hospital Charity. The money raised will enable year 1 to be a part of the charity's city wide Bear Hunt which will take place in Leeds over the summer! Amazing effort! We are all so incredibly proud.We hope those of you who were trying to watch made it and saw them. Thank you to everyone who came down to offer their support, it really helped them stay motivated and forget about the pain!

This week in maths the children have loved exploring using the balances. The children compared the mass of items against each other, then used non standard methods such as cubes to weigh them.

The children in class one all made crowns to wear for our special coronation picnic. The children learned about some of the items that would be used in the coronation service and we talked about the plans for the day. The children were very interested in the horses that would be on parade!

The children loved their visit to the Wildlife Park. The children walked around and saw many of the animals in their groups. The class met up for their picnic lunch before heading off to their workshop all about the different categories of animals. In the workshop, the children had the opportunity to touch 'Colin the African Hissing Cockroach' and 'Banana the Corn Snake'. They also had the chance to hold a giant snail! They were all incredibly brave and well behaved! It was a great day!

Year 1 took a vey wet trip to Rodley Nature Reserve. The children walked down to the reserve then enjoyed filling their sticky boards with plants they found along the way. They watched birds in the hides and tried to identify them. After lunch, the children split into groups to take part in a bee talk learning how honey was made and they made bird feeders. The children had a lovely time and they did some amazing walking too!

In science, we looked at the different parts of a flower or plant. We linked it to our healthy eating snacks and thought about which part of the plant we were using - was it the seeds, the stem or the leaves? The children made wonderful collages of plants which they then labelled with the different parts.

This week was our healthy week. All week we thought about how we could look after our bodies. We were lucky enough to have a skipping lesson and we thought how exercise helps keep us healthy. We learnt about different fruit and vegetables and we used these to design and make our own healthy snack. We talked about how important it was to make sure our hands were clean before eating or preparing food! Finally we looked really closely at the patterns and shapes on our left over fruit and vegetables and used them to create repeating pattern prints.

As part of healthy week, the children each designed their own healthy snack. From this, together we wrote a shopping list and picked children's names out of a hat. The children chosen went to Tesco to buy everything we needed. They checked they had everything on the list, paid and carried all the bags back to school!

The children in year 1 have started their cricket coaching this half term. The time to Shine programmed teaches them the basic skills and understanding of cricket. The children have loved it so far and they are looking forward to the rest of the half term!

Today we celebrated World Book Day. The children all looked amazing in their outfits - thank you for all the effort with them. We wrote our own stories based on our author of the week, Eric Carle story Brown Bear. They are amazing!! We found out who the winners of the potato competition was and redesigned a book cover for our favourite story. It was a day full of reading and sharing stories and we were all lucky enough to visit the school book fayre and buy our own new book!

Here is a video of the children riding last week. They were all absolutely amazing and we are incredibly proud of them all. Most of the children were riding independently by the end of Friday, with just a few needing a little more time. We hope they've been showing off their new skills this weekend! 

This week we have had Danny working with us from Cycle North. All the children have made amazing progress as they spent three days trying to balance and pedal. Most of them were able to ride after their sessions and all had a wonderful time. The were kind, encouraging and extremely resilient! We are so proud of you all! Well done!

We were incredibly proud of all the year 1 entries into the Talent Show. It took a tremendous amount of courage to get up and perform on stage. Well done everyone for taking part!

We have been learning to use tuned instruments to play simple music. The children used the chime bars and tried play along to the rhythms we had been learning. The children worked in pairs, with one child playing the melody on the chime bars and the other keeping the rhythm with the shaker.

Year 1 had a visit from Dside. They talked about internet safety and how to keep ourselves safe on the internet. We learnt we needed to ask an adults permission before going online, that we need to look at things that are suitable for our age and we learnt not to give out any of our personal information.

Today, class one enjoyed their superhero day, to celebrate all their hard work during their superhero topic! The children all came dressed as superheroes and they learned a dance which they performed for their grown ups when they joined us in the afternoon. Together, we completed some craft activities - making super mini me pictures and our own masks! It was an action packed day!

Today the children explored their Supertato topic further when they made their own veggie villains to use in their own comic strip next week. The children used a range of materials including felt, tape and googly eyes!

Tim, from Rhythmicity, delivered 2 days of workshops for the children to experience playing percussion instruments and playing as a group. Year one listened to a story called 'Sammy The Spider'. They played along to the rhythms as the story went on, being careful not to wake Charlie the Camel. The children then showed their learning to the rest of the school at the end of the workshop. They were amazing!

The children completed a simple experiment to see which materials were absorbent and which materials were not absorbent. The children tried to make their predictions first by asking did they think the material would be absorbent. The children then tested the cotton wool, fabric, newspaper and the plastic by seeing if they could ‘soak up’ or absorb the water in their bowls.

To begin our shape day, the children were all challenged at coming to school dressed as a shape. We had a wonderful range of 2d and 3d shapes. The children looked closely at 3d shapes. We sorted the different shapes into similar shapes by looking at their properties. We talked about the faces and the edges. The children tried to make the 3d shapes out of playdough. They made spheres, cones, pyramids, cubes and cuboids. The children sorted 2d shapes into similar shapes. Then we discussed the properties and the number of sides and edges. The children attempted to a range of shapes using the geo boards and elastic bands. They made circles, triangles, squares, rhombus, rectangles, pentagons, hexagons and octagons. Some children knew a heptagon was a 7 sided shape. In PE the children were challenged to work together to make a range of 2d and 3d shapes in pairs and in small groups. The children worked well together and thought about the sides and edges when making their shapes.

The children did an amazing job in this year's production of Whoops a Daisy Angel. The children all learnt the songs and some of the year 1's had lines to learn! They were amazing and we were all so proud of them! They looked wonderful in their costumes!

The children loved their Christmas party day! In the morning they decorated the classroom and prepared the games they would play. In the afternoon they played lots of games, watched a special message from Santa and they enjoyed their party treats. They all received a special present too! It was a lovely day!

Today we all had a lovely time playing Christmas themed PE games. We played decorate the tree where we had to throw a bean bag onto the Christmas tree. The targets kept changing and we collected points for our accuracy. We then helped to pass the presents to Santa as fast as we could by passing over head or under legs. It was great fun!

Today the children marked this special occasion by learning why we do it each year. The children listened respectfully and then thought of people they knew or people in their families who they might think about during the silence. All the children made their own poppy and we wore them when we completed the two minutes silence while watching the scenes from all over the UK on the news.

This week the children have been using untuned instruments in music. They have had the opportunity to play lots of different instruments such as drums, tambourines, triangles and maracas. The children were good at thinking when to play and when not to play.

As a final part of the their art topic, the children visited Leeds Art Gallery. In the gallery we explored what you learn from a portrait. We looked for clues in the artwork and the children had fabulous detective skills. We created our own images to take back to school. The children all behaved wonderfully and they were a credit to their families and to the school.

This half term in PE we have started our dance module. The children were fabulous today and they were beginning to practise putting together held poses with a travel sequence. Some children were even able to include a spin into their routine. We looked at high and low freezes as well as different ways we could travel to the music.

This week the children have enjoyed three zoom sessions with Amanda from the Art Gallery in Leeds. They have been exploring the use of colour and looking at what feelings this may represent. They have also been looking at portraits and how a portrait may give us clues about that person. Tomorrow the children are visiting the Art Gallery to celebrate all their learning and experience the exhibit which focuses on differences.

This week the road safety team came in to help us think about how to stay safe around the roads. We thought about what we needed to do to stay safe in a car and we thought about the 'think, stop, look, listen' motto.

In science this half term we are learning all about how amazing our body is. First we checked we knew lots of the names of our body parts. We drew around each other and added labels with the different parts. It was great fun. Next we thought about what our five senses were and we took part in some mini experiments to test them! Many of the children already knew that their nose was the body part they used to smell. The children were given the challenge to create the smelliest sock they could using a range of ingredients. They had to smell the ingredients to find the smelliest ones to combine together to make the smelliest sock. A lot of the children knew we used our hands to touch but they were surprised to think about how we actually felt things. We talked about how our skin is designed to feel texture and temperature. We usually use our hands to touch so in this experiments we felt items in a feely bag so we could not see them. We used given words to try to describe them, before we found out what they were. The children knew that we tasted using our mouths but only a few had heard of our taste buds. They were surprised to learn that different parts of our tongue will taste the different flavours. The children closed their eyes and tried some sour, sweet and salty foods. They were all very brave and gave most of them a good go! We tried lemon, soya sauce, honey and olives. The children knew that they used their eyes to see but they all enjoyed testing their eye sight when we played ‘Kims Game’. The children had to look at the items on the tray and then try to name the missing item when one was taken away. Mrs Lofthouse did try to trick us when she took two items away! The children got to put their ears to the test when they were played a selection of very random sounds they needed to identify. We turned down all the lights and closed our eyes to help our ears work. The children heard birds singing, an egg frying, fingers scratching a blackboard and cats meowing. The children then voted for their favourite sound. Most children liked the cat meowing and the birds singing – not many liked the scratching sound!

It was lovey to have so many adults in this afternoon for our Elmer crafting. The children had a lovely time making elephant faces, Elmer names and Elmer collages. After the crafts, the children loved reading their own Elmer stories to their adults and friends. It was a lovely way to end the topic.

This week the children have been learning the story of Elmer. They used a text map and actions to retell the story. They will use the text map and actions to write their own Elmer story next week. Can your child tell you the story using their actions?

Our history topic this half term is history in living memory. In class we have a chest full of toys from the past. We have been learning how these toys work and we have loved playing with them. To help us learn about history, we asked grandparent volunteers to come and spend the morning with us. The children all wrote questions for the grandparents, to help them find out first hand, what life was like when their grandparents were younger. We were so lucky to have so many grandparents come into school and share their memories with us and answer the children's questions. After, we all completed a toy timeline together, trying to identify the oldest and youngest of the toys in the photographs. We would like to say a huge thank you to all our grandparents who came to help us on this morning!

Over the last few weeks the children have been exploring their new classroom environment. We have indoor and outdoor provision that the children can access at given times. They have loved looking in the areas and they have loved completed the challenges we have set them. The children all brought in their 'all about me bag' and it was lovely to hear them speaking confidently about what they had chosen to bring into us and to hear them explaining why they chose that.