Stanningley Primary School

On 28th June, year 1 and 2 went on their summer trip to Lotherton Hall. It was a lovely day! The children were a credit to the school with their behaviour, manners and questions. The children took part in a penguin workshop, learning all about the penguins that live at Lotherton. Then they had a guided tour around wildlife world - there was so much to do and see. After we all sat and had a lovely picnic in the grounds before having a little play on the playground before heading back to school! It was a fabulous day! Thank you to our parent helpers who came with us - without you trips like this would not be possible!

The children had some new arrivals this week. The children helped to settle the caterpillars into their new homes by adding food before helping to carefully move the caterpillars.

The children have been looking at numbers to 100. They have been looking at the value of the tens and ones number and have been making them using Dienes resources and we have been playing games to learn one more and one less than a given number.

We were so proud of the children in their sports day today! They were encouraging each other and they all tried so hard in their races!

The children had a great time visiting Pudsey Bear in Pudsey Park yesterday. The children got on the public bus to get the park. Then, the children went on a hunt to find him and they all had a photo together. After the applied all their geography learning to search for physical and human features within the park. They began to think about their science learning and looked for a variety of leaves to identify too. The children enjoyed a lovely picnic together and even had time for a little play on the park!

The children started learning about length in maths this week. The children enjoyed comparing the length of some of the objects in the classroom. They used the key vocabulary longer, shorter, taller in stem sentences when feeding back their findings. The children know that to get an accurate measure both objects must be at the same point. They applied their learning further and tried to compare their heights.

The children in year 1 are constantly looking at the weather and seasons, and they were excited to find that spring had arrived. They went for a walk to look to see what they could spot in our school grounds. The children then planted their own sunflowers and they are watching them grow. They will use them to learn about the different parts of the plant.

During healthy week, the children learnt about a healthy plate and the different food groups. The children learnt that to have a healthy diet, they needed to have a selection of foods from the different groups. Equipped with this knowledge, the children designed their own heathy snack and wrote a shopping list. They then made and ate their snack! They were delicious and lots of the children tried foods they would not normally eat. The children finished the DT learning by evaluating their snack and thinking about what they would and wouldn't change.

During heathy week, the children experienced LOTS of ways to keep our bodies healthy. The children worked with staff from Nuffield Hospital to learn about germs. They made their own germs from playdough and learned how to wash their hands properly using a UV light and gel.

The children have loved creating their own versions of the story 'Naughty Bus'. To help with their writing, the children drew their own text map using pen and watercolour. The results are wonderful and they are looking forward to using these to create their own Naughty Bus stories.

On World Book Day, the children all dressed up as their favourite characters The children looked amazing. They enjoyed sharing and reading stories as well as becoming authors for the day! The children wrote their own version of Brown Bear Brown Bear By Eric Carle.

The children all helped to raise money for Comic Relief by dressing in red. The children all paid £1 to come out of uniform and they looked great! The children learnt why we raise money and how Comic Relief helps people all over the world.

We had so many entries to the S Factor this year. Well done to all the children who performed their science experiments and explained the science behind them so well. A huge congratulations to our 3 winners Franco, Skyler and Iris. Iris will go through to the whole school final on Wednesday.

This week the children have been learning to ride their bikes. Danny from Cycle North brought his helmets, balance bikes and pedal bikes. The children had three days outside, but most of them learnt to ride! They should amazing perseverance even when the weather was challenging!

The children celebrated the end of this term's topic with a superhero day. The children all looked wonderful in their outfits and they even learnt a superhero dance! Unfortunately, because of the snowy weather our parent craft afternoon was not able to go ahead, however the children had a great time completing the challenges the next day.

This week the children will be writing their own comic strip stories in year 1. In preparation, the children made their own hero and villain! They really enjoying making these and they will use these in their work.

This week the children have been learning about teen numbers. They have been learning that the 1 in a teen number stands for 1 ten. They have made the numbers using counters and tens frames - always filling tens frame first to represent the 10!

This weekend was the great bird watch organised by the RSPB. The children all made a bird feeder to take home to help them take part. They used a pinecone with a string attached, then covered it in lard and bird seed. The children loved creating their own feeders to encourage the birds into their outdoor space.

The children were given a challenge to choose the best material to make a boat from. The children had cotton wool, tissue and plastic The children made their predictions first, deciding if a material would be absorbent or waterproof. The Children then tested the materials by pouring a little water onto each material. They observed what happened and found that the plastic was waterproof while the other materials were absorbent, they soaked up the water. The children decided plastic would be the best material to make a boat from. The children also noticed that the cotton wool was more absorbent than the tissue as some water leaked out of the tissue paper.

The children had a wonderful time at the Christmas party today. They all looked lovely in their party clothes. They voted for their favourite games and then played most of them! They enjoyed the chocolate game and pass the parcel before joining year 2 in the hall for some more games! We even had a special video message from a very special person who left some presents outside our door!

The children in year 1 and 2 put on an amazing performance of 'The Big Little Nativity' this week. They all looked wonderful in their outfits and they all worked really hard to remember their lines. We were so proud of them all! Well done!

The children have been learning about Atlases. They have used them to explore and learn the names of the 7 continents and 5 oceans. The children start each geography lesson by labelling their maps. The children have loved looking at the different types of maps in the atlases.

The children have been using their own text map to talk through their own instructions on how to catch a dragon. The have been using time openers and imperative verbs to make their instructions nice and bossy!

The children identified the different materials of the various objects and sorted them using sorting rings. The children worked together to decide we could cross the rings for the objects made of more than one material. The paintbrush was made from wood and metal and the scissors were made from metal and plastic.

After all the excitement of finding an egg in the classroom, it has now gone missing! The children went on a hunt for clues around school, using their map skills to add them to a map of the school grounds. The children found parts of the nest, egg shells, footprints and burnt paper. We are still not sure what happened to the egg but with the year 1 detectives on the case, we will soon solve the mystery!

This week was peace week. The week began with 'odd socks day' where the children all wore odd socks to celebrate how each of them are different. We linked this to the protected characteristics and thought about how even when people are different, they have the right to be treated equally. Year 1 thought about ways they could be a good friend. They thought about ways they could compliment each other. They all chose a friend and wrote a compliment for them. The children LOVED hearing their friends saying nice things about them!

The children loved hearing about why we remember on 11th November. The children talked about some people in their family who had experienced wars. The children who brought money into school were able to buy poppies, but then each child designed their own medal to help them remember why we mark this important occasion.

Today the children learnt which body part is used for each sense. The children carried out a simple test to explore each of their body parts and recorded their findings in different ways. Smell 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. Touch 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. Taste 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, honey and olives. Sight The children knew that they used their eyes to see but they all enjoyed testing their eye sight when we played ‘Kim’s 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. Hearing 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!

To celebrate the end of our Elmer topic, the children all dressed up in their colourful clothing, just like Elmer. We had a circle time where we thought about difference. The children were so mature in their thinking and made some very thoughtful comments. They all agreed it was a good thing to be different. In the afternoon we read our own finished Elmer stories with Early Years. Then we came back to complete a range of Elmer crafts. The children loved designing their name plates, their own milk bottle Elmers and creating their own colourful collages.

The children all identified the parts of their body featured in the song 'heads shoulders knees and toes'. The children then drew around a child and labelled all the body parts they knew. The children located the head, neck, arms, elbows, legs, knees, face, ears, eyes, hair, mouth and teeth on their drawing. We used our own bodies to identify exactly where the body part was on their drawing.

In maths, the children have been working hard to understand new vocabulary in year 1. They consolidated their learning by completing stem sentences comparing numbers. They used the terms less than, greater than and equals to and applied them to practical objects. They used the natural resources in the playground to complete the sentences and compare numbers.

The children have been enjoying using Elmer to help them with their art skills. They learnt the 3 primary colours were red, blue and yellow. They started to use ONLY these colours to decorate their own Elmer. We then looked at ways to shape paper. The children rolled the paper using their fingers, they coiled them around their pencils and then they practised folding the paper in different ways before adding them to their Elmer. The children LOVED this activity and many wanted to continue their skills at home.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this morning so successful. The children all enjoyed a delicious bun in the hall. It was lovely to see so many grown ups there to share this special time.

The children had a Zoom lesson with Sarah from Kirkstall Toy Museum. Sarah showed us some of her older toys – some were over 100 years old! We learnt older toys were less colourful and usually made from darker wood. We found out that in the past, children would have had less toys than we have today. They would have only had one so the toys were harder to master.

We were so lucky to have some very special visitors in school today. This morning, we some of our grandparents joined us to help us learn about the past. We all wrote questions to find out more about their childhood and what the past was like. We moved around the grandparents and they answered our questions, telling us all about their school life! We completed a timeline together then had the chance to play with some traditional toys from the past. Thank you to all the grandparents who gave up their time to be with us!

The children have loved exploring their new space. They have played inside and outside, exploring all their areas of provision.