Stanningley Primary School

In science our new topic is plants. We are beginning to think about what a plant needs to grow. We all learnt how to plant a seed, then went on to plant our own seed and bulb so we can watch them grow.

At Stanningely Primary, we celebrated World Book Day with a whole week of fun activities. The week began with two performance poets working with the children on our class text 'The Naughty Bus'. We then continued through the week with a book swap coffee morning, a school disco and of course - dressing up on World Book Day! It was great fun. We brought in our favourite books to share with our friends and took part in lots of book themed activities.

Year 1 celebrated all the learning from this half term by having a Superhero Day! The children looked amazing dressed up as their favourite superheroes. The day began with a class assembly where year 1 showed the school and grown ups all the learning they have done over the last 6 weeks. Then all the grown ups were invited back to the classroom to share in some craft activities. After, the children loved testing their superpowers in a tough circuit session in PE. The children listened amazingly well and remembered everything they needed to do at each station! They worked hard and enjoyed the challenges. Finally, the children designed and made their own superhero shields and loved playing outside with them!

In year 1 we were lucky enough to have a visit from the bikability team. Danny helped showed us the skills needed to ride a bike. We loved being out in the playground practising the skills we had learnt.

Our science topic this half term is materials. We have been looking at the properties of different materials and sorting them out according to criteria. Mrs Hayward set us a challenge to build a boat. So we needed to sort through the materials available to see what had the properties we needed. We decided the materials needed to be waterproof and not absorbent. We loved making and testing our boats to see if they could sink or float! We made it a fair test by timing the boats in the water. If they floated after 1 minute we said they were a success!

As part of our Superhero topic, we have been looking at the book Supertato. We really enjoyed making our own heroes and villains from vegetables and a selection of craft materials.

As part of our science learning on materials, we experimented by building our own houses made of twigs, straw and bricks! Mrs Hayward was the 'Big Bad Wolf' with her hairdryer and she tried to blow down the houses! We agreed that the dryer must be a pencils length away from the houses and that it was only allowed to blow for one minute (Carmen used a timer to make sure we were accurate!). This made sure it was a fair test.

We had a lovely party day to celebrate Christmas. The children came to school dressed in party clothes and all were very generous with the food they brought o share. We played games in the classroom, had more games with year 2 in the hall then came back for some food and drinks. It was a lovely day and there were lots of laughs and giggles!

Year 1 were lucky enough to have a visit from a very special guest on party day. He delivered a present for each of the children and told us we needed to be in bed on time and leave him a drink and snack on Christmas Eve!!

As part of our RE learning about celebrations, year 1 went on a visit to St Thomas' Church. The children behaved brilliantly while they found out about different celebrations that took place in the church. They learnt about celebrations such as Advent, Easter, weddings, funerals and Christingles! Each child also had a chance to play the church organ which was extremely loud!

To celebrate Children In Need we were so lucky to have a very special visit from Pudsey Bear!!! He came into assembly to draw the raffle and 2 of our class were lucky enough to win their very own Pudey Bears! Well done toe Robin and Finley! Afterwards, the children all had the opportunity to meet and have a photo with Pudsey!

This half term we are learning all about different materials and their properties. We began by looking at different objects and the material they were made out of. We went on a material hunt around the classroom, we tried to spot metal, wood, plastic, glass and rock. As we thought of adjectives for the materials we labelled them.

We are lucky enough to have a weekly music lesson with Mrs Rivers every Thursday morning! We love it as it is always so much fun. This half term we are learning about pitch. We are using tuned instruments and we are trying hard to find our singing voices.

In science we are constantly learning about the seasons and how things change as they change. Class one went on an autumn walk around the school grounds and to the local park to look at what signs of Autumn we could find. The children loved collecting leaves and sticks as we walked around. When we got back into the classroom we discussed other changes such as the shorter days and the darker evenings.

To celebrate the end of our black history learning on Elmer, all the children in year 1 came dressed in their most colourful outfits! They looked amazing! We invited all our grown ups to come and share in an afternoon of art and crafts. It was a great afternoon and it was very glittery!!

A crucial part of year 1 maths, is mastering the part part whole model. This week, the children have been introduced to it and have managed to apply it in many ways. We have looked at the number in each of the parts and worked out that if we add these together, we find our whole. We then looked at models with missing numbers and tried to use our knowledge of the model to work them out.

As part of our history learning, we have invited some grandparents to come and visit us. We wrote a list of questions to ask Freddie's grandma and we loved listening to her answers.

As part of our art skills, this week we learnt how to coil paper. We used this skill to make our own name designs.

As part of our body topic, the children have been exploring their senses. We learnt about our 5 senses and which body parts they belong to. Then we got to work testing them. First we played Kims game to test our sight and see if we could spot the missing objects. Next we had a listening quiz where we tried to identify the sound, then we all voted for our favourite. After that the children had a range of objects they touched and they tried to match adjectives to them to test their sense of touch. Then we tested our taste buds by trying a range of sweet, salty and sour ingredients - the children loved the marshmallows but were not too keen on the lemon juice! Finally, the children used their sense of smell to make the smelliest sock they could. Mrs Barnett had the unlucky job of judging the smelliest sock!!

To begin our history topic this term, 'life in the past for our family members', we have been looking at old fashioned artifacts. The children really enjoyed learning about objects from the past and they loved handling them and trying some of them out for themselves. We are looking forward to some of our grandparents coming in to talk to us about their experiences.

To help build our writing muscles, we do dough disco before we write. This warms up our hands and gets us ready to write. We enjoy watching the videos online and trying to copy all the moves.

As part of our work around the story of Elmer, the children enjoyed mixing different colour paints together to make new colours. The children really enjoyed experimenting with the colours and using their new art sketch books.

In science we are learning all about our bodies. This week we looked at our skeletons, we learnt how it keeps us strong and helps us move. We learnt the names of our ribs, skull and hips. The children enjoyed making their own skeletons using art straws.

The children have been amazing since coming back after the holidays. They are adapting well to their new surroundings and their new routines. They have loved playing in the different areas of provision and they have loved their lessons. We have been making numbers using the different resources from the maths area, we have been labelling our bodies by drawing around each other, we have been sorting objects and we have also had our first music lesson as year 1 with Mrs Rivers. So much packed in and it's only been 2 weeks!!