Five great senses...let us begin!

Welcome to this week’s blog.

The children have made a great start to their learning in Year 1 and we know that we can certainly challenge these children this year with the curriculum. Mmm...might have go on a shopping spree to buy lots more GREEN clothes!!! (Ask your child what it means when one of us wears green!!)

Domestics

Thank you to all the children who are remembering to put their diaries in the box as they come into school each morning. As they are very grown up Year 1’s this year, they are ready to be more independent, particularly with their organisational skills. We have a little rhyme to help us remember where things go in our room – diary, water, snack and BAG. Some of the children have been singing this to the tune of Frere Jacques to help them remember. Give it a try and see if we can get 100% of the children remembering!

This Friday is a NON UNIFORM DAY. For this, we ask the children to bring in a donation for our Harvest Festival. The donations are very gratefully received by St Joseph’s Welfare Centre and are distributed to those more needy than ourselves. Could we request that donations are either tins or packets for distribution. Many thanks in anticipation of your support.
Our Harvest Festival Mass is on Tuesday 30th October at 9.10am in the school hall. Parents are most welcome to join us, but please remember space is at a premium in the hall.

PE

Each week for this half term, the children are following a Multi-skills programme, which a number of older children in the school have had in the past. They are thoroughly enjoying it, but getting changed just can’t happen quickly enough for them – definitely a case of more haste , less speed I think! So a plea...try to spend just a couple of minutes over the weekend practising fastening buttons and turning jumpers back from inside out. We will still help the children with ties and top buttons, but why not get your child to have a go at doing their tie this year? It was a challenge for both my daughters, but after practice, they do get there eventually – honest!

Staff

This week, Mrs Walker is going on holiday!! Well, not exactly! She is accompanying our Year 6 children on their residential to the Conway Centre. You will be missed by us all Mrs Walker and come back without too many bruises!! On Thursday, I shall be on a course, so the class will be taken by a supply teacher. Of course Miss Knight will still be here, so any messages may be passed on through her on this day.

So, what are we learning this week?

Literacy

We will be continuing with the second week of Stories with a Familiar setting, but this week sees our chance to be actors!

The children have been making bear masks to help with their retelling of the story and they will be completed this week. They will given pride of place on a display in the Key Stage 1 area, complete with writing about the story. We’ll let you know when it’s up, so you can pop in and see their work.

This week, the children will be given props, costumes, a digital camera and computers to help make up their own story about when they, or a made up character, couldn’t sleep. I can’t wait!
By the end of week, the children:

MUST be able to retell stories, ordering events using story language
SHOULD be able to explore familiar themes and characters through improvisation and role-play
COULD be able to create short simple texts on paper and on screen that combine words with images

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/english/storyplant.shtml grow your very own story from the story plant

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/learn_y4/main.asp?lesson_path=year_4/writing_stories/&lesson_file=lesson.swf&language=eng this will be useful for yourselves as well as some great sequencing activities for beginnings, middles and ends of stories.

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/cap_letters_stops/eng/Introduction/default.htm how to use capital letters and full stops. This has some lovely activities to help click and drag them to the correct place.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/english/penguinsonice.shtml Can you make the penguins take a bow? Remember to ask your child to choose the right piece of punctuation for the end of the sentence. Can they sing you the penguin song??

Numeracy

This week we will be focussing on addition. The children have remembered the rhyme taught last year of:

Count, Count, Together, COUNT.

This year, we move on to being able to recognise how these sums can be written down and making some of our own up. The children will be using the = and + symbols and learning lots of different words which mean the same as addition.

How many of these does your child already know:

+, add, more, plus make, sum, total altogether score double, near double one more, two more... ten more how many more to make...? how many more is... than...? how much more is...?
What is the total of...?

By the end of the week, the children:

MUST be able to able to add 1 more to a given number to 20.

SHOULD be able to recognise that addition can be done in any order.

COULD be able to add 3 numbers by putting the largest number first.

http://www.ictgames.com/funny_fingers_v2.html visual aid to help add numbers to 10
http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/add/add.html drag the number to the correct place on the board to make the number sentence correct
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/mw/swfs/rockhopper_grade2.html get the frog to jump across the rocks which total the number on the large rock. (It makes sense when you see it!)
http://www.ictgames.com/safecracker.html turn the safe numbers to make an addition sum which opens the safe

Challenge

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/numbertime/games/dartboard.shtml use this site to practice DOUBLING the numbers on the dartboard. You can double a number, by adding it to itself – so double 5 is the same as 5 + 5.
http://www.mathsonline.co.uk/nonmembers/gamesroom/bugs/bugrace3.html ooh I loved this one! Type 1 as the low number and 10 as the highest number to practise adding numbers to 20.

Science

We had great fun last week, learning about the different parts of the body and labelling them. The children showed great scissor skills in cutting them out, which will help to develop their handwriting skills too.
We began to learn a song to help us remember the senses and we will learn a new verse each week to help us. It goes something like this...(to the tune of Frere Jacques)

Ears, eyes, nose x2
Tongue and skin x 2
Five great senses x 2
Let us begin x 2
Ears for hearing …
Catch the sound
Listen carefully
Sounds all around
Eyes for seeing
When it’s light
Looking carefully
Colours all around
Nose for smelling
Good or bad?
Smelling carefully
Scents all around
Tongue for tasting
Sweet or sour?
Tasting carefully
Flavours all around
Skin for feeling
Hot or cold?
Feeling carefully
Textures all around

This week, we move onto being able to identify which sense we are using at any one time. We are encouraging the children to use the name of the SENSE they are using and not the part of the body, so they need to be able to say the can SMELL the toast burning in the staffroom at breaktime! (Ooo may have just given away the extent of my culinary expertise there!!)

BY the end of the week, the children:

MUST be able to identify the parts of the body related to the senses
SHOULD be able to name the 5 senses
COULD be able to say which sense they have used in relation to a task

http://www.firstschoolyears.com/science/ourselves/ourselves.htm lots of ideas and resources for you to print at home to support our topic of Ourselves.

The links from last week will help support your child in this area of learning this week.

Here I Am

This week we move on to the Relate part of our topic, and the children will learn to appreciate that our senses are a gift from God. We will be looking at David’s song of praise and writing our own litany of thanks to god for our senses. During our assemblies this week, we will also be learning a song which thanks God for ‘making me me!)

Dear God,
You know all about me.
You know when I am running round,
You know when I am sitting still.
You know when I am sleeping,
You know when I am waking.
You know when I am talking,
You know when I am listening.
Great and wonderful Creator God,
I thank you and I praise you
for creating wonderful me!

Homework

You will have received your child’s first set of homework this week. I have had some very positive feedback so far and the children have loved doing it. We ask that homework is signed by a parent each week and also, if there have been any issues with the completion of the work, that you write a short comment. This helps us tremendously in school, and also help us to ensure that your child’s homework both suitably supports and challenges them.

Here’s to a good week!
Year 1 team xx