Year R
Summer Term
All about owls
Over the last few weeks, we have been learning about owls. We had lots of 'wonderings' that we wanted to find the answers to, and we were lucky to be able to ask our questions to an expert on our school trip to the Hawk Conservancy.
At the Hawk Conservancy, we took part in an owl workshop where we got to feel an owl feather and meet some of the owls who live there. Did you know owls fly silently?
We watched the Birds of Africa show. During the show, different birds flew around the arena. Some of them flew so low they almost touched our heads!
We also had lots of time to visit all the birds at the Hawk Conservancy. The biggest owl was the Eurasian Eagle owl and the smallest was the burrowing owl. We even met a friendly robin!
Did you know an owl swallows its food whole, in one gulp without chewing it? Then they cough up a pellet which is made of all the bits their body doesn’t need. In school, the adults pulled apart some owl pellets to see what was inside. We discovered that the owl (Captain Bigglesworth) had been eating chicks and squirrels!
Orienteering
Over the last few weeks, the children have enjoyed completing several orienteering courses in our garden area. They have learnt to read a map to help them find the things we have hidden. They have shown great teamwork skills – helping each other if they are stuck but also not telling people where things are hidden. We plan to set up more courses after the half term break.
Under the Sea Art
This half term we have been practising our skills of observational drawing, colour mixing, cutting and collage to create our own under the sea pictures.
First, we experimented with mixing primary colours to discover how to create the perfect ‘sea’ colour.
We agreed we needed to mix blue, yellow and white. Then we painted the background to our picture.
While these were drying, we used our observational drawing skills to draw different sea creatures that we wanted to have in our pictures. We needed to look carefully at the image we were copying and think about the size and position of different body parts.
After that, we carefully coloured them in. We have been working on colouring in one direction, staying in the lines and not leaving white spaces.
Next, we cut out each of our sea creatures and stuck them onto our sea background. We have spent lots of time practising using scissors to cut around tricky shapes and we are getting really good at it!
Finally, we used tissue paper to collage seaweed and stones on to our pictures.
Spring Term
Two weeks ago, ten eggs arrived in an incubator. We learnt that the incubator keeps the eggs warm when the mummy hen cannot sit on them. A few days later, the eggs started to crack and seven chicks hatched! We were lucky enough to see one chick hatch out of its egg.
When they were a few days old, they came to visit us in Class 1 and 2. We were all so excited because we were able to hold them or stroke them. We had to sit very still and by very quiet so we didn't frighten them. The chicks enjoyed walking around and flapping their wings.
We have been learning about the Polar lands. We had great fun finding out facts about penguins and polar bears. We learnt that Penguins live in Antarctica and Polar Bears live in the Arctic. They are never together and this only happens in stories.
We worked in groups to create some stories based around this picture and finding some footprints in the snow.
We created a story map to help us learn our stories.
We wrote our stories out and practised reading these to perform to Year 6 in our readers theatre.
During our art lesson we drew a polar bear step by step. We had to think about the size of the polar bear and the shapes that we needed to use. Once we had drawn the polar bears, we used different materials to collage them.
Chinese New Year
We started our topic by boarding a plane and flying to a mystery country. After lots of thinking and discussion we agreed we were in China. We learnt about lots of the traditions followed when celebrating New Year in China and talked about what was the same and what was different to how we had celebrated New Year.
Then we wrote to Mrs Wyeth to ask if we could have our own Chinese New Year celebration … and she said yes! So we got busy preparing. First, we cleaned and tidied the classroom to get rid of any bad luck. Then we decorated the classroom with red lanterns and bunting that we had made. Red is a very lucky colour in China. We also made red envelopes and wrote ‘Happy New Year’ in Chinese writing. On New Year’s Day, children wake up to find red envelopes filled with shiny coins and sweets. We were very lucky that Mrs Bond came in and helped us to make dumplings for our New Year feast. After our feast, we performed a dragon dance under an enormous dragon. It was such a great way to end our topic!
Space – The Way Back Home
We have been reading a story called ‘The Way Back Home’ and learning all about space. In our story, a boy gets stuck on the moon when his aeroplane runs out of petrol. We used our Monkey learning power (creativity) to think of lots of different ways to help him solve his problem.
When we read the next few pages, we discovered the boy met a martian who was also stuck on the moon. We role-played what they might say to each other when they shook hands. Here are some of our ideas …
We also did some observational drawings of the martian. We had to look closely at the shapes and colours we needed.
We have also been learning about the moon. We started by wondering and generating questions. Then we used books and the internet to try to find the answers to our questions. Next week we are going to make factsheets to share with a grown up at home.
Finally, we have been doing lots of space-themed art work:
Autumn Term
Ish
We have been reading the story Ish.
Ish is a story about a boy named Ramon who loved to draw, and he would draw wherever he went. One day when he was drawing, his older brother came into the room and laughed at his drawing. This made Ramon very angry, and he crumpled up all his pictures. He gave up drawing because he just felt that his drawings weren’t perfect. His sister took from him a crumpled drawing and ran away with it. Ramon chases her and discovers that she has been putting up his drawings in her room. His sister shared her favourite picture, and it was one of the flowers in a vase. They said that it looked vase-ish. This gave Ramon the confidence to draw again. He just drew an ish picture each time.
The children enjoyed discussing this story. We spoke about feelings and if it was kind what his brother said. We thought about times when we may have been feeling like Ramon and how we could solve it. So, we thought it would be nice to do our own versions of vase-ish drawings. We had some flowers in a vase, and we created an observational drawing of what we could see. We particularly focused on the shapes and colours.
Exploring Autumn
We went on a walk around the school grounds, to talk about the season change. We looked for lots of changes such as the leaves falling, berries and the leaves changing colours.
During art we created some leaf rubbings with the leaves that we collected. We thought carefully about the colours that we would use. These matched the colours that we saw on our walk.
We also practised our fine motor skills and used scissors to cut out some leaves so we could put up a tree display in our classrooms.
Little Red Hen
It all began with the arrival of a mystery bag … the children worked together as detectives to work out that all the things in the bag belonged to the story of the Little Red Hen.
We listened to the story lots of times and drew our own story map. Then the children enjoyed using the puppets to retell the story with their friends.
A few days later, we received a very important letter …
But we had a problem – we wanted to help the Little Red Hen but we didn’t know how to make bread. Again, the children did some great detective work and found out the ingredients we needed and how to use them to make bread. We wrote a letter to tell the Little Red Hen we could help make some bread and Mrs Parry and Mrs Mead bought the ingredients we needed. Finally, we were ready to work together to make bread. We made a roll for each of us and some extra rolls to send to the Little Red Hen. It was delicious!
After we had made our bread for the Little Red Hen, we were interested in what other breads from around the world looked and tasted like. We tried baguette from France, sour dough from Egypt, Bagel from America, Flatbread from Greece and Tortilla Wraps from Mexico. We had a split on our favourite bread with the baguette and bagel coming out on top. 
Settling In - September 2024
The new Year R children have settled in really well and have spent their first few days at school exploring the resources in their classrooms and outdoors. They have had so much fun!
