Powerdown Day and end of the week .....

We had a great day on friday with no electricity and the children loved the little tealights that we used to see what we were doing! That morning we designed our own flower garden for one of the veg trugs, as part of a competition. We read stories about gardens: one about a little boy's garden, set in this country and one about a little Indian girl's garden. We looked at pictures of plants and looked at real flowers, then set about our own designs in a variety of ways. The results were delightful and so varied - Mr Wainwright will have a very hard job to judge the winning garden! Well done to ALL of Class 2 for being so creative!

We have also been learning about different explorers in Class 2. This week we compared the times of Christopher Columbus to those of Neil Armstrong. The children were fascinated to know that when computers were first invented, they took up a whole room!!!!

Some children also used numicon and puzzles in their maths work, other children did some different Thinking Things Through  maths activities, for example finding out how old a grandma was from a series of clues, and finding all the possible ways of sharing 20 baby birds between 3 nests - but they could only use even numbers! Very tricky, but well tried, that group.

Our Nativity Play is also coming along and it's 26 Sleeps till Christmas!

Friendship Week

Last week the children enjoyed a variety of activities to do with Friendship.
At the end of the week we watched a short film about a chameleon who was different to the others and from this film, we generated lots of 'feeling' words which we used in our literacy / art activities.
The children used some great language to describe how the chameleon felt at different times in the film: dejected, glum, miserable, nervous, joyful,  ..... We also thought about places a red chameleon could hide and the children came up with some great ideas!

We have also been building some flying saucers and rockets in Class 2 (to rescue Little Wolf  from the moon!) and the children are currently making some aliens to fly the space craft. The children have as ever done a great job with these!

The build up to Christmas has always been my favourite time of year at school and we are beginning work on our Christmas Play now, which this year is called 'Mary's Knitting'. Lots of singing, acting, dancing and dressing up to come!!

Enjoy a few photos below to demonstrate the children's work:

'The red chameleon is hiding in the red bit of the rainbow.'

'The red chameleon is hiding in the rose garden at sunset!'

'The red chameleon is hiding in the tree with the autumn leaves.'

Speaking and listening - retelling the story of QPootle5 with stick puppets.

Chelmsford Cathedral

On Tuesday morning Class 2 and the year 2s from Class 3 went to Chelmsford Cathedral for an Advent and Christmas workshop. We had a great time learning about the Christmas story and then dressing up and acting it out. It was an excellent introduction to the Nativity and will help the children understand their roles when we come to perform our version in December. Thank you to Molly's parents for your help on our trip.

Space

A shorter week but we still managed to pack in lots of learning. We started our new theme of 'Space' with a visit from the space dome and writing stories about a boy who built a rocket and went to the moon. While he was there he made friends with an alien who had crashed landed his spaceship. I was very impressed with the children's efforts, some using capital letters, full stops, finger spaces and checking their writing made sense. In maths we have been working on Subtraction and this will continue through next week. In RE we were thinking about a 'big' question 'What is heaven like?' The children enjoyed thinking about this as it was a question they couldn't get wrong and their teachers didn't know the answer! They had some very interesting ideas, expressed through drawings and discussion. In Science year 1 started their topic on materials and year 2 were investigating which materials were good at conducting electricity.

Natalie's zip

A double ended pencil

Hollie and Florence making good use of wet play time

Next week we have Gym on Monday and our visit to Chelmsford Cathedral on Tuesday. Don't forget Half Term homework is due in on Monday, I am looking forward to seeing your creations.

Half Term

Hope you are all enjoying a restful half term break. We rounded off this half term with our final rugby session ...

... a visit from Mr Rob Malcolm and his apple press...

... and a Harvest assembly (see Awe & Wonder blog). We also had a 'Big Maths' test and learning conferences. - Another busy week!

Next week we will be doing the sponsored spell on Wednesday and the Space Dome comes to school on Thursday. I shall be starting 'Key Stage One Choir' on Tuesday lunchtimes, so if you enjoy singing please come and join me. 

P.E. will be Gym on Mondays and Games/Dance on Thursdays. The children will need shorts and t-shirt for Gym, long hair tied back and jewellery removed.

Enjoy the rest of the holiday, see you Tuesday!

Week ending 16th October

We've looked at fruit and vegetables in the context of the Seasons in Science and we've used seasonal fruits to cook with and help out Country Mouse, and on friday we looked at fruit and vegetables as a material to use for a work of art! We found out about the artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo used  fruit and vegetables to make portraits of people! This was a new and exciting and funny concept for the children and they loved designing and then making their own faces or people from fruit and vegetables. They are now in the process of recreating their faces in pastels!

Below are photos of just a few examples. I can honestly say they were all fantastic!

Also by popular request, here is the recipe for Gruffalo Crumble:

You will need:
5 bananas
350g berries (fresh or frozen)
250g plain digestive biscuit crumbs
140g brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
140g melted butter.

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F
2. Slice bananas thickly.
3. Stir butter, brown sugar, cinnamon into buiscuits (crushed)
     until well coated.
4. Put bananas and berries of your choice into a shallow dish and top with the crumb mixture.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes until it starts to brown.
6. Stand for 10 minutes and serve with icecream.