Year 1 Willow Class Keeping Fit!
Today in Willow Class we managed to grab the only dry spell possible to get out on the fit trail. The children had great fun but also worked their bodies, took risks, worked together, took turns and shared equipment. Well done guys!
All children at Hazeldown were lucky enough to be treated to a classical music concert by two wonderful musicians from the Teignmouth Classical Music Festival. Alfie and Rebecca wowed us with their amazing musical talents and we experienced so many instruments being played live! Who knew a bassoon could make such a low and deep sound!? What an extra treat in the middle of World Book Week!
Don’t forget the Classical Music Festival is happening this weekend in Teignmouth this weekend, Alfie and Rebecca are performing a special concert on Saturday afternoon. Details can be found in the leaflet given out this week.
Willow class were fab at using their bodies to sway, twist, travel, and stretch in dance today. We used our imaginations and pretended to be leaves on a tree, being blown away in a storm. We choreographed our dances in small groups to atmospheric music that suggested different types of weather. We improved our dances by changing levels and directions. This involved lots of collaboration and compromise. Well done Willow class!
From learning about turns, directions and positional language in Mathematics to Victorian dunces hats in SOLE; our home learners are certainly keeping busy! Great to see some extra fun photos too of activities they are enjoying whilst at home. Thanks Year 1!
Over the last few weeks, children at Hazeldown have had access to resources and activities surrounding the Zones of Regulation. We understand the anxiety and worries surrounding our current strange times and also the possible returning to school. We want to help children better understand their feelings and emotions around these times.
Over the last week, we have been focusing on these ‘Zones’ within our Literacy and completing various tasks to help the children better understand these and talk about their emotions/feelings.
Some of the children at home have very kindly sent in some lovely pictures displaying the work they have been up to around this topic. Well done guys!
Some great Maths and SOLE learning here! We love seeing how our planning is transferred into learning at home. You are all doing so well, keep up the good work and keep sending us photos. Even if it’s not based around your learning, it might be some cool lego model or picture you have made, we would love to see what you are up to!
It’s so lovely to see some happy smiling faces enjoying their learning at home! What lovely tree boggarts River has made as part of our Enchanted Woodland learning journey. Well done to all of you that have had a go at this at home, keep up the good work in these tough times! Don’t forget to send your photos of any fab learning or any lockdown activities you are doing at home and we can add them to our blog.
What a wonderful day we’ve had at Paignton Zoo to kickstart our new learning journey ‘Paws, Claws and Whiskers’. The rain held off, the sun shone and lots of the animals were out and about too!
Here are some of our favourite pictures:
Maple class were so proud of their homework that they brought in this week, with good reason! It was fantastic! We had a wonderful time looking at each other’s superhero creations and work in their homework books. Well done guys! Here is a selection of some of the children’s work.
Willow and Maple class are really getting into our new Literacy story – “Traction Man”. They sequenced the story using pictures and were great at explaining their choices to each other and the rest of the class. If you want to watch a reading of the book at home, please find a YouTube link below.
We enjoyed a walk around the school grounds this afternoon on an Autumn hunt. We spotted a maple tree that was showing signs of Autumn and we began to draw our observations. 
What other signs of Autumn have you spotted?
This week’s ‘Special Week’ children tried their hands at painting in the style of local artist, from Totnes, Yvonne Coomber. They produced an amazing piece of work using watercolour paints, dribbling and layering paint on top of other paints and really thought about what flowers would look like outside, in a field. Not bad for 4 and 5 year olds!
Our children didn’t let the rain stop their learning and play today. Instead they made a rain catcher! They designed and created it with minimal support. “Let’s see how much rain we can get!” said Harriet. Do you think the rain can fill the tough spot?
We were learning all about capacity today and using the measures : Full, half full and empty to describe our containers. We played a great game to cement our learning.
We loved our visit from the RNLI, who told us all about their different flags and what to look for on the beach. Great listening Foundation! I wonder if you can remember what to do if you need help in the water?
The children in Reception loved their first PE session of the Summer term. They got changed well and enjoyed learning how to respond to the tambourine during the session. Well done guys!
The Foundation children were amazing today, playing their instruments and singing in front of Year 4. This performance was the culmination of our Friday music sessions with Kip Pratt and we were all very proud of the children and their wonderful music, performance skills and behaviour.
The children in Ash Class used numicon to see how many different ways they could make 11. What fantastic mathematicians!
Wow, what a day we’ve had celebrating books and reading. The children made a wonderful effort with their costumes and absolutely loved being read to and sharing books with Year 4. What a treat!
We had great fun dancing and playing musical instruments along with Kip this morning. Kip is a Primary Music Lecturer from Plymouth University who is very kindly dedicating the next few Friday mornings to visit us all in Foundation.
Don’t forget to buy your copy of the Herald Express today for the new 2018 class pictures!
Yay, great news! We have just had confirmation that our new Reception photographs will appear in the bumper section of the Herald Express on Wednesday 17th October. Don’t forget to buy a copy!
What a great start to the morning on our finger gym! Lots of finger strengthening going on, using the tweezers to rescue the bugs from our spider’s web.
We loved our afternoon playing cricket games with Mr Buzz! We practised our spatial awareness and aim with rolling balls. We also practised our quick changes of direction with a catch game.
The Foundation Stage children had a great PE session today exploring the large, indoor apparatus. Lots of stretching and balancing and weight taking. What animals like climbing and hanging up high like our Foundation children?
We had great fun in Foundation this morning learning our pirate song, playing our instruments and learning our pirate dance too .
This week we have been looking at repeating patterns, in nature, art and making our own. Can you make a repeating pattern?
We have been working on lots of fine motor control activities this week. Today we even went to the dough disco where we rolled and squished our play dough in different ways. This is a great stress reliever as well as being a great exercise for strengthening fingers and hands. Perfect for writing.
Wow, we are doing well in our phonics lessons. Today we learnt the letter ‘g’. We played with ‘goo’ and made glasses. Look how fabulous we look!
Can you think of any words which begin with ‘g’?
Everyone in Reception enjoyed the special occasion today of Bonnie and Edward Bear’s wedding! It was a beautiful ceremony and we wish Bonnie and Edward Bear much happiness for the future. All the guests were invited to a wonderful reception afterwards where they were given a piece of special ‘wedding bear’ cake (biscuit) and lots of dancing took place!
Goldilocks came to visit us today. We asked some questions about why she let herself in to the bears’ house and she said she had been wrong to do that. We gave her some advice and suggested her mummy buy her some porridge so she doesn’t have to eat anyone else’s.
Lots of children were very excited about acting out the Goldilocks story after her visit.
Wow! We have worked so hard on our new role play area. We had lots of patients today. They had injections, plasters and bandages. Some people wrote lists of the equipment we need to get. Our next job is to find a bed to add to the ward!
Were you you a doctor or nurse in the hospital today?
Check out these lovely pinwheels! We have been writing our instrunctions for a couple of days now on how to make a pinwheel and finally, this afternoon we were able to make them. Aren’t they fantastic?
We were adding and subtracting today, in Mrs Simister’s Store. Children were having to find different combinations of coins to pay with, as a well as working out what change they were owed.
Congratulations to all contestants in the Hazeldown’s got talent auditions. What a fabulous afternoon!
Well done to Arley, Erin and Lila who will be I’m the final next week at the school fair, Good luck!
Year 1 had a marvellous day on Dartmoor walking from Hay Tor, across the moor, to Smallacombe Rocks. The day was full of plant and animal spotting, sweating and enjoying being outdoors in the sunshine! Dartmoor smiled on us today. Thank you for all adult helpers and to the children for digging deep when they were tired and making it back to the coach in 1 piece!
Today we ordered numbers from smallest to biggest. This might sound easy but the learning really happened when we asked the children to explain how they knew. As you can see, these young mathematicians have described their thinking wonderfully.
We have been working really hard in our Phonics lessons, sound talking a variety of real and nonsense words. We have been spotting different sounds in books, playing sound talking games and reminding ourselves of all the different sounds we have learnt.
Next week, the Year 1 children will be completing the national Phonics Screening Test. They will be asked to read 40 words, some real some nonsense. They are used to this format as we regularly practise.
Don’t forget the Phonics pack we sent to everyone back in March if you want to check your children can say each sound and look at our website for useful tips.
We have spent the last couple of weeks learning about how leaflets persuade people to visit a place. We have written our own leaflets promoting the wonders of Teignmouth. We have used powerful verbs and adjectives to great effect.
All the children have worked really hard and we are incredibly proud of them.
We have been classifying animals in SOLE today ahead of our Dartmoor trip on Friday. We think we will see some mammals, some birds and maybe some reptiles. The children thought carefully about each category and had several discussions about which one certain animals slot in to. They were interested to learn that whales are mammals as they give birth to live young.
Willow class thoroughly enjoyed their football workshop today, as part of our sports week. All children put in 100% effort and learnt some great new skills. What a wonderful way to spend a Friday afternoon! A massive thank you to Exeter City Football Club tutors.
We had great fun today learning how to fire arrows at a target. Great fun and some great skills learnt!
We took to writing on the tables to describe our trolls body parts, today. See if you can spot some disgusting, snot filled descriptions!
We made our very own setting and puppets of characters from The 3 Billy Goats Gruff story. They helped us re tell the story in our own words. Great fun!
Halves, quarters, eighths and even sixteenths of shapes were investigated today, during our maths session. Some children even discovered equivalent fractions! Excellent stuff Willow Class!
We have been counting in 2s starting at 2 but today we asked the question – Do you have to start at 2?
We decided that the answer is NO! You can count in steps of 2 from any number. Some of us started at 3, some started at 100, some started at 700. We worked out that to count in 2s, you count every other number.
Some children even managed to count in steps of 200!
It was excitement all round today as the children and adults in Willow and Maple class were put into planet teams and sent on a Space scavenger hunt. The task – to find as many information cards hidden in the two classrooms and answer questions relating to them.
We searched high and low, in front of and behind, over and under and between in our quest to find the cards. We also learnt a lot of new facts along the way. For example, Saturn is not the only planet with rings. Why not ask your children if they can name any of the others?
This afternoon in Willow class we had a visitor come in to teach us some gymnastics. Today we learnt different balances which included the T balance, V sit and balancing on our tummies. We all worked really hard and kept trying until we could hold our balance. 
We have been enjoying learning about Space so far this week. We have been learning about the moon landing in 1969. We watched actual footage of Neil Armstrong’s momentous moon walk and heard the famous words “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”
We also started to discuss the concept of zero gravity and watched video clips from an International Space Station. Why not ask your child about sleeping and washing hair in space?
Today in Willow class we pretended to be the sun and the Earth to help us learn why we get the different seasons each year. When we were the sun we stayed still and our friend orbited around us slowly just like the Earth would do in space. We found out that it takes the Earth 1 year to orbit the sun and that the tilt of the Earth is the reason why we get autumn, winter, summer and spring. 
