Pond Dipping!
In Year 1 this week, we have taken in turns to take a trip down to our new pond. It is full of life and we Mae sure to take advantage of this and research all of the tiny creatures we could find.
We had fun identifying them and watching them all swim around in our own mini tubs.
Take a look!
Maples have been very in school this week.
In Literacy they have been working hard on adding conjunctions to sentences to up-level them. They have also been looking at sentences that have no spaces in them, the children have had to identify where the words start and end to make the sentence make sense – this has made them realise how important finger spaces are! We have also started looking at verbs and nouns and how to identify them in a sentence.
We have been working hard on reading this week as well, we have looked at reading comprehensions about The Wimbledon Tennis Tournament, The Gingerbread Man and The Rainforest.
Every morning the children have been practising their handwriting, they have been really concentrating on their letter formation.
In maths they have been focussing on bar models and learning our number bonds to 20. They have also been identifying the variety of number sentences that go with each bar model! Some have been rather challenging! They have been using number lines and 100 squares to help them.
Then of course we also leave time for a little bit of fun! Collecting Crickets is still a favourite pass time but this week paper aeroplanes have also been a firm favourite.
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!
The Maple children in school have been working really hard. Today, we spent time learning like Victorian school children. We did our 3 Rs, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. We practised our neatest handwriting on blackboards using chalk, we read a book together and we even practised chanting our 2 and 5 times tables. Mrs Maguire did have to become quite strict at times and was checking that the children were clean and hygienic, just like Victorian teachers would have done.
We also had fun outside working out how to do whole, half and quarter turns. We drew our own chalk circles and drew lines to quarter them. This really helped. We also discovered that if you do a whole turn, you always end up facing the same way you started. When we started off facing the wall on the lower playground and then did half a turn, we ended up facing the sea, a much nicer view. We hope you are having as much fun with your learning at home.
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!
We have had a great first week back in school in Maple class and we are leaving today with big smiles on our faces. We are all in GREEN ZONE because it is the weekend!!
We made posters to show the different emotions of each zone, a fabulous hay den was built at break time and lunch time on the field and then we ended the day with a bit of rainbow colouring.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Our little Maples have settled back into school really well and have been working really hard as well as having fun.
They have been trying really hard with learning how to cut shapes into halves and quarters as well as how to share in quarters as well. Sometimes they have had to find the whole and other times they have to find a quarter.
They have also been leanring to use vocabulary such as less than, more than and exactly. Here is one of the questions we had a go at.
My little Maples have also been working really hard at recognising their feelings, learning about the Zones of Regulation. We have been identifying our feelings in each zone and thinking about examples of when we have been in those zones. Then we have talked about how to get ourselves back into the green zone. They have come up with some excellent examples.
The children who have been in school did the Maths quartering quiz today. To help us understand quartering, we practised folding a shape in half then in half again to make a quarter. We challenged ourselves to quarter the shapes in different ways.
Did you know that when you quarter a square, each quarter can be either squares or triangles. Why don’t you practise at home.
We have set our children the challenge of making mini woodlands in a tray using twigs, sand, flowers and anything they find from their gardens or from woodland walks. Look at some of the wonderful pictures we have already been sent.
Noah has been doing leaf rubbings of oak leaves.
Lucas has been taking inspiration from the artist, Andy Goldsworthy, and has used pebbles and seaweed from the beach and fir cones to create his artwork.
Don’t forget to send us your photos. We love seeing what you have all been up to.
Our children have been busy using their senses to explore their surroundings to help them write setting descriptions. We have been focusing on using adjectives to add interest. As always, we are so impressed with the work the children have been doing and wanted to share some. Well done Maple Class and keep up the good work!
Our children have certainly been keeping busy and showing amazing resilience. Just look at these pictures. Elliot has learnt how to ride his bike without stabilisers, Florence spent ages completing her Lego model and Isabel has been helping build a castle in the back garden. We are very impressed.
Our Learning Journey, ‘Enchanted Woodlands’, has inspired many of our children to get creative with leaves, flowers and twigs. Here is a selection of some of the crowns children have made.
Can you spot the child wearing his woodland crown in this next photo? You’ll have to look carefully, he’s very well camouflaged!
We have also loved looking at other work the children have been doing at home on the same topic. Look at this poster all about an apple tree. There is so much information on it. Well done!
Once again, you all continue to impress us so much with the level of work you are producing at home. We wanted to share some of the Big Writes our Year One children have been doing. They were re-telling the well-known traditional tale, Jack and the Beanstalk. Look out for the adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions they are using.
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!
Down in Year 1, it has been great to see everyone’s Home Learning and all the different unique ways the children have decided to present their work. From pictures to posters, Pic collages to 3D models they’ve all been amazing.
This week we are going to take a closer look at 2 examples of how you could present your work.
Welcome to the Hazeldown News!
The weather may have changed since the lovely sunshine we had last week but we wanted to share with everyone all the wonderful, sunny photos that have been sent to us by our Year 1 children. We continue to be so proud of all your efforts in doing school work and of how you are keeping busy.
We miss you all very much.
We are all so impressed. This photo was sent to us by a child in Maple Class and all this wonderful work spread out across the table shows what he has achieved in one day. Wow! His brother has done the same too and they have let us know how much they are enjoying all their learning. This is what we love to hear.
Our Learning journey, Enchanted Woodland, has been focusing on flowers and plants. Look at these photos taken on a walk in the woods.
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.
We thought you would like to see some of the things our wonderful Year One children have been busy doing at home recently. We have loved looking at all their online work and are so proud of how hard the children have been working.
It has been lovely to see how so many of them have been taking up new hobbies as well. Those chocolate biscuits look delicious.
Don’t forget to keep sending us your photos. You could end up on our school 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:
We have become London experts since starting our Bright Lights Big City learning journey. To showcase our knowledge of London landmarks, we designed then made a fridge magnet souvenir.
The children did a couple of drafts of their picture then decided which shape it was best suited to. They carefully coloured and made a border for their magnet. They decided it should be strengthened so we laminated the paper and then the children cut and stuck a suitable sized strip of magnetic tape to the back.
We think they’re good enough to go in any London shop!
We have already created fire artwork using oil pastels and today we used a different medium, paper. We put the scissors to one side and ripped red, yellow and orange paper into different sized strips before layering them to get the effect of flames. Some children used a pencil to curl the strips of paper.
We have been learning about the events of The Great Fire in 1666 and know that the diary of Samuel Pepys provided lots of information. If you follow the link below, you can learn more about the events and play a few Fire of London games along the way.
In Year 1, we have been looking at how members of the Royal Family might speak, walk and sit.
We discussed how we could improve our etiquette, posture and manners to be more like The Queen!
We had to walk and sit with straight backs, ensuring we spoke with correct pronunciation for every word. We even played a game trying to keep bean bags on our heads for as long as possible.
Hopefully all the children were able to come home and show you everything they had learnt!
After performing so well in our final Christmas performance, the children in Maple Class loved being set this challenge. Using only letters that appear in the word Christmas, how many other words can you find?
They used their phonic knowledge to great effect and soon realised there were two s, meaning they could turn some words into plurals. We came together at the end to share each other’s lists of words. They had managed to find some words I hadn’t even considered.
I wonder if there are many more?
We had great fun in Literacy today, exploring the sounds different instruments make. We have been looking at poetry to do with our senses and were playing instruments and then writing down words to describe each sound.
We generated our own word bank which will support us when we come to write our own senses poems.
In year 1, we began exploring our senses to describe different objects! We used our mouths to taste, ears to listen, nose to smell, hands to touch and eyes to look.
We described each object using adjectives before exploring how they made us feel.
Our favourite part was during our tasting sessions were we got to try a lot of new foods, describing the taste and smell to our friends.
I think the popcorn was Mr Capell’s favourite!!
In Year 1, we continued our look into the different ways the part-whole model helps us learn.
Using a number line, we worked through a set of missing number problems before identifying how this would be represented on a cherry diagram.
We had to keep reminding each other that the biggest number had to be the whole!
In Maths today, we were looking at different ways to solve addition problems and methods we can use to prove we are correct. We spoke about two parts making one whole. Some of us even attempted writing a story to go with the number sentence.
Three children, who had worked incredibly hard to solve the problem, were then appointed experts for the lesson to support others in their understanding. They were so helpful. Well done!
Today the children were introduced to ten frames in Maths. We worked out that we could represent different numbers by drawing dots. We also worked out that a number can be represented in a variety of ways.
We challenged ourselves to find different ways to represent the same number. We then applied our reasoning skills to solve a problem.
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.
This week in maths we have been looking at comparing groups of objects.
We used the language of ‘more than’ and ‘fewer than’ to compare our objects with our friends.
We were able to use a range of resources and collaborated with our partners to help develop our understanding further.
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Unbelievably, we managed to get a little bit of outdoor PE time today before the heavens opened!
Continuing with our Superhero theme, we were stringing together a series of actions. We leapt, held a superhero pose for 5 seconds, stepped forwards to punch the air then completed our sequence with a pretend throw.
The most challenging part was holding a pose as still as we could for 5 seconds. Some of us wobbled a little!
Whizz! kerpow! Zoom!
We leapt into action today dressed as superheroes. We have had a wonderful day, measuring our long leaps, practising our superhero poses, making superhero gadgets and going on a superhero hunt. We found the mighty Thor hiding between the shed and the wall, we found Ironman under the brick wall next to the bin and we found the Incredible Hulk buried beneath a pile of leaves!
Why not ask your children what their favourite superhero moment has been.
In Year 1, we’ve been investigating the new resources we can use to help us learn.
We worked in small groups and partners to look at Cuisenaire rods, discussing their length.
Some of use stretched our learning further and found out that two rods placed together can be the same size as another coloured rod.
All of this information learned will help us later in the year and we can’t wait to find out more!
Willow class went for a small walk today discussing everything about seasons!
We talked about the season we are in now and what has just finished – discussing the key features of each season. We’re all hoping for snow to come in Winter and can’t wait for the all the fun we will have.
We have been learning a new skill this week, journaling. We have enjoyed cutting, sticking and embellishing the work we have done as part of our Moon Zoom learning journey.
We hope you enjoy looking at our books this week at Parents’ Evening.
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?
Willow class had a great time down at TCS participating in a KS1 Fun Festival.
We got to play a variety of games and practice a lot of skills, including; throwing and catching, kicking, balancing, gymnastics and many more!
We got a bit wet on the walk back but everyone left with a great big smile on their faces!
Once again, a wet Monday prevented us from doing outdoor PE but, determined to get our daily dose of physical activity, we found a space in the classroom and started learning some yoga poses.
The children loved it and are keen to learn some other, more complicated, poses. We realised balance is important as well as remembering to breathe!
We discussed the benefits of yoga and focused breathing in helping us relax.
We had a very special visitor in school this week. Professor Pong visited us from the British Space and Alien Research Company to talk about the crash landing and what we all needed to do next.
We got to ask him all of our questions and found out we weren’t the only school in Devon to have an alien visit.
After his visit we discussed his original email and started trying to answer all his questions.
Thank you Professor Pong!
We have an alien update for you. The children in Maple and Willow class today received an email from Professor Pong from the British Space and Alien Research company. He is planning to help us locate and send home the alien that crash landed on our playground a few weeks ago.
We will be building up to write an email back to him once we have more facts. To help us with our future email writing, we became Feature Detectives today, working in groups to find full stops, capital letters, question marks and finger spaces. We worked brilliantly together, collaborating and taking turns.
Today, we were tasked with finding things that are shorter than us. We had fun going around the classroom and standing next to objects and people. We had to use the correct language to compare, ie taller than and shorter than.
Some of us were even challenged to find objects that are half our height.
Why not find objects at home to measure.
We had a lot of fun in PE today. We practised working in spaces and tried our hardest not to bump into anyone. There were a couple of little collisions to start with, but the children soon improved at avoiding each other.
We also practised changing direction when running, hopping, jumping and skipping.
Just a quick reminder that PE for Year One is every Monday and Friday so the children will need their PE kits in school everyday please, including a pair of trainers or plimsoles.
Thank you.
In year 1, we’ve been learning about all the crazy aliens that crashed into our playground this week.
Today we spoke about all the different features our aliens could have and used play dough to make them. Some of us even tried to draw what we thought our aliens would look like.
Have a look at our amazing creations!
We had to act as detectives to solve a mystery today. We found strange equipment, a broken computer, a photo of an alien and a lot of slime strewn across the playground. After bringing the evidence back to the classrooms, we examined the exhibits and discussed at great length what may have happened.
We have a few theories, including a meteor colliding with a satellite and an alien on the loose. We are all in agreement that an alien spaceship has crash landed on our playground.
Watch this space for updates!
Years 1 and 2 have been doing lots of work on plants. They have been learning how to draw them in the style of Georgia O’keeffe. They have learnt language used to describe them and then used this to help them identify different plants. They even used their sorting skills to classify different leaves.
Willow class had the opportunity to take part in a Fun Festival at TCS yesterday. We took part in a range of activities included Athletics, Cricket Rounder and Parachute Games.
We had a great time cooperating with children from different schools and even got to see some old friends! The activities were quite challenging and we all worked up quite a sweat.
Thank you to everyone at TCS and to the parents for making the afternoon run so smoothly.
