Year 1

Friday 19th April: Week 1 

This week in Year 1 in English, we have been busy continuing our learning journey based on the book 'Stop! That's not my story'. We have been writing our own narrative. In Maths, we have focused on identifying and representing numbers from 0-100 using different mathematical resources and have been using the language of 'more than, less than and equal to'. In P.E we have been practising our throwing and catching skills and for Free Reading Friday we took part in reading around the 'campfire'!

Thursday 28th March: Week 6

This week in year 1, we have performed our seaside sounds using a selection of musical instruments. We also performed our production of 'Rock Pool' to our families, they loved it!  In Maths, we talked about how we would measure different activities, either in minutes, seconds or hours. We also took part in some Easter crafts! 

Friday 22nd March: Week 5

This week in year 1 we started to make our toy cars out of recycled materials. We even got to use a saw to cut our axles to the correct size for our vehicle. In Guided reading we rehearsed and then performed our new poem with instruments. We also had a dress rehearsal to year R of our production 'Rock Pool'.

Friday 15th March: Week 4

This week we were very excited because we got to see our costumes for our production in their full glory! We continued learning about the importance of water, and the impact water has on the environment and different communities. We took part in an obstacle course, where we tried not to spill a single drop of water. In Computing, we looked at how computers group different objects. We had a go at grouping different objects on our tables ourselves to develop our understanding. In Maths, we started learning how to tell the time. 

Friday 8th March: Week 3

This week we discussed healthy and unhealthy foods in English. We looked at a variety of different foods Mr Grinling might have in his lunch and talked about the importance of healthy food. In Guided reading, we continued to rehearse our new poem "Daddy fell into the pond". We learnt the meanings of new vocabulary and drew pictures to show our understanding. We also had World Book Day, look at our fantastic costumes!

Friday 1st March: Week 2

This week in year 1, we have been learning all about wheels, axles, axle holders and chassis. We are very excited to make our own toy car in Design and Technology. In English, we made sandwiches and thought about the different steps to instruction writing. We continued practising our parts for our upcoming Spring production. We can't wait for you to see it! 

Friday - 23rd February 2024 - Week 1

This week in year 1 we have begun learning our lines for our production 'Rock Pool'. We have also begun learning the songs too! We celebrated some fantastic work and it was put on display in our year 1 shared area. In English, we have started our learning journey on "The Lighthouse Keeper's lunch". We predicted what Mr Grinling might have in his lunch. In Health and wellbeing, we started our new learning all about the importance of water. 

Friday 14th July - Week 6

This week we were really lucky, and had the chance to visit John Hanson for their gymnastics festival. We had the chance to use trampolines, trampettes, and the air track! The children were on their best behavior and we were really proud of how they followed our code of conduct whilst off site.

Friday 7th July - Week 5

What an amazing week! This week was Arts' week and we have had a wonderful time. We studied Austrialian aboriginal art and focused on the composer Mirrie Hill. We created pieces of collaborative art using the dotting technique, as well as individual 'rainbow serpents'. We also took part in afternoon workshops including drumming, samba and bollywood dancing!

Friday 30th June - Week 4

This week we have loved taking part in 'Scooter-ability' lessons. We learnt how to stop and move off using our scooters safely. We also practiced moving around obstacles and pedestrians. We were very sensible!

Friday 23rd June - Week 3

Striking and Fielding

This half term we are learning striking and fielding games such as rounders, baseball and softball. To start our learning journey we have been recapping our throwing strategies. 

Week 2 - Reading for Pleasure

This week in guided reading we are focusing on reading for pleasure. We have enjoyed trips to the library to explore a wide variety of texts. We have been sharing the books with one another and talking about what we enjoy. We love to snuggle on a bean bag and dive in to a new book!

Week 1 - Gardening

As part of our Health and Wellbeing Curriculum, children get to spend lots of time planting and growing food. Today we planted some new vegetables as our lettuce was ready to harvest. We enjoyed eating the lettuce!

Rooksbury Mill Trip - Week 6

This week we visited Rooksbury Mill as part of our Longitudinal Study! We were looking for features of Spring and were so excited to see a baby coot, and a gosling! We were so sensible crossing roads and keeping ourselves safe. Our teachers are so proud of us!

Summer 1 - Week 5

Building on our drama and skills sessions from last week, today we published our final Jack and the Beanstalk stories. The children were very excited to become real life authors and publish their final works. Here is a snippet of what the children created. We are so proud of how hard the children have worked this week so make sure their work was the best it could be. 

Summer 1 Week 4

Jack and the Beanstalk

This week we were amazed to find a beanstalk growing in the Year 1 area! The Year 1 children were very quick to remind us of the story 'Jack and the Beanstalk'. To show off their story knowledge, we created an 'in the round' theatre and acted out the story. 

Summer 1 - Week 3

This week, Year 1 children enjoyed a visit to the 'Tricky word woods'! 

Children had to hunt for as many tricky words as they could, read them to a partner and write them down. We had lots of fun. 

Summer 1 - Week 2

This week children have enjoyed their first computing lesson of the half term. Children got to grips with the programe 'Scratch Junior', and coded commands to animate a character. 

At the start of each computing lesson, we begin with a short Talk Toolbox on E-Safety. This week we were discussing the rules for staying safe online. We revised our 'Think then click' policy which we have in place at the Federation. Children were so sensible when using the tablets, following instructions carefully and not clicking on anything which they had not been instructed to. Well done Year 1!

Summer 1 - Week 1 

In Health and Wellbeing this week we have been discussing...

What does Safety mean to us?

Here are some of our responses;

"Don’t swing on your chairs"

"Don’t push people"

"Don’t cross the road when a car is coming"

"Wait for the traffic lights to cross"

"Don’t talk if the teacher is talking – they might be trying to keep you safe!"

" I feel safe in my house" 

Once we had shared a response, we put our fingerprint on our poster to show our contribution to the Talk Toolbox session. 

Geography

In Geography this half term we have been learning all about our town - Andover! Over the past few weeks we have been learning to identify human and physical features. We created mini 3D ariel maps of a small area in Andover to share with our classmates. We then discussed whether the features we had drawn were human or physical. 

Music

This week in music we played follow the leader! We recapped our prior learning on tempo, volume, rhythm and pace by responding to the beat Miss Bolton played to us using her drum. We used untuned percussion instruments to each take a turn at being the 'leader' setting the beat for our friends!

Counting in 10s

This week we have been learning to count in 10s. We have been using a variety of practical resources to group and count. Later in the week we applied our knowledge to problem solving.

Tree Planting at Bury Hill

We had a fantastic time planting at Bury Hill this week. We learned how to dig a hole, plant the tree and identify it for future visitors. We got very muddy but had so much fun!

Rooksbury Mill Trip 

This week we went for an Autumn walk to Rooksbury Mill! We went as part of our longitudinal study to observe wildlife, weather and trees. 

The children were extremely well behaved and asked some fantastic questions. 

We saw robins, swans, cormorants and even a heron!

"I will huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down...

 The children love to perform and made the most of the woodland amphitheatre to perform The Three Little Pigs as part of our English learning journey.

Investigating Pushes and Pulls

This week in science we have been learning about the forces, push and pull. We took a trip to the local park to investigate different types of push and pull! 

DT - Wooden Spoon  Puppets

This Half term we have designed and made our own wooden spoon puppets! We have been learning to select materials and tools to carefully join materials together in different ways. 

Marshmallow Maths!

This week in Maths we have been learning all about 2D and 3D shapes! To help us identify and name 3D shapes, we used marshmallows and cocktail sticks to create 3D shapes such as cubes, cuboids and pyramids.

It was great fun!

P.E In the Sunshine!

This week in P.E we had a bonus session to remind ourselves how to correctly use our play-ground equipment. We are so lucky here to have lots of amazing things to play with outside! Our teachers helped us learn to correctly use the bats and balls, skip and even hula hoop!

Chicks!

This week we have had the pleasure of watching 10 eggs hatch into very cute chicks! The children have loved keeping chick diaries and making observations each day. The children have all day the chance to hold a chick, which they have really enjoyed. We have also made chick fact posters which we plan to share with the Year R children later in the term. 

Counting in 2s

This week we have been continuing to practice counting in 2s. Here we are problem solving using a variety of practical resources. 

Meerkat Mail!

This week we had a visit from a very special visitor! Sunny the Meerkat has come all the way from the Kalahari desert to visit Balksbury Infant School. We started our learning journey by generating questions for Sunny and punctuation our sentences with a question mark. Just as we had started to learn more about Sunny, a post-card arrived from his very concerned Mum! We decided to help Sunny by writing a reply to his Mum for him. Some pictures from the week can be seen below. 

Lost and Found Diary Entries

This half term we have been using the text driver 'Lost and Found' by Oliver Jeffers. 

The story follows the journey of a little boy an a penguin who find each other in an unlikely friendship.

Here are some of the diary entries we wrote. We pretended to be the boy writing at the time of a storm whilst sailing to the South Pole. 

Tree by Britta Teckentrup

In English this week we have started exploring a new text called Tree!

It links beautifully with our science learning all about the four seasons. 

In response to the text we created group art pieces representing how trees change throughout the year. 

Here are some pictures of us hard at work and some pictures of the finished pieces. 

Drawing nature!

This week in Art we have been experimenting with different types of drawing materials! We used pencils, crayons and pastels to draw sunflowers from our Year One Garden. 

Free Reading Friday!

This week in Free Reading Friday we had a visit from the lovely Year 2 children. It was lovely to see the two year groups sharing stories together. Our Year One children really enjoyed themselves!

Farm to Fork!

This Term in Design & Technology we have been learning all about where food comes from and how to prepare food safely. Our food in the Poly-tunnel is not ready to be harvested yet, so we had to buy our food from the supermarket. We learned all about how the food arrives in the supermarket and where our food is grown. Here we are cooking a delicious pasta bake, containing lots of delicious vegetables! Watch out Masterchef, here we come!

Measuring Measuring and More Measuring! 

We have been mathematical investigators by using water to measure the volume and capacity of different containers. We had lots of fun understanding the concept of containers being full and half full!

All about the United Kingdom!

We have been learning all about The United Kingdom in Geography this half term. 

We started by identifying the 7 continents so we could understand which continent the UK is in.  We learned that the UK is in Europe and then we started to learn about each of the countries within the UK. 

We created our own group posters on each of the capital cities and have made amazing models of UK landmarks!

See some of our learning below.

Writing instructions for our friends in Year R!

As you can see from our pictures below, our plants are thriving in the polytunnel! Our friends in Year R have been reading the stories "The Tiny Seed" and "Oliver's vegetables", just like us! We thought it would be a great opportunity to write them instructions on how to plant seeds of their own. We gifted them some sunflower seeds and had a zoom call on Friday to share our instructions. The children loved seeing their old teachers and the Year R children enjoyed the experience too! 

Plant power!

In Year 1 we are going ga-ga for gardening! Now that we finally have some beautiful weather, we are on a missing to make our outdoor area look as beautiful as possible. Because we are scientists in year one, we are learning all about the parts of a plant and what they need to grow. In English we are using the story "The curious gardener" to write diary entries from the perspective of a little boy who gardens an entire city!

Here are some pictures of all the fun we have been having over the past couple of weeks. 

Fancy dress Friday!

This week we celebrated another amazing week of home learning with Fancy Dress Friday.

As part of Children's Mental Health week, we had been learning all about self-expression.

It felt like the perfect time to choose our favorite outfits and end the week with a dance off.

Here are some of our amazing costumes. 

We are so proud of the resilience our children have shown both in school and when learning at home. We are still smiling and working hard. Well done everyone!

The Queens Knickers and the Queens Handbag!

In Year one over the past couple of weeks we have been learning all about Her Majesty the Queen!

In English we designed our own pair of VIP knickers and wrote sentences to describe what they might look like. 

We also thought of questions we might ask the Queen if she visited our school.

We wrote diary entries from the perspective of the Queens royal knicker keeper!

In Art we created some fantastic portraits of the Queen and her corgis. We also learned to draw Buckingham palace. 

Here is some of our amazing work!

Amazing online learning!

This half term our year one children have blown us away with their amazing attitude towards their learning at home.

At the start of the term we chose to use "Meerkat Mail" by Emily Gravett as our text driver. We even had a visit from Sunny the Meerkat!

In English we wrote postcards, letters and made wanted posters for the pesky jackal!

In Geography we studied the human and physical features of the Kalahari desert. We thought about which areas of our school would be most suitable for Sunny during his stay at Balksbury.

In Science we learned about different animal classifications and compared Sunny the Meerkat with Miss Bolton's pet dog Polly.

English

Our Text : Tree by Britta Teckentrup

In science and English this week we have been learning all about the different seasons. We made clay characters on the trees and wrote about what our characters would see in the woodland all year round. Have a look below at some of our creations and writing! 

A Warm Welcome from the Year One team!

We have been enthusiastic scientific investigators by creating baskets that would protect Humpty from breaking, we learnt about different materials and how they could be used to protect our eggs. 

Poetry 

To celebrate Poetry at Balksbury we created a Poet-tree to share our thoughts...

Our reflection areas

We have really enjoyed thinking about who are important to us and shared those important people in our Reflection Areas...

When a Tiger Came to Tea!

A big, furry, stripy tiger came knocking on the door. We let him in and he was very hungry. He looked in all the cupboards but he had already eaten most of our fruit at playtime. He said he liked sandwiches, buns, cake, chicken, daddy's beer, tea and all the water in the tap. Sadly we could only offer him one banana and so he left in search of more food. We discussed what we could do to prepare ourselves for next time he comes as he did say he would be back!

Paschal Candle Ceremony

We had a Paschal Candle Ceremony. We began by sitting in a circle in the dark and thinking about what darkness means to us. Then, the Paschal Candle was brought in and we watched as more candles were lit from the Paschal Candle. The centre of the room was filled with light and the children were spellbound gazing at the flames. Gradually, we gathered closer to the flame and thought about how Christians feel when they think about Jesus' light in the darkness. We said a prayer and blew out the candle, imagining we are Christians taking Jesus' light into our heart and minds.

PSHE

We have been learning about how we can achieve goals with practice and perseverance. In PE, we supported our partners to navigate around the hall without touching the floor. Many of the children tackled equipment in ways they had not felt confident to previously.

Geography!

We looked closely at photographs of an unknown place. We described the physical and human geography we could see and built the places using junk modelling, plasticine, Lego and craft materials. We noticed that in some of the photos the place looked dry and hot. However the people were wearing warm clothes so we thought it must not be hot after all. We saw that they were making their own clothes and the place has mountains and forests. We also noticed that some people live in big cities and other people live in small villages with houses made from straw. Later we learned that this place was Peru!

Treasure Hunting!

We found a message in a bottle! We read the message and discussed what we should do next. We wrote to Mrs Holloway to ask if we could follow the instructions and dig to see if we could find anything. It took us a little while to solve the riddle but once we did, we went on an expedition to see if we were right. We took turns to dig in the ground until, to our great excitement, we hit something solid. We pulled it out of the ground and it turned out to be a bag with a box inside. Once we had brought our find inside we all took turns to look inside the box and describe what we could see. 

This week we have been learning about how to use exclamations in our writing. We went on a virtual tour of the Houses of Parliament and practised exclaiming about the wonderful things we had seen. Click the link below for the tour...

https://www.parliament.uk/visiting/virtualtour/

When a Dragon Came to Balksbury...