In our final week we had our exciting DT project of designing, making and evaluating rockets. First, in Science with Mrs Hornsey, we learnt about our two key words upthrust and gravity. We also learnt about the different parts of rockets and what we would need to include in our design.

The next step was to design them, we drew and labelled them, thinking carefully about the materials we needed and how we would attach the different parts. We have to remember to include the nose of our rocket, which we used a cone shape for and also fins!

Take off! Kestrels had a BLAST. We used a foot pump to blast our rockets up into the air. We started by seeing how high they would go, measuring with a metre stick. The highest rocket went 3m! We then changed the direction to see the distance the rockets could travel sideways, using a points system to measure.

Finally, we evaluated, thinking about what had gone well and what we could improve. We found that the biggest factor that affected our rocket launch was the person jumping as that controlled the amount of air and therefore the power behind the rockets' launch.

Well done Kestrels for all your hard work on our Moon Zoom topic. See you after half term for our last term of Year 1! 

In our final week we met up with Wrens Class to do some paired reading. Kestrels chose a book from our class and shared it with a Wren. It was lovely to see the children enjoying sharing books together.

This term we started a new Maths unit on 'Multiplication and Division'. So far this has included counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. In Year 1, we need to be able to count objects and solve problems counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. Here, you can see us counting Noah's animals in 2s as they move into the Ark! We used some songs to help us, which you can find linked below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvTcpfSnOMQ Counting in 2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amxVL9KUmq8 Counting in 5s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8CEOlAOGas Counting in 10s

Next we started looking at equal and unequal groups. Equal meaning the same as. We had a go at making equal and unequal groups and identifying. 

This week we have had a school school focus on kindness and friendship. We learnt that we can support others by saying 'STOP', when we see unkind behaviour. We all understand that we can talk to the adults who will also help us. 

In Maths we are learning onto a unit of Multiplication and Division. We started this by practising counting in 2s. We thought about Noah's Ark, where the animals walk two by two. We had a go at counting our own animals in 2s before having a go at our Power Maths Workbooks.

Recently in Phonics we have looked at split digraphs. These are:

a_e,i_e, e_e, o_e, u_e

They are always separated by another letter, for example, bike, cake, flute and bone.

We spoke about how when we see a split digraph the first letter moves from a short sound, to it's long alphabet name e.g 'a' says /a/ but turns to /ai/.

These sounds can be tricky to spot, so look out for them when reading your books at home!

We have been focusing on numbers to 50. In these pictures you will see us playing a game where we had to work in pairs. One of us had to close our eyes while the other hid some numbers on the 50 grid with blu tac. Then our partner opened our eyes and had to say and write which numbers were hiding!

We finally got to the end of our story, Beegu! Before we did, we had a go at predicting the ending and making up our own. We worked in groups to do this and Kestrels had lots of lovely ideas.

It's been a busy first week back! Here is a sneak peak at some of our learning...

Phonics - This week we have learnt the sounds /oi/ and /oy. Later in the week we compared them, noticing that 'oi' comes in the middle of words where as 'oy' can be found at the end.

Maths- We are finishing our addition and subtraction unit to 20, making sure we are all ready to tackle numbers to 50 next week!

English- Pictured, you can see our focus text for the next couple of weeks called 'Beegu'. This week we started by exploring the book by asking questions such as 'Who is Beegu?', 'Where does Beegu come from?'.

Topic- For our first couple of lessons we have had a Geography focus. This included a recap of our world's oceans. We also learnt the different continents. We had a go at a world map jigsaw and Miss Gibbons was so impressed with the team work and perseverance shown!

Here is our oceans song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6BE4VcYngQ

Our Continents song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6DSMZ8b3LE

PSHE- This week we have spoken about privacy, what it means and the importance of respecting others privacy and boundaries. We discussed the importance of telling an adult you trust if you have any uncomfortable feelings. We also recapped the Pantosaurus song which can be found here if you'd like to watch at home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnroTxz7USI