Kingfishers in action!
Childline offers help, support and ideas for children who are worried, frustrated or feeling bad or sad.
Check out their website for all sorts of ideas. Click the picture below.
You can also call Childline: 0800 11 11
Kingfishers in Action!
Summer Term
Key Stage 1 Sports Day!
On Wednesday 14th July the Year 1 children had great fun at Hethersett and Tas Valley Cricket Club where they took part in a kwick cricket festival.
Week 12
This week, we have been:
- creating and drawing a habitat to house our clay ‘Mother and Child’ creatures (photos next week)
- using number lines for addition and writing a description of the Giant’s castle thinking carefully about sentences
- practising for Sports Day with Robins Class
- making a slider in DT to help Jack climb and descend the beanstalk – videos of this will go on Tapestry over the weekend.
This is one of our class butterflies, enjoying their first taste of freedom.
Our beautiful display of butterflies and pollination telling the story of insect pollination.
Weeks 9 to 11
What a busy few weeks we have had! My apologies for not updating our ‘in Action’ page sooner.
In science, we have been finding out about insect pollination using a pipe cleaner to represent the furry legs of a bee, and powder paint as the pollen to be collected from one flower and transported to another. The seeds we have been growing in bags have reached a stage where they need some soil and more air, so they have come home. I hope you enjoy planting them and watching them grow into something edible. We have also been watching some caterpillars eat and eat and eat, then pupate and now, they have emerged as Painted Lady butterflies. We will release these sometime this week.
Reverend Cate came to class to tell us about the Christian tradition of baptism. She brought baby Shrek with her to demonstrate a baptism.
The following week, we went to the church to see a ‘real’ baptism. This time, it was our class doll, Francesca’s turn.
Felix has been helping to look after some recently hatched chicks at home. We were lucky enough to have a visit from the little feathery balls of fluff.
We put our problem solving into practice. We watched a video of a game without any sound, then talked to our partner to work out how to play the game, what the rules might be and how to win. Then we had a go at playing.
In maths, we have been working on making arrays – laying a number of cubes out in equal rows or columns – this helps us to understand multiplication and division. We have also been using tens and ones to support our understanding of both digits in 2-digit numbers.
Week 8
Welcome back. I hope you have all enjoyed a restful break.
This week, the Year 2 children have been very busy showing us what they can do independently in maths, writing and reading. They have all worked really hard and made me proud.
The Year 1 children have been continuing their thinking about time: reading clocks, showing the time by drawing the hands on the clock face, and investigating what they can do in 1 minute.
Week 7
It’s been a busy final week with Governor, Ms Warner visiting on Wednesday, Alpington Action Day on Thursday and a film reward on Friday.
In maths, we have been learning about the positions of the minute and hour hand when it is o’clock or half past. We have also been learning about clockwise and anti-clockwise turns (quarter, half, three-quarters and a whole). We applied this to our learning in computing by playing Pirate Paraphernalia where we had to follow an algorithm (instructions) and, if we made a mistake, we had to debug (make corrections) to make sure we reached all of the pirate’s belongings.
In English this week, we have been curious writers. We watched a Pixar short film called ‘For the Birds’ (follow the link to watch on YouTube) and then worked in pairs to create a comic strip using speech and thought bubbles to show what the birds were thinking or saying.
For Alpington Action day, we found out about toilets around the world and discovered that a quarter of the world’s population don’t have a loo. We kept a tally of our toilet use at school out of interest. We decided to help people who don’t have a loo by raising money for toilet twinning – an organisation which helps communities to learn the skills needed to build their own toilets, reducing diarrhoea and cholera.
Week 6
This week, we have been finding out about mammals. We sorted photos of different types of animals into groups. In music we enjoyed listening to Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals. For each piece of music, we used the rhythm, speed and instruments to give us clues about the type of animal being represented. We moved around the hall in different ways as we responded to the music.
In maths, we have been talking about time and how it can be measured. We have been practising reading o’clock and half past and setting the hands to show those times too.
On Friday, we made kites because it was really windy. At the end of the day, the children had great fun flying their kites in the wet and windy playground.
Week 5
This week we have been aspirational scientists, exploring our world through science and finding out about minibeasts. We discovered that not all minibeasts are insects. We also learnt about the structure of some insects including head, thorax, abdomen, wings and six legs. On Tuesday, we were empathetic scientists as we gathered as many natural resources as we could find on the field, and used them to make bug hotels under hedges and in dark corners. On Wednesday, we explored our bug hotels to see whether any guests had arrived. Using an identification chart of common British insects, we were able to identify and name many of the species we found. Following further research, we became courageous scientists and writers, and used our knowledge to write a fact file about our favourite insects.
In maths, we have been continuing our work on arrays and multiplications. We have also started practising counting in tens from any number – knowing that the ‘ones’ number doesn’t change but the ‘tens’ number does. This is easiest to see on a 100 square or number grid. We are being aspirational mathematicians by challenging ourselves in our learning.
Week 3 and 4
In these two weeks, we have continued our learning about how the needs of humans change as we get older and develop. In maths, we have been revisiting arrays – a way of setting out quantities in rows and columns. We have started sculpting our own version of Barbara Hepworth’s Mother and Child in Art and Design. In Religious Education we have been thinking about life as a journey. This week we have learnt about the Jewish coming of age traditions of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. The children enjoyed getting their hands (and the yad) on some genuine Jewish artefacts.
Week 2
This week we had some exciting visitors in Kingfishers in the form of Mrs Chisholm and her baby. The children loved seeing them both and having the opportunity to ask questions and talk about their own experiences as babies or with babies. We have also been thinking about how our bodies grow and change as we get older. In maths, we have continued our problem solving as well as beginning to learn about multiplication as equal groups.
Week 1
We have kicked off our new topic, Growing and Changing, with a busy week. We started by trying to identify baby photos of people in our class. We are having a push on problem solving in maths over this half term, so you might hear your children talking about trial and improvement or working systematically. We have also been measuring using rulers and metre sticks, and counting on and back in tens.
