Pirates

Ahoy there !

This week we have been learning all about pirates.  We have found out about life aboard a pirate ship from a non fiction book.  They were very cramped in their ships and often had to share their beds with rats!  We found out that there were also lady pirates!  The captain decided where to go to look for treasure and he shared out his 'booty' with his shipmates.  Pirates did a lot of fighting and often were quite unlucky and lost a leg or an arm in a fight !!

Reece and Eimantas loved reading our pirate books

 On Tuesday we had a message in a bottle from Captain Black Jack - it said that his treasure had been stolen by Pirate Pete.  He asked us to help him to find the treasure.  Luckily several Grasshoppers had seen Pirate Pete with some treasure - he was out on Scroby Sands digging a big hole to bury it in.  So we wrote back to Captain Black Jack and told him where to find his treasure.  Miss Cannell is a really fast runner so we sent her down to the beach with our message in a bottle to throw it in the sea.  On Wednesday we sent Mrs Ball down to the beach to see if there was a reply.  She was gone ages - and when she came back we realised why.  She had taken a bucket and spade down there and started playing in the sand!  Anyway Mrs Ball found the next message and it was a treasure map.

This week in maths we have been learning about money.  We have been counting up 1p and 2p coins and playing shops.  We have also had a go at making different amounts using a range of coins.  We have also been practising counting in 2's and 5's.  Why not have a go at counting coins at home?

Chloe sorts her coins

Indianna and Jamie-Lee play shops

We have used lots of different construction kits to make our own pirate ships and we have painted some fantastic pirate pictures.  We even made our own treasure chests.

Lexi with her treasure chest

 

 

Eimantas built a lego pirate ship

 

Indianna will be taking Diggory home this weekend - she has done some really super writing.  Well done Indianna.

 

See you next week.

 

Grasshopper Class

Space

Hello Everyone,

This week we are learning about space.  We have found out about all the different planets and about our planet -  Earth.  On Monday we did a mind map about what we knew about space and we also came up with a few questions.  We wanted to know how many stars there were in the sky and later in the week we found out that there are more than a billion stars!!

We have had a go at making rockets from lots of different construction kits and we have done lots of art work about space.  On Wednesday we used marbling inks to create space-like patterns and Miss Ball helped us to print our own space paper.  It was very messy and one of the ink bottles exploded all over poor Miss Ball !!  But all the mess was worth it because on Thursday we used our brilliant space paper to make our own planets.  Look out for them hanging up in our class!

Jessica-May and Courtney marbling

Daniel helps with a messy job!

Sophie helps to mix the marbling ink

 

Lexi making one of our planets

Abigail and Sophie cut out the circles

Alfie and Chloe help to string up the planets

 

Eimantas builds a space rocket

Jordan holds the rocket steady

We have also made aliens and listened to lots of space stories - we can't make our minds up about whether aliens really exist - who knows?  However, on Wednesday we got a letter from someone called Mr Alien?  He lived on Mars and he had sent us a fact sheet about his planet.  The envelope was full of red, sparkly dust!  He asked us to write a fact sheet about planet Earth so we set to work.  Mrs Young then sent the fact sheets back to Mr Alien.  Do you know the next day we had a reply from him with a present (still covered in red, sparkly dust) - it was a 'Gogglebit' from Mars.  How exciting!  May be aliens are real after all?

Mr Alien sent us a 'Gogglebit' from Mars!

Do you think Mr Alien might look like this?

Chase and Daniel writing about space

We have found out all about the first man on the moon - we watched a video clip of Neil Armstrong in his space craft 'The Eagle'.  We saw 'The Eagle' land on the moon and then watched as Neil Armstrong climbed out of his space craft and walked on the Moon.  We decided that he must have been very brave to go all that way (we read that if you could drive in a car to the moon it would take 170 years) !

Reece completes the space puzzles

Mackenzie and Jessica-May get ready for blast off

On Friday we had a special dance coach come into school to teach us how to do a Carnival dance.  We had a brilliant time and all tried really hard to learn the dance.  In the afternoon we had a special assembly where we all had to perform our dances for the rest of the school.

Rosanna was really good at dancing

Ebony followed the dance instructor's instructions

Alexus and Sophie are great dancers

 

 

Diggory is going to spend the weekend with Ebony as she tried so hard in the dance lesson today.  Have fun!

 

See you next week.

 

Grasshopper Class

Superheroes

Hello Everyone,

This week we have been learning about superheroes.  We started by deciding which superheroes we knew and what their job was.  We decided that superheroes are good characters who try to help people with their extra super powers.  We also made sure that we knew that superheroes are made up characters in stories and that they are not real !  Heroes obviously can be real but they don't tend to have 'super powers'!


We actually met a real life hero on Monday - Mr Garrod came into school to tell us about his job as a member of the Caister Lifeboat team!  He came in his special Lifeboat Suit and told us lots of stories about people he had rescued.  He also warned us about the dangers of digging really deep holes on the beach.  He even let some of us dress up in his special coat - it was very heavy!

 

Alexus disappeared under the coat!

Jona the Lifeboat Lady

Taloola ready for action

 

We designed our own superhero pants or superhero hat or superhero mask and Miss Ball helped us to work from our plans to make our own designs.  It is really tricky to work from a design and we did a really good job of trying to stick to our plans.

Look at these fantastic superhero masks!

We have been doing lots of doubling and halving in maths so that we know that there is a link between doubles and halves eg double 4 is 8 and half of 8 is 4.  Try practising this at home because it will really  help you in Year 1.  We have also been doing lots of measuring - we have thought about weight, length, capacity and time and Mrs Young was impressed with how much we had
remembered! 

Jona uses the balance scales to compare heavy and light objects

Abigail found out which container holds the most

Rosanna busy comparing different containers

On Thursday we had a go at writing our own Superhero story.  We read lots of stories first and discussed the beginning, middle and end.  We then wrote the beginning of our story together on the carpet.  It was then our job to write the middle and end of the story ourselves.  Here is the beginning of the story:

One rainy night the superheroes heard a scream.  Someone was in trouble.........


And here are some of our middles and ends !

Eimantas wrote: There was a dog lost in the park.  Superkids flew into the park and helped the dog.

Abigail wrote: They found out there was a fire.  They used their magic powers to put the fire out.

Mrs Young has been really busy visiting all the Pre-schools and nurseries this week so we've had lots of different teachers popping in to have fun with us.

Daniel will be taking Diggory home this weekend because he has been doing so well in Year 1 with his maths each week.

See you next week.

Grasshopper Class

People Who Help Us

Welcome back,

Hopefully you all had a great week off?  I know Sophie has been very busy because she has been at the Suffolk Show with her horses.  She entered a competition where she had to trot on her horse and she came 4th !  She brought in her rosette to show us - we were  very impressed.

 

Sophie with her rosettes

This week we have been learning all about people who help us.  We started off by writing down everything we knew about people who help us.  We thought about firefighters, paramedics, nurses and doctors, lollipop ladies, teachers, dinner ladies, cooks, shopkeepers, road workers .........and then Jessica-May remembered that our mums and dads help us too!  Taloola remembered that we'd forgotten the Bin Men so we added them to our mind map too.  We painted pictures of emergency vehicles on Monday and Eimantas did a great police motorbike -  look out for it on our display. 

On Tuesday we made our own firefighter helmets.  Jessica-May made a fantastic helmet using her own ideas.  Well done!

We have also made some amazing emergency vehicles from junk - Miss Ball came in to help us and we worked together using our own ideas to create our models.  We made a fire engine, an ambulance and a police car.  It was good fun deciding what resources to use for all the different bits.

Chase and Eimantas work on the ambulance

Jessica May worked hard on the ladder

Taloola and Ebony work together

We have also made fire engines from mobilo - Reece worked hard to make his models and he also noticed that he had used lots of 3D shapes - cubes.

 

In maths we have been learning to half numbers.  We have learnt that when you half a number you have to make sure that you have 2 numbers that are the same eg If I had 10 bones and gave half to one dog and half to the other then both dogs would have 5 bones each - because half of 10 is 5.  We also found out that if we know our doubles to 10 then halving numbers to 10 is really easy !

 

Ebony shares the bones out

Jordan makes sure both dogs have the same

Chloe and Jona sharing the bones out

 

In PE this half term we will be practising for Sports Day so remember to bring some plimsols or trainers to wear outside on the field. 

 

Diggory will be going home with Taloola this week because she always tries her best with whatever she is doing.  Have fun Taloola!

 

See you next week.

 

Grasshopper Class