Our topic is 'Fairy Tales and Castles' and we started with a visit from 'Shine Drama' and had a dragon workshop! We were told the traditional Welsh tale of 'The Welsh Dragon' and we used expressive arts and dramatic skills to act out the story. We then recounted the story again during an expressive arts lesson and made our own red and white dragons. 

 

In Literacy this half term we have used literature to fire our imagination. We have used Julia Donaldsons 'The Gruffalo' and through expressive arts we have acted out the story, we have added our own verse and we have also made our own animation as inspired by the BBC's film. We also use this stimulus to look at different habitats. We even made 'Gruffalo Crumble'  Being the best we could be we painted our own Gruffalo's and ensured we added every detail - even his 'crusty wart at the end of his nose!'  We could not believe that we were able to add in even more adjectives to the famous authors text! To conclude our module we followed a success criteria to make our film and ensured we used 'loud voice, clear, crisp voices and handled the i pad carefully'  

During literacy we have also developed our fine motor skills and ensured that we are doing daily dough, ribbon dance and letter join formation. We also spend time in our science and water area and use pipettes to make our little hands super strong so we can have posh handwriting.  

In Maths and Numeracy we have been busy bees - during our role play we have been ambitious learners and quite the entrepreneurs in charging £2 for a cup cake in our very own 'Cariad!'.  We have been looking at place value and learning how to write our numbers.  Pattern and shape have been explored in play and through art in some wonderful prints.  The Year 1's have been looking at ordinal numbers and we have deepened our understanding through a variety of races - our t shirts were peppered with stickers! 

 

We are ethically informed citizens in the Flamingo class and we have extended our learning in humanities by looking at Max Roach a famous black jazz drummer. We explored the different rhythms and we were able to look back and see how he changed drumming in history by inspiring others to increase the rhythm. We also had a parent visitor come in and tell us all about African drumming. We were able to compare the two different styles of music in the past and present. We have also been looking at castles and the historical tale of how Wales had a Welsh flag.  We looked a the Welsh tale and retold it whilst making our own honey mead (in the science area!). In Geography we have understood different habitats where the animals in the Gruffalo story live. We have understood that habitats give shelter, food, safety and a place to bring up young.  We have also looked at the natural landscapes surrounding castles.  We learnt about this through song! Ask us to recite our castle song to you!  We have been super busy!  We finished our half term with a visit to the local Tabernacle and understood that at harvest time we give our thanks to the farmers.  We also made an autumn poem to show our thanks.

Much of our learning this half term has been explored through expressive arts.  We love our music session each week with our talented music teacher Miss Atwell - she has taught us rhythm and we were able to transfer these skills to our poetry writing.  Mr Boyd taught us all about African drums and we used listening skills to repeat and build a beat.  To extend our learning on the Welsh Dragon we recited the story by using collage to make our own white and red dragon - we talked about the different materials we were using. We acted out the story during our engage event - just look at Mrs D's moves and expression!  To make our film of 'The Gruffalo' we used digital skills and took photos to add into an i movie.  Our Year 1's became experts and have since begun photographing and filming independently - moving on to filming our dramatic content on our stage.  Being active and doing helps our brain develop.  Our imagination has helped us build our own stories - we have used the puppet theatre to help us.

We are healthy and confident individuals.  We understand that by moving make us happy and healthy.  We have been working on a medley of fundamental skills this half term and have watched our older friends in Year 2 who have been great role models during our PE session.  Our 'Think Equal' programme has made us realise that we are all different and we are all 'Marvellous' in our own way - we are beginning to learn about different emotions and relate these to our every day life - it is such a special time of day where we enjoy stories.  This half term we have been learning about the expectations in school and ensured we have set our own rules to be the best we can.  Being outside as much as possible - or as much as we would like really makes us happy and healthy - Mrs D LOVES the rain so we are all learning to love the Welsh weather too!  We took time to sit and chat on mental health awareness day - and a splash of yellow always makes us happy.  Exploring our outdoors with our friends and playing brings out the biggest of smiles! 

In Science and Technology we have understood that we need to look after living creatures. We spent time on our bird feeders and we even had to alter our design so that all the bird seed would not drop off! We explored our woodland and did a survey in our grounds on what British Trees we have in our school - we also asked our grown ups to look at the trees at home.  Whilst making our Gruffalo crumble we noticed the change in our 'purple prickles' and our 'orange eyes' and that through cooking the heat made the fruit softer.  We spent time in our Downstairs Woodland and picked our crop - we had tomato sandwiches in the autumn sunshine!