We hope you enjoy looking at our Year 1 blog which will show you some of the learning we have been doing in class.
Year 1 have enjoyed exploring watercolours. Artist Emma Burleigh explained how she uses watercolours in her art work. She lets a picture emerge from marks on the page, allowing the paint to ‘do its own thing’. She also explained different paint techniques including using only two or three colours, colour washing and ‘wet in wet’. Children enoyed exploring the way the paint flows on the page.
Last Friday, the whole school took part in the Schools of Sanctuary: Day of Welcome. During the day, they learnt about the lives of refugees and how we can make our community in Queen’s Hill welcoming. This years theme was ‘Community is our Superpower’.
Children in Year 1 learnt about different playground games that children play from around the world. They played ‘Chinlone’ and ‘Oon’ from Myanmar and ‘Cossak’ from Ukraine. They shared these games with their buddies in Year 4 too.
Children in Year 3 & 4 took part in a live lesson with schools across the country to hear stories from Dina Nayeri about her own personal experiences of being a refugee as a child and fleeing to the United States of America. As part of the lesson, children had the opportunity to try some Taekwondo moves, as taking up this sport was something that helped Dina feel part of her new community when she moved to America.
In Year 5, children designed and wrote postcards to refugee children, welcoming them to Queen’s Hill. They explained how they would be welcomed into the community. Collaboratively, Year 5, along with their buddies in Year 2, designed houses for Moomins after reading about the displacement of the Moomins in ‘The Moomins and the Great Flood’ by Tove Jansson.
Year 1 have been learning about plants. They planted seeds and are excited to watch them grow. We have also been looking at real plants to notice the parts of the plants and used post-it notes to label them.
This week, year one and year four pupils buddied up for an afternoon session of African animal research on the iPads. It was wonderful to see such polite and caring partnerships between our older and younger students. Our year ones went away with lots of interesting and useful facts about meerkats, lions and giraffes which they will use to help them with their writing next week. We look forward to them sharing this work with their older buddies at the end of term.
This year the school council decided to run the Christmas bauble project again. The plastic baubles were very kindly bought by the Friends and each year group chose their own designs and have been busy over the last few weeks creating them.
In Reception they decorated wooden baubles with paint, glitter and sequins.
In Year 1 they used tissue paper to collage the inside of their baubles.
In Year 2 the children measured their height and filled their bauble with ribbon that is the same height as them in 2024.
In Year 3 they filled their baubles with cotton wool ‘snow’ and decorated the outside with Christmas patterns.
In Year 4 the children decorated their baubles with glitter.
In Year 5 they used tissue paper to create bright and colourful baubles that have been hanging on their class Christmas trees.
In Year 6 they chose glitter for the insides and drew Christmas patterns and messages on the outside.
We think they all look amazing! A great big thank you to the School Council for organising this for everyone and an even bigger thank you to the Friends for supplying us with the baubles.
In Year 1 we have been learning about repeating patterns. We started with shape patterns and then moved onto making patterns with a range of materials. The children enjoyed moving around the classroom and experimenting with different patterns.
This week Year 1 drew in their sketchbooks for the first time. They were encouraged to put themselves on the page. Children used pens, pencils and crayons to draw things that matter to them and decorate it in a way that made it completely theirs. Each one was completely unique and we think it’ll be a great memory for them to look back on, we were so impressed by their creativity.
Year 1 really enjoyed their trip to Stranger’s Hall. They played with toys, sorted toys and even made their own toy!
Year 1 have been helping to keep our school tidy during busy time. Some children chose to use litter pickers to pick up any rubbish that they saw.
In Year 1, we have been learning about spiral art. We were inspired by spirals in nature and created our own spiral art! We then hosted an art gallery where we displayed our work and discussed each other’s final piece.