Living and Learning – I know that being physically active is healthy mentally and physically.
Over the last couple of weeks, Year 3 have been discussing how to stay healthy mentally and physically.
Physical activity helps to:
- strength our muscles
- develops our coordination
- improves our fitness
- maintain a healthy weight
We discussed our day to day lives to work out if we are being active enough. These are some opportunities we have to be active; walking to and from school, Wake Up Shake Up, PE, swimming, clubs, playtimes.
Help at home: Have a look at Uma’s day. How could she be more active? Have a look at your own day. How can you be more active?
Physical activity helps to keep our minds healthy too. Being active releases chemicals in your brain that make you feel good – boosting your self-esteem and helping you concentrate as well as sleep well and feel better.
Science – sunflower update!
Hello,
Does the amount of seeds in one plant pot affect the growth of the plants?
Lots of us predicted that the plant pot with 1 seed would grow quicker and taller than the others because it has more space to grow in the soil and doesn’t have to share its nutrients and water with other seeds!
However…
At the moment, our plant pots with 8 seeds is growing quicker and taller than any of the others with the tallest being 8cm.
Help at home: Can you think of a reason why this could be happening?
Reading: Y5 met Liz Pichon AGAIN!
Once again, we had a surprise video call from author Liz Pichon – who writes the Tom Gates novels.
Liz talked about where she gets inspiration for her stories and how she plans out the novels before writing. She talked us through how she draws the doodles in her stories and we also had a go – what do you think of our front covers?
Finally, she talked about her book: the book of everything! This book has pages that YOU can write and draw on. It is full of funny characters, hilarious stories and fabulous doodles.
Living and Learning: Physical health and fitness
Over the past two weeks, Year 5 have been discussing physical heath and fitness. We looked at the ‘5 ways to wellbeing’.
The children discussed how they were already looking after their wellbeing for each category and then set a target for how they could improve. Some children suggested:
- more exercise
- helping with cooking a healthy dinner
- talking to friends outside of school
- joining a new club
- playing games with family
In our last lesson, we looked at how to keep a balanced lifestyle. We talked about what a balanced lifestyle might look like.
The children identified how different fictional character led a balanced lifestyle and then shared how they themselves kept a balanced lifestyle.
Help at home: Discuss their targets for each category in the ‘5 ways to wellbeing’.
Food Technology: Tomato Sauce
On Friday, Year 5 made a tomato sauce base for pasta.
We worked in small groups to prepare the ingredients and then cook them. We made sure that we washed our hands and wore our aprons for hygiene reasons.
We used the bridge cutting method and the claw cutting method to cut up our vegetables. These methods are the safest way to cut food as they help us from hurting ourselves!
We cooked some pasta alongside our sauce so we could try it!
The recipe for this was sent home with your child today, if they wish to make it at home too.
Living and Learning: health, fitness and mental wellbeing
In our Living and Learning lessons over the last two weeks, we’ve been looking at the importance of wellbeing, including with physical and mental health.
It’s a good idea to dedicate some time in your day towards taking a small break to be present in your surroundings. We discussed some key tips for being aware of life going on around you:
- getting a plant for your home
- taking notice of sights and
sounds outdoors - switching off technology, such
as your mobile phone - taking notice of how your friends
or family are feeling or acting
Help at home by discussing the answers to the above questions that we looked at in class. It’s a great idea to have small goals and keep returning to them and checking in with each other.
Amazing Africa!
In Geography lessons, over the last few weeks, Year 2 have learnt lots about about Kenya in Africa. We have looked closely at the similarities and differences between Kenya and England and Nairobi and Leeds.
The children were able to name physical and human geography in both Nairobi and Leeds.
In writing, we have looked at features of reports and planned our own report about Nairobi. Next week, we will write our reports all about Kenya and Nairobi.
Help at home by asking your child some facts about Nairobi.
Can they name some features of a report?
We are mathematicians!
Over the past couple of weeks in maths Year 1 have been working hard on numbers up to 100. We have been making the numbers using resources as well as breaking apart the numbers into tens and ones. We have looked at one more and one less than any number to 100 as well as comparing two numbers using the greater than (>) and less than (<) signs. The children have done brilliantly and I have been very impressed with their knowledge and how flexibly they can work with these numbers. These will great an amazing foundation for their work in Year 2.
Help at home by talking about numbers to 100 and asking children questions such as ‘What’s one more than _____? What’s one less? How many tens and how many ones are there in _____?’
Summer 1: Week5
What a fantastic week reception have had this week!
We have enjoyed lots of poetry this week. Aswell as learning our Poetry Picnic poem (The Fox), we have been learning other poems about animals we would find on a farm.
English
Here is a video of us perfoming one of our animal poems. The children created their own actions to bring the poem to life.
The children have also enjoyed creating their own farms and zoos. They planned what animals would be in them and worked collaboratively to bring their ideas to life.
English
During the week, we have been discussing the different animals we would find on a farm and their young. The children have been labelling different animals and writing about what they might find on a farm.
Maths
During the week, the children have demostrated some brilliant independent learning. In the areas of provision, children have been placing the correct number of animals in pens, playing the number track game with a partner and building their own staircase to ten using the unifix cubes. This has supported their knowledge development for numbers within ten.
Help at home: by counting to 10 and making your own number track at home to play with.
Living and Learning: I know that being physically active is mentally and physically healthy.
The children came up with ideas as to how they can stay physically healthy:
I can run lots at lunchtime.
I go on my bike really fast to use up all my energy.
We have been continuing our discusions from last week about healthy eating. The children have been making fruit kebabs. They decided what fruit they would like to have on these and enjoyed making them as much as they enjoyed eating them.
Reminder: Friday 24th May is a training day.
Writing – The Flood
In Writing, Year 3 are planning a narrative. A narrative is a story that entertains and interests the reader. Our narrative is going to be based on this picture book called ‘The Flood’.
Features to include:
- description
- action
- dialogue (direct speech)
- different sentence lengths
In today’s lesson, we spent time generating vocabulary to use in our narrative. We tried to describe nouns like the storm, rain and clouds. We used the iPads to find synonyms of words we could think of. Here’s what we found!
Help at home: Can you think of any more adjectives to describe these nouns?