Time Travel – A stroll around the houses
Our new Big Topic is Time Travel. Year 1 and 2 are focussing on houses through time. To kick off, we’ve all gone for a walk to see what the houses around us look like today. There are lots of different houses all around the small area near school so just imagine how many different styles we’ll see across thousands of years.
We had to be careful as the streets have been very slippery this week.
We saw detached houses, semi-detached house, bungalows and flats all in our mile long walk! I wonder what different houses we’ll see as we travel through time?
Creative homework
What can you make out of the rubbish (recycling) in your house?
What a great response to this week’s homework! I’ve seen lots of amazing work in books as well as models we brought into school. Here are some things we created…
16 January 2015
This week’s homework is creative homework. Apologies that this homework has been posted later than normal – because of this, it is not expected to be handed in until Thursday 22 January.
Do all the things in my kitchen cupboards weigh the same?
This homework is creative but is reinforcing some learning that has happened in Maths. After looking at measuring mass (weight) this week, it will be interesting for the children to look in their kitchen cupboards and look at the weights of different products. This could be presented in a variety of ways:
- photos with labels showing mass
- drawings with labels showing mass
- comparisons of different products and their masses
- pictures / photos of products that do weigh the same
- photos of children cooking something and weighing the ingredients
16 January 2015
Here are this week’s spellings. There will be a spelling test on Friday 23 January. Apologies for not posting these before now.
|
Red Group |
Yellow Group |
Green Group |
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said |
curl |
swimming |
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so |
world |
digging |
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was |
learn |
jogging |
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he |
first |
running |
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she |
thirsty |
throwing |
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we |
stronger |
chewing |
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faster |
talking |
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third |
waving |
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|
taking |
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dancing |
Our new neighbours
Some of you may know that, here at Moortown Primary School, we’ll soon have new neighbours. The building next door, which used to be Search Laboratories, is soon to become a nursery and a pre-school and after school care provider. Whilst we don’t endorse one provider over another, we thought you might like to hear more about this news as it’s so local to our school. Here’s a message from the new owners:
Hello there. I’m Helen Gration and I’m honoured to have gained planning permission to open the ‘Moortown Montessori Nursery’ next to your outstanding school.
Our passion for supporting children in their early years reflects the same values that have right here in your school – high-quality care, outstanding education, and staff with some of the best hearts in childcare. Our nursery will be open 7.30am – 6.30pm and there’ll be an out-of-school service for those who need it too. We already have two children’s nurseries in York where we have gained ‘outstanding’ judgements from Ofsted and we’ll be bringing those values with us.
Work on the Old Chapel next door will start very soon and we’re heading for an opening for the Summer term. We’ll keep you posted but, if you’ve any questions, you can email us on leedsmontnurtury@aol.co.uk. We look forward to seeing you in the neighbourhood!
Time travel
Our new whole school Big Topic, Time Travel, got underway today with Year 1 and 2 focussing on houses and homes.
The first challenge was to work as a group to put the different types of houses in chronological order according to when they were built. There was lots of discussion about what the houses looked like and what they were made of. The next task was to match the inside of the house to the outside.
The first types of houses we investigated were Celtic houses and we concluded that houses certainly have changed over time.
We’re learning about history.
We enjoyed a visit from Time Striders today and learnt lots about the history of Britain.
The Tin Forest
For the first two weeks of Spring Term, we’ve enjoyed a book called The Tin Forest by Helen Ward. This tells the tale of an old man who lives on the edge of nowhere, near forgotten, whose house is surrounded by other people’s rubbish.
We started our mini topic by looking at the pictures and developing our prediction and inference skills for reading.
We wondered about who might live in the abandoned house and whether we’d like to go there ourselves. It was a unanimous NO!
Then we thought about who might live in this house and what sort of questions we might want to ask that person. Here are some of our ideas…
After writing a diary entry as the old man; a letter to a real person who lives on a dump; a description of the final forest; and a poem… we made our very own Tin Forest!
Keep visiting our news feed for weekly updates on the forest and how it is growing and thank you to those of you who contributed to our tin tree trunks.
16 January 2015
This week’s homework is creative and is due on Wednesday 21 January.
What can you make out of the rubbish (recycling) you produce in your home?
Look around the house at the things you’re throwing away and think about what you could make out of them. The old man made a forest out of tin – think about useful, attractive and magical things you could make.
This homework is creative so you could decide to actually make an item and take a picture or bring it into school or you might want to design something in your homework book (especially if you’ve got an idea as big as the forest the old man made).
Phonics open mornings
We have three fun phonics sessions for parents this week. Don’t worry if you haven’t requested a session, just turn up on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday at 9am.
See you there!