Science – plants
This half term in science we are studying plants. First of all we talked about what we already knew about plants. We knew so much and we named about 10-15 different types of flowers!
In our first lesson last week, we looked at some onion bulbs and talked about how bulbs are different to seeds. Can your child name any other plants that grow from bulbs?
We planted some onion bulbs in some soil and gave them a good water.
We also set up an experiment where we took away something from the bulb. One bulb had water and soil but no light. Another had water and light but no soil and the final bulb had light and soil but no water. Which one do you think will grow the best?
Today, we checked on our bulbs after they have been growing for one week. We were very impressed by the results!
Help at home by talking to your child about plants you can see in the park or the garden. What are they called? How do they grow? Can you name the parts of the plant?
Living and Learning: health and prevention
Over the last fortnight Year 1 have been learning all about what keeps us healthy. We started off by discussing all the things we knew about staying healthy. We knew lots and lots, I was very impressed.
In the first week, we learnt about the sun. The sun can provide us with lots of things we need, like vitamin D for strong bones, but we need to be really careful in the sun too. As a class we discussed the dangers of the sun: heat stroke, eye damage and sunburn.
We knew all the things we needed to keep safe too:
- sun cream
- hats
- water
- wearing long sleeves
You have to put sun cream on so your skin doesn’t get damaged.
Drink lots of water when you are in the sun.
In the second week, we learnt about the importance of good sleep.
We talked about what makes a good sleep routine and why it is so important to get a good sleep to keep us healthy. We had lots of good ideas of what makes a good bedtime routine.
Help at home by talking to your children about how to keep healthy and helping them make healthy choices.
PE with Foot-Tech Academy
This half term we are very lucky to have Foot-Tech Academy come into Moortown to help us with our PE learning. We will be practising three different skills: run, jump and throw. This week we learnt how to control our speed and movements when running. We each picked up a cone and pretended it was a steering wheel and we were driving a car. We had to change gears depending on how fast we were going! Hula hoops were roundabouts and we needed to make sure we slowed right down in order to go around the roundabout. There were even bridges to jump over.
We had a brilliant time and we can’t wait to continue our learning for the rest of the half term.
Coronation celebration – Themed Menu 05 May 2023
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu for the Coronation Celebration on Friday 05 May 2023. See the menu here.
Please contact the office, in the next few days, if your child would like a school dinner on this day (no action needed if your child normally has a school meal on this day).
Big Walk and Wheel final results
After the two week Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge, we now have the final results.
In our category of small primary schools, we finished in 24th place out of 514 schools with an average of 91.14% of our journeys to school being active. We achieved the highest national (24th) and Northern England (5th) ranking out of those schools in Leeds taking part.
This is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.
We hope these active journeys continue as by walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.
Living and Learning: MindMate
This half term our Living and Learning lessons are based around the MindMate learning themes of emotions and friendships.
Our first lesson was based around strong emotions and exploring and describing how it feels to be sad/unhappy.
We thought about how others might express feelings of unhappiness and if they did feel unhappy, to practise asking, and listening to, others about what makes them unhappy.
We reinforced that everyone feels sad or unhappy at times and that’s natural.
In our circle time on the same theme, the children suggested some things to do if they were feeling sad.
Would it help if…
- you talked to a friend or a trusted adult
- you wrote down how you felt
- you played with a friend or brother or sister
- you did something you enjoyed
- you did some exercise
As part of this lesson, we did two of the mindfulness exercises taken from this website. The children enjoyed this very much and focussed excellently.
In the second lesson, we started by working together to match emotions to the pictures and explaining the choices.
We recognised all the emotions from our own lives and that a person’s facial expressions often say how they are feeling. We also discussed how our bodies might change in other ways when we feel strong emotions (clenched fist, red cheeks etc..)
This video of two friends shows lots of characteristics of a good friendship and a healthy relationship. Friends do have fall outs and we talked about what to say to someone who is feeling upset because they have fallen out with a friend, being teased or is feeling left out.
This was done by putting themselves in their shoes.
Help at home – ask your child to practise what they might say to someone who is being teased or feeling left out.
Design and Technology: food preparation
This week, Year 1 have prepared, eaten and evaluated some overnight oats. This is part of our Living and Learning (healthy eating) and Design & Technology (food preparation) learning.
The children have thoroughly enjoyed it and have used lots of different food preparation skills and techniques.
Then we got to taste it! Yum!
The recipe has been sent home so you can ask your child to demonstrate their cookery skills at home over the holidays!
Smart Money Award 2023
Today, we welcomed Nicola and Linda from HSBC to our whole school assembly to present us with our Smart Money Award 2023.
This is awarded for financial education lessons which took place in school for all classes last summer as part of our Living and Learning curriculum.
Nicola combined this visit with some more financial education for the children.
Big Walk and Wheel – getting active on the way to school
It’s been a great start to Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge this week.
After the first five days, we are currently in 14th place (out of 514 schools) in the small primary category with an average of 90.36% of our journeys to school being active. This is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.
To keep up with the leader board for the rest of the challenge, it can be viewed here.
Thank you to those families who brought along bikes to the bike register event too. Nineteen bikes were registered at school.
By walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.
The Big Walk and Wheel challenge continues until Friday 31st March so we look forward to seeing our progress over the upcoming week.
A special visitor!
Today, Year 1 had a special visitor come into class. Our local councillor, Mahalia France Mir, came to talk to us about the letters we sent to her before half term. She was very impressed with our writing and our arguments for improving safety around the shops near school. She explained what her job entails and how she helps the local community solve problems. We asked some great questions!
This followed on from our trip to the shops with the police last Tuesday to hand out warning tickets to local drivers. We are very proud of ourselves for making a difference in our locality.
Well done Year 1!
