Design and Technology

March 2025

This term in design and technology, the children have each followed a design criteria to make their own windmill. The children firstly looked at a range of real life windmills and we discussed what their purpose was and how they work. We then thought about what materials we could use to make our own. The children followed instructions really well and showed great designing, cutting and constructing skills. Once the windmills were made, the children tested them in a variety of ways, both inside and outside. All the windmills moved when exposed to direct wind, although some more than others, which lead on to some great discussions about possible reasons for this. The children then evaluated their windmills against the design criteria. 

Art - Exploring watercolour 

February 2025

This term in Art, Year 1 have explored watercolour. The children have learned that watercolour paint has special characteristics, that we can use the element of surprise or accident to create art, and that we can develop and enhance our paintings by adding lines and shapes. 

The children enjoyed looking at famous art pieces created by artist Emma Burleigh, they also watched some videos of Emma Burleigh discussing her art work and giving advice on how to use water colour and where to start. The children found Emma's work and advice really inspiring and helpful, allowing them to go off and be creative with their own art work. The children worked really well with their mediums and all painted wonderful pieces and even reflected on their work, later on enhancing some of it by adding extra lines and shapes.

History - Toys old and new 🧸🦄🪀⚽️🏓🛝🛼🎲🧩🎮

January 2025

This term in our History topic, we are learning about toys in the past and toys in the present. To help us with this topic, we had a very special visitor in our class called Barbara. Barbara came in to chat to the children about toys that she used to play with when she was younger. She brought in some very old dolls, an old Mickey Mouse teddy, some plasticine, and some wooden blocks. She also told the children about television programs that she used to watch, including Bill and Ben and Muffin the Mule. The children enjoyed asking her lots of really good questions and they learned so much about how toys have changed over the years. 

Design and Technology 

December 2025

This term in Design and Technology, as part of our cooking and nutrition topic, we have worked towards making smoothies. The children have learned about a wide range of fruit and vegetables and how to identify and distinguish between them. They have learned about where fruit and vegetables come from, for example underground or above ground. The children have enjoyed practicing food preparation skills and testing out ingredients, ready to make their recipe. All the planning and preparation was then put into practice when the children made they very own smoothies. They independently cut up their fruit, poured their juice and prepared it all, ready to go into the blender, for the teachers to mix it all up. The children enjoyed trying their finished products and then they evaluated them.

Art Day with Artist - Anne Blankson-Hemans

On Friday 15th November, the Year 1 children enjoyed a full day of Art with Anne Blankson-Hemans. The children worked with different mediums such as charcoal, pencils, felt tips, chalks and oil pastels to see what different effects they could make when drawing lines, circles and spirals. It was a wonderful day and the children were all really inspired by Anne and all produced some fantastic art work. 

Local walk 

17th October 2024

Today we went for a walk around our local area - Kells. We spotted lots of different places on our walk including the pharmacy, our church, the local shop, the playpark, the local fish and chip shop and we even saw Haig Pit. The children had a great time looking for features of our local area and we also looked for signs of Autumn too. We saw lots of trees with orange and brown leaves on them. The walk has really helped to consolidate the children's knowledge of our Geography topic 'What is it like here?', as we've spent lots of time looking at Google Earth and at aerial maps of our local area, so it was very useful for the children to explore the area more closely. 

Literacy - Autumn 2024

This term in Literacy, our focus texts have included the fictional story ‘The Tiger who came to Tea’, the non-fictional book ‘Tigers in danger’ and a poem called ‘Tea with Aunty Mabel’. The children have completed lots of wonderful tasks in connection with these texts; including letters, invitations, instructions, a fact file and a poetry performance. The children were also lucky enough to have their very own tiger tea party, which included following their own written instructions to make sandwiches and then they enjoyed eating their finished products with a cup of juice and a cake, just like in the story! 

Geography - Autumn 2024

This term our topic is called ‘What is it like here?’ The children have been learning all about our country, the United Kingdom and the four countries within it. They have learned more about our local town Whitehaven and they have learned about aerial photographs and have also and made their own ‘messy maps’. More recently, the children have looked at our own playground map and the key on it, which shows us what all the features are and where they are located. 

Science - Autumn 2024

This term our topic is called ‘Animals including humans’. The children have taken part in lots of interesting activities to help them with their knowledge of the human body and our senses and also about different types of animals and the categories that they belong in and what their diets are.