Year 1 have been very busy actively participating in their home learning. Here are a few examples of what they have been doing at home:
Acts of Kindness:
During this term’s period of home learning Year 1 have been blessing their families and impressing them with their skills in the kitchen. Enis, Emily, Irina, Emran and Kelly look very comfortable prepping vegetables. The salads, pizza, strawberry cake, cupcakes and orange juice that Year 1 made all look absolutely delicious. Emran and Irina presented their Acts of Kindness as a power point. They shared their power points to the class on Zoom.
Year 1 proved their expertise in the kitchen but they also excelled at being kind in other ways as well. For example, Noah-Hussain did jobs and tidied his bedroom, James helped to walk his three dogs, Izah fed her little brother and Caitlin regularly waters all her plants. Irina helps to sort the family’s rubbish and is learning how to recycle. She designed a poster and photo collage of how she is recycling at home. Emily and Emran confidently read books to their grandparents on Zoom. Emily read Farmer Duck and Emran read Mr Large in Charge. Year 1 also wrote letters to show their appreciation to people in their community.
Learning About Food and Making Salads
In our Science topic on plants we learned about farming and where our food comes from. Year 1 created their own farm and drew what they would grow if they owned a farm. As part of their learning, the children spent time emptying cupboards and fridges at home looking closely at what they eat. The class examined all the vegetables they could find and noted differences in colour, shape and size. The observational drawings of these vegetables were very realistic and looked good enough to eat.
Mrs Taylor read the story Carrot Soup which included a recipe to make this soup. However, we decided that it was too warm for vegetable soups and to make a healthy salad instead. Many children rose to the challenge of turning some fresh vegetables into a salad for all of their family to enjoy a healthy meal.
Learning About Money
For their topic learning about money, Year 1 set up shop at home. They were quick to work out how much to charge their customers and how to calculate the right change. They all practised using real money. This was a fun way to end our topic after learning all about identifying British coins and notes and answering a variety of questions involving money.
Irina set up a dinosaur museum at home and charged visitors a very reasonable entrance fee of 50p. Once inside customers could visit the shop inside the museum. Enis set up a mini Sainsburys at home and used an interactive calculator to check he had given the right change.
Studying Flowers
Year 1 have been learning about plants this half-term. To kick start this new topic the children received a surprise postal delivery of some sunflower and sweet pea seeds to sow at home. During some live Science lessons and video, the children were given precise instructions as to how to sow their seeds. We also had a go at making our own environmentally friendly and biodegradable plant containers out of an egg carton. Each week, children have been completing a sunflower diary to chart the progress of their plant and to measure and record its growth. In Zoom form-time we have been comparing and looking at each other’s plants. Some children have sowed other plants like cucumbers as well.
Mrs Taylor wrote a letter to the children about their seeds and how to look after them and everyone wrote Mrs Taylor wonderful letters in reply. After everyone in the class sowed their seeds the children wrote and drew instructions as a way of showing what they had done.
To finish our unit of work on sunflowers the class made sunflowers and wrote the lifecycle of the sunflower inside. During Art lessons, the sunflowers that were painted were stunning. We looked at Van Gogh’s masterpiece for inspiration and then challenged ourselves to create our own.
We studied some of Georgia O’Keeffe’s fabulous flower paintings. We liked her use of bright, vivid colours and her close-ups zooming right into the centre of the flowers. In our home learning we used magnifying glasses to help us with our own observational drawings of flowers that we found around us and then used paint and collage to replicate these.
