We have been reading the story Avocado Baby and using it as inspiration for our writing. In the story the baby would only eat avocado which made him very strong. 
It got us all thinking what avocados might smell, feel and taste like. 

​

Miss Ashton bought 2 avocado, we started by looking at and feeling the skin, we noticed it was bumpy but soft. After this we cut it open to find the stone inside. We all felt the stone and had a smell inside the avocado. The everyone had a slice of avocado to feel and taste. Almost everyone was brave enough to try the avocado and everyone was well mannered and respectful. Most of us were unsure about the flavor, some of us really didn't like it and a couple of us said we would try it again!  

Once all the tasting was done we were left with two avocado stones. We wondered if we would be able to plant them, we watched a video that explained to us how to grow a new avocado from the stone by suspending it in water. We gathered the things we needed and got to work. This is how they look now, we have put them in the windowsill and keep checking for changes! 

We had a fantastic time on our school trip to Cannon Hall Farm. For most of us this was our first every school trip and everyone was on their best behavior. Year 1 proudly represented our school by being respectful, calm and doing their best listening all day. 

We learnt a lot about our science topic (Animals including humans) while on our trip. We got to see different mammals, reptiles, fish, birds and amphibians. We made sure to notice different animals characteristics so we knew which group they belonged too. 

We started our trip and the farm by having a tour around the indoor animals, we learnt lots of information about how different animals grow and how they are cared for. After this we all went on a tractor ride before breaking for lunch. After lunch we had a look around the reptile house and the mammal house. We then finished our day with a well deserved play on the park. 

In maths we have been working hard to partition numbers in to 2 parts. We are now progressing to using the plus symbol to combine both parts to make a whole. Today we represented this using counters and a whiteboard. We worked together with a partner to partition 6 counters in different ways and then represent the parts using numerals and the plus symbol. 

We have been practicing spotting mistakes and correcting our writing. We first read through our writing and focused on looking for finger spaces, full stops and capital letters all in the right place. After this we looked at our handwriting and took the time to fix any incorrect letter formation. Finally we read our sentence again and checked if we could add anything extra. 
We are all becoming fantastic writiers! 

This week in DT we have continued to explore books with moving parts. We started by reading 'The Gingerbread Man'. We thought the book would be so much more exciting if it had moving parts. 
Next we used a scene from the story, when the Gingerbread man is being chased, we added colour to our scene before choosing a character to colour. After this we carefully cut a long slit in the paper, making sure not to cut it off! We then added our character to a stick and fed it through the slit. Now are character can move like they're chasing the Gingerbread man!  

This week we started our first DT topic, Books with moving parts! Our end goal will be for us to degisn and make our own picture with a moving part. 
First we started off by looking at some books with different moving parts. We evaluated the books by answering key questions such as 'how did it move?' and 'how did it work?' Next we compared books with each other and tried to notice what was the same, what was different and how the books with similar. 

On Thursday our Elf had completely disappeared..he didn't even make any mess! We were all so upset, so we made a plan to get him back. We decided we must show our Elf that we really are full of Christmas cheer, we made sure to sing lots of Christmas songs all morning hoping he would return after lunch. 
We came back excited after lunch but...Elvis the elf was still nowhere to be seen. We made a new plan, to decorate our classroom and hope he came back in the morning and.....

IT WORKED!  Elvis came back and made his biggest mess yet! 

Merry Christmas everyone!  

In writing this week we have been learning to use the pronoun 'I' and remembering that no matter where it is in the sentence that it needs to be a capital letter. 
We learnt that we use the word 'I' when we are writing about ourselves or if we are writing as someone else. 
We practiced this skill by pretending to be Cindy-Lou writing a letter to the Grinch. We thought about what Cindy would have heard, seen, and how she would have felt when the Grinch stole Christmas. 
Our writing turned out fantastic, so much that we had to write it up on a special sheet! 

Today we did our last performance of our show A Christmas Recipe. Everyone has worked so incredibly hard and everyone should feel so proud of their performance. 
Year 1, you sang your hearts out, sat beautifully and put on a fantastic show for everyone, well done! 

Today we finished our art unit on 3D modeling. 
Last week we rolled the clay out, using a paper template and a clay knife we cut out the the Christmas tree shape. We left the trees to dry and harden. 
Now the trees have hardened its time to paint them. We used green and brown paint to make them look just like Christmas trees. We had to take care to be gentle as even though the clay had hardened our decorations were still fragile.