Long Ago - Spring Term 1

In the Long Ago project the children will learn about their history and how they have changed from when they were babies. They will learn about their family history and heritage and find out what life was like when their grandparents were children. They will learn about what it was like to go to school in the past and how everyday objects, such as clothes, toys and vehicles have changed.

Our big question this term is: How have things changed?

Week 6

This week we have been able to continue our understanding of our ‘Long Ago’ topic. We have been able to explore the big question ‘How have things changed?’ by gathering our learning from the term together. We know that objects from the past can look different to objects to the present. We looked at everyday objects such as clothes, vehicles and toys and noticed they change overtime and tell us about the past. We were able to make observations about objects and artefacts from the past relating to everyday life and compare how these have changed and why. We were able to answer a range of questions to enable us to talk about the past and present, events in our life and those who are important to us. We have been able to describe about the past and changes over time.

Culture Day

We had a super fun afternoon on Tuesday, taking part in Culture Day. We learned all about the country China! We were able to explore many things about China such as clothes, food, flag, country, language, and even were able to speak some of the language by counting! We enjoyed being able to write letters and numbers in Chinese but our favourite part was definitely the food tasting! We enjoyed the range of activities to help us with our cultural understanding of China!

Go red in Feb day! 

On the last day of term, Friday 10th February, we had the chance to dress in red to raise money for the British Heart Foundation & Heartlink. We had a super arts and crafts session in the afternoon, decorating pottery and collaging hearts. The children really enjoyed the session. 

Week 5

To start the week, we continued our Heritage and Families aspect of our topic. We looked at family meal picture cards and discussed meal times. We discussed the food we like to eat on different occasions such as birthdays, Christmas and other celebrations. We listened to each other when we were sharing our experiences with each other. We then decorated our own plate with our favourite meal and used the sound mats to label our drawing.

We then moved on to Royalty in the past. We looked at different traditional tales and chose one to read which was Snow White, discussing the royal characters in the book. We discussed that Kings and Queens are known as royalty and some are real people and others are characters in stories. We were able to explore and talk about some photographs that were shared of royalty. We asked lots of questions and listened to each others ideas. We used our independent learning time to make castles out of lego and blocks and used the creative area to make some crowns of our own!

We looked at portraits and understood that artwork was a way of keeping images of people alive from the past. We looked at sculpture picture cards and we understood that artists had the job of creating these. We used play dough and paint to create our own portraits of a royal character and some of us continued to create portraits of royal characters during our independent learning.

This week for our circle time we have been continuing the theme of keeping safe with a focus on online safety. We watched a short clip & learned a song to help us remember what to do if we don't like something that we see on our devices. We then designed t-shirts and drew pictures using the clip to make our own class poster. 

Week 4

This week we continued our Stories and Rhymes companion project and we looked at ‘I can sing a Rainbow’. We were able to use primary and other coloured paints and use a range of method applications. We created our own rainbow paintings! We gained the knowledge that the primary colours are red, yellow and blue. We then sang the song and used our performance skills to perform it to each other, increasingly matching the pitch and increasing the melody.  

We moved onto Heritage and Families and were able to shown an awareness of the similarities and differences between people in different communities and groups from around the world. We know that families are unique and can be of different sizes and have different values, beliefs and traditions. Our families give us our heritage. We learned that in spring each year, Chinese families celebrate Chinese New Year. We were able to compare this with celebrations we know we have.

We learned that every family has history, which makes them different and unique. We were able to talk about the past and present events in our own lives and those who are important to us. We read a story called ‘Coming to England’ by Floella Benjamin, which enabled us to explore her feelings in the story and understand how families are different and how families come together through different experiences. We really enjoyed learning about her life, watching clips of her on 'Play school' and using the globe to explore and see the different countries. We have also been thinking about own our suitcases and deciding what we would pack if we were going to a hot country or a cold country. 

For our PE lesson this week for dance we used the song 'The Hockey Cokey!' We were thinking about how to change our dance style when feeling 'silly' and 'tired', we were very good at changing our posture and movements for the different emotions. 

Week 3

We have been talking about special memories this week. We have understood that memories are things we remember from the past and we learned that our history is all the events that have happened in our life. We looked at how we have changed from being a baby and how people change over their lifetime. We then discussed a personal special memory and drew pictures of them, we even used our writing skills to write about what we had drawn!

Engage: We then moved on to learning about Yearly Changes. We enjoyed discussing how the weather changes across the seasons and ways to describe the weather. We were able to share our experiences of the seasons and weather and share our existing knowledge of this to build upon.

We started our Stories and Rhymes companion project by exploring ‘Helping Humpty’! We learnt that nursery rhymes are traditional children’s songs and rhymes. After singing Humpty Dumpty, we noticed we had received a letter – it was from Humpty Dumpty! He asked us for help as he was worried he wasn’t protected enough and was worried he may break again. We came up with ideas to help him and we then put our ideas to the test to see which was the best idea to help him!

For our PE lesson this week we used the nursery rhyme: Heads, shoulders, knees and toes. We focused on the emotions 'angry' and 'confident' and thought carefully about how to change our speed, posture and movements to match the emotions. We then had a go at dancing in a hula style, making lots of circular movements with our hips and twisting and turning! 

Week 2

This week we have continued to explore the past and how things have changed. We have been able to make observations about old objects such as toys, phones, pens and clothes to understand and explain why these may be modern or old. The children loved being able to relate their knowledge to this activity and share what they know about the past, building from our previous week. The children also learned that antique are often valuable objects from the past and we used our knowledge of a museum to explore antiques.

During one of our lessons, we were able to become historians and find out about life in the past. We went on a hunt for signs and things that tell us about the history and past of our school. We discussed whether we thought our school was modern or old and why we made these decisions. We used the iPads to take photographs of things we found interesting on our hunt.

We have been able to put things in order by looking at different points of our day. We have been able to identify what we do and when and order these in the sequence of the day. We understand what it means by putting things in chronological order and why this is important to Historians. We created our own visual timetable as a class and looked at a clock to see which times in the day we do things. We were certainly experts at being able to identify points in our day and enjoyed trying to use the clock!

For our Guided reading this week we have been using a Julia Donaldson book called: Rosie's Hat. The children really enjoyed this story and noticed that time went by quickly at the beginning of the story but at the end years went by. We worked together using our phonics for writing to create our own story map. 

Week 1

This week we launched our new topic ‘Long Ago’.

We discussed the past and present and what we know about the past and present. We understand that in the past something has already happened. We learned that we remember the past using our memory and we discussed memories we have from the past and things that we remember that have already happened. We then looked at artifacts and toys from the past and discussed how they have changed. We then understood what a museum was and then explored our own Toy Museum in the classroom. 

For our PE this term we are focusing on dance. This week we used the nursery rhyme 'I'm a little tea pot'. We performed the dance using different emotions: happy & sad, thinking about how to change our speed and movements in accordance to the emotions.