Our Cornerstones project this term is called Bright Lights, Big City. In the Bright Lights, Big City project, your child will take part in a royal garden party and learn about Queen Elizabeth II. They will learn about the countries that make up the United Kingdom, including their location, capital cities and some of their physical and human features. They will have the opportunity to do map work, using compasses and positional and directional language to plan routes. They will research the cause and impact of the Great Fire of London and look at some famous London landmarks. They will learn about other capital cities around the world, including Kuala Lumpur, and compare how they are similar and different to London.

All of these wonderful learning experiences will help us to answer this projects Big Question: What do you know about the United Kingdom?

Week 12

WOW Event

We have had such a wonderful WOW event this week, celebrating Diwali!

We played music, did lots of Diwali craft and ate Diwali food. 

Thank you to all the adults who came to join in the fun!

Week 11

Religious Education

For our innovate challenge this week, we thought about luck.

We asked ourselves:

What is good luck? Are you lucky? Can you think of three lucky things? Can people make good luck? Is everyone in the world lucky? Why do Hindus ask Lakshmi for good luck?

We picked a present out of a ‘lucky dip’ bag and unwrapped it. The items were all simple, every day items and we discussed how we must always remember how lucky we are to have these things when so many people in the world don't. We then thought about what we would put in our own lucky bag and why we chose them.

For the second part of the lesson, we compared the celebration of Diwali to another celebration that we are all familiar with, Christmas.

Week 9

Art

This week has been our innovate challenge where we have combined all of our skills to create a piece of art.

We used our art sketchbooks to reflect on the previous skills developed in shape, line and texture, all revolving around weather motifs.

The first part of our innovate challenge was to choose a weather motif and created a collagraph using different materials. We thought hard about the textures and what effect they would give when printing. 

We then used ink and rollers to make weather prints from our collagraph. Can you guess which weather motif we each selected?

Maths

We have had great fun measuring length this week!

Week 8

Religious Education

This week, in RE, we worked hard to make decorate our classroom for Diwali in order to welcome the Hindu Goddess, Lakshmi.

We used our diva lamps to light the way and decorated with Rangoli patterns and posters.

Week 7

Art

Using our previous knowledge about the textures of different materials, we explored the process of collagraphy. We chose various materials to see what effect they created when printing. It was messy, but so much fun!

Week 6

Art

As part of our Bright Lights, Big City project, we did an art lesson based around drawing London landmarks.

We looked at the work completed by the very talented Stephen Wiltshire who has a photographic memory. He looks at city landscapes and draws them from memory.

We chose a London landmark and talked about it with a partner.

We then hid the photographs to produce sketches from memory. Take a look at the following drawings and see if you can guess the landmarks!

Week 5

Art

This week, in groups, we have been exploring different textures of a selection of materials.

We then came back together as a class and reflected on how the materials felt.

Writing

During our writing lesson today we used books and Ipads to find out as much information as we could about London.

Geography

We had great fun finding our capital city, London, on Google Earth. We were amazed at how big it was!

It was very exciting zooming in on the different landmarks. Once we had done this and learnt a bit more information about them, we produced posters in our pairs.

Week 4 

Religious Education

People who follow the religion of Hinduism see Diwali as a time for new beginnings. We learnt about how new clothes are bought, houses are cleaned and gifts are bought to celebrate this. The people of Hindu faith believe that Diwali signifies being able to put the last year into the past and look forward to the future.

As a class, we created our own tree. We all had a leaf and thought hard about how we could make sure, from now on, that we could all live, learn and grow together harmoniously. We look forward to our new beginning!

Week 3

Science

We had a fantastic lesson today observing signs of Winter. 

We then made our own predictions about what changes we may see as Winter changes to Spring. We are all looking forward to some of these signs of Spring.

Art and Design

To start our Art and Design companion project, Rain and Sunrays, we looked at different weather motifs. In pairs, we then designed our own weather motifs using a range of different natural materials.

Week 2 

Religious Education

We had great fun decorating out Diva lamps!

Literacy 

This week in literacy we have began learning all about Traditional Tales. The children began the week acting out the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We certainly have some budding actors in the class and the children worked hard to add expression and use their facial expressions when retelling the story.

Week 1

Religious Education

We have begun our new exciting project this week, exploring the Hindu celebration of Diwali.

For our memorable experience, we made Diva lamps. Hindus use the lamps to remind them of a special story, The Demon King, where Rama and Sita were welcomed back to the town with lovely Diva lights. The Diva lamps are also used to welcome important visitors into their home during Diwali, in particular, Goddess of Wealth, Lakshmi.

We then watched a video clip about what it is like in a Hindu temple.

As a class, we reflected on what happens in the Mandir. We also discussed how worship takes place at home and how a Puja set is used.