21.10.14- Our windy trip to Poundbury

What a brilliant day we had! After a very blustery walk to the Garden Centre we split into two groups. Poundbury Garden Centre were very generous and gave each child a pot, daffodil bulb and two pansies. After having a snack supplied by the Garden Centre we had a look at the Christmas display before heading to Odette and Katherine's Grandma's for lunch.

 

 

Once we had lunch we met Steve from Fry's building contractors on Poundbury. Every child then got the chance to build their own wall. This was a fantastic experience for all of the children to take part in. All of the children thrived in the outside environment and there were some very straight walls built! Steve and Dexter, the builders in Poundbury, even gave each child a High Vis jacket to take home!

 

We will put the photos on the whiteboard tomorrow. We would like to say thank you to everyone that made our trip brilliant! Parent helpers, Poundbury Garden Centre, Odette and Katherine's Grandma, Building Contractors and of course all of the children that walked quite a long well today and were conscientious, considerate and co-operative learners.

Right to a home in India

Mr Farrington came into Year 1 yesterday to talk about his visits to India. The children learnt about how houses in India are as different from each other as they are in this country.

POWSA AGM

Just a quick reminder that the POWSA AGM is happening this Thursday 23rd October 19.45 in the school staffroom.
This is a great opportunity to meet the current POWSA Committee, find out what we do for the school and enjoy home made goodies! We are a committed, friendly but small band of parents and we are always looking for new members. the level of your involvement in planning, implementing and running POWSA events is entirely up to you. We don't expect you to be at every meeting and at every event from start to finish but with more members and if we all do a little bit then there is plenty of time for us all to enjoy each event with our families as well as helping out.
It is a lot of fun and in return you receive a huge amount of satisfaction and feeling of pride that you have raised funds which are used to help all our children and our fantastic school.
Please consider coming along and finding out a bit more. Hope to see you there, POWSA.

The Great PoW Poetry Competition!!!!!! Get Writing!!!!!

What a wonderful, exciting and inspiring time of year we are immersed in - beautiful autumnal colours, leaves floating to the ground and flooding the pavements, conkers peppering the streets, crackling fires, Diwali, Halloween, Bonfire Night, moving towards winter and all the excitement of Christmas............so let's fire up our creativity and use it to compose a poem!

I am thrilled to announce The Great PoW Poetry Competition!

The theme is Autumn/Winter.

BE AS CREATIVE AS YOU LIKE! Your poem can be as long or as short as you like, it can rhyme or not, you can use any particular style (Acrostic, Haiku, Tanka, rhyming couplets........) However you choose to construct your poem make sure it conveys the theme, remember the presentation of you poem is important too and why not illustrate it as well!!!!!

For Reception ONLY: if writing your own poem is a bit tricky, why not find a favourite poem about this theme and try to copy it, get an adult to help you write one, use a computer or even record yourself reciting one!

There will be one winner per class so, PUT YOUR NAME AND CLASS ON YOUR ENTRY AND HAND IT IN TO YOUR CLASS TEACHER BY FRIDAY 7th NOVEMBER.

The winners will also be displayed on the New Golden Writing Wall!!!!!

We are a very creative school with a bubbling and overflowing imagination so I would love to see as many of you as possible having a go...........then we can have more competitions like this!!!!!

Get writing!!!!!!!

Good Luck - Mrs. Johnson (Literacy Coordinator)

20.10.14- Poundbury trip tomorrow and the start of our Rights Respecting Week

Year 1 are really looking forward to our Poundbury trip tomorrow. Please make sure your child brings a coat and sensible shoes that you don't mind getting dirty as we will be going on to a builders site! 

We started off our Rights Respecting Week with a visit from Mr Farrington where we looked at 'The Right to a Home'. We specifically looked at homes in India that Mr Farrington has visited. The children compared the home to their own home. 

17.10.14- Home learning for next week

In Literacy today we finished off our work looking at homes from around the world. The children have looked at teepees, tree houses and floating homes in China. Why not ask your child which one they looked at. Can they tell you any of the facts? 

We have sent home some Maths home learning to help the children consolidate their work on money. Please can the sheets come back in to school by Tuesday. 

Hope you have a great weekend. Next week brings our themed week looking at our Rights as well as our trip on Tuesday. Next week we will also be introducing spellings in to Year 1. You will be receiving a letter about how this will work and how you an support your child. 

Year 1 Team 

Important information about Poundbury trip on Tuesday!

On Tuesday we will be walking to Poundbury and leaving at around 9.10am. Please make sure your child has appropriate clothing depending on the weather. They need to wear their school top but can wear home trousers and sensible comfortable shoes/trainers. All children will need a rain coat. 

All children that have booked a cooked lunch for the Tuesday will not need to bring a packed lunch. These children will be provided with a packed lunch. All they will need to bring is a small rucksack that they can wear on their back to carry the lunch in. The garden centre will be providing us with a drink and snack so no need to worry about a drinks bottle or snack either. 

Just to confirm children need rain coats, rucksack to hold lunches and sensible footwear. 

Asking questions, money, Kandinsky and trains!

What a fantastic start to the week! It is great to see so many brilliant pieces of home learning. Well done everyone who has bought us some writing, maths, pictures and maps. We do try and share and praise every piece of home learning either on a one to one basis, to the whole class or with Mr Farrington.

In Music this week we have listened to the song 'The little train of Caipira’ . The track is a motive track that tells the story of a train travelling through Brazil. The children listened to the track and thought about what the train was doing (faster tempo-train was travelling down hill). Then they drew what they thought that train looked like at a particular part in the track.

In Literacy we are looking at how to ask questions using the five main openers

This week we will be looking at the topic question: How many types of houses are there? The children will be learning about different homes and cultures from around the world.

In Maths we have started to look at money. On Monday we were concentrating on looking at how many pennies are in 5p,10p, 20p and 50p. We have now moved on to adding two amounts of money together using 1ps to help. So if you have the chance to at any point please do let the children count the coins in your purses/piggy banks.

In Art today we started to look at the artist Kandinsky. Half of the class started to make their abstract trees based on one of Kandinsky's pictures whilst the other half worked with Miss Richards looking at changing materials in Science. Keep an eye out in the Year 2 classroom over the next week to see the abstract trees develop!

Thank you for all the kind offers to join us on our trip on Tuesday. We now have enough helpers.

Harvest Celebration Success!

 

Thank you everyone that donated to our Harvest festival this morning and to our café this morning. Year 1 have had a brilliant day! We were really proud of them this morning singing 'A farmer's life for me' and the tractor and trailer was our contribution to the Harvest art.  

Today we finished off our senses poem about bread. This afternoon we visited the café and the children got to choose two items to eat. We didn't get to taste the Banana loaves we made but we hope that who ever bought them thought they were tasty. 

 

This week we have noticed that many children do not have their books/book bags in school. Please can we have all of them in next week as we do Guided Reading everyday and encourage regular book changes in the library. When your child does change their library books can you also make sure that they scan them back in to the system first as we have lots of books outstanding that children say they have bought back. Thank you.

 

Lastly, I just wanted to share our poem of the week given to us by Rosa. It is a great poem by Spike Milligan

 

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!                             

Our visitors from DMS

It was fantastic to host the Year 5's from Dorchester Middle School. Mrs Ray bought her class in to share their stories. Mrs Ray read a story written by Jill Murphy called 'On the Way Home' . It was about a little girl that hurt her knee and met lots of different people on her way back home and told them all a different story about how it happened.

 

The Year 5 children then had to write their own story about how they lost their homework and think of lots of excuses, like how a hurricane blew it away or Santa Claus took it! Year 1 were very good listeners and thoroughly enjoyed their time with Year 5.

Fairtrade, cheese and poems!

Throughout the week we have been learning about Fair trade and in particular Bananas. Year 1 have watched a very interesting video on how bananas are harvested and we discussed what fair trade is and why it is important. We have then ordered and wrote about banana production. Miss Richards and Year 1 have made some delicious smelling banana loaves using Fair Trade products for the Harvest café on Friday afternoon at 2.30pm. If you are also a keen baker please feel free to donate more food to the café for us to sell.

In Literacy the children have been developing their poetry skills. We have been using our senses to describe apples and crusty bread. As groups we have come up with some brilliant descriptions such as crumbly, crunchy, spongy, fresh, juicy, sweet, curved. Tomorrow we will be using all of our ideas to write our own poems.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the week this week we are looking at where our food comes from. We have learnt all about cheese and watched a video explaining how cheese is made. Year 1 have also had the chance to taste two strengths of cheese. So far most of the children have preferred the mild cheddar!

I hope to see lots of you for the Harvest celebration assembly on Friday morning at 9.20am.

Just a reminder- Our school trip to Poundbury Garden Centre is on Tuesday 21st October. If you haven't had the chance to come on a trip with us yet and would like to please see one of the adults in Year 1. We need a few parent helpers and want to give everyone a chance to come out and learn with us on this brilliant trip.

Can anybody help?

On the 20th of October we will be having a Rights Respecting Week to celebrate 25 years of the UNCRC. 

The Children's Voice have decided that they would like to see some of the UNICEF articles of the Rights of the Child displayed in our school entrance. Each year group will be designing and making a flag portraying one of the articles. 

This is where we need your help! We are looking for some plain white flat sheets usually used for bedding that we could have please. As an Eco School we encourage recycling old unwanted items so was wondering if anyone has any old sheets that we could have for our project please. If so please can you either give them to your child's class teacher or pass them on to Mrs Thorpe in Year 1. 

Many thanks 

Harvest celebration- This Friday

First of all I just wanted to apologise for the lack of blogging I have had no internet! A huge well done to all the children for their fantastic effort in our assembly on Friday I was very proud of all of them. They showed how confident they are becoming!

This week we are focussing on Farm to Fork; specifically looking at where cheese comes from. We will also be investigating Fair trade and how we get Bananas in our supermarkets. As well as this we will be doing lots of Harvest activities including poem writing, cooking and singing.

Please join us on Friday at 9.20am for our Harvest celebration assembly. Then at 2.30pm for our Harvest Café. The children are invited to bring a 20p donation which they can spend at the cafe with their class. We will have our Harvest display up for you all to see. If you can spare any cans or food products for our Harvest collection that would be very much appreciated.

Whole school home learning

This week all children will be bringing home a whole school home learning project. We are really proud to be a Rights Respecting School and will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the UNCRC in the week beginning 20th October (more information to follow soon).

Article 8 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child:

‘We have a right to an identity’

We are going to be designing a school flag to be displayed at The Thomas Hardye School as part of our DASP Rights Week Project (starting on the 20^th October). We would like the children to design something we can add on our flag linked to our theme. One design from each class will be chosen by the Children’s Voice. It could be a picture they draw or suitable quote/words. Why are the children proud to be them? What makes them special? All entries to be given to class teachers by the 10^th of October.