Summer Term- Week 1 25th April '25

Welcome back to a new term. We hope that you all had a lovely Easter. The children have had a busy start to the summer term. On Wednesday we were been introduced to our value for this term - perseverance. There will be lots of opportunities for the children to show this value over the coming term. Keep a look out for new leaves appearing on our tree.

The first opportunity for the class to persevere altogether was when we all read the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk". This is our focus text for the next few weeks. It was lovely to see how confident the children were when reading the story, despite some tricky words such as "enormous" and "bellowed". Can your children remember what these words mean? Maybe they can remember some other words that we learnt the meanings for...

In maths, we have continued our focus on multiplication and division. This week has seen a focus on our ten times table. Year 1 have really developed their skills of putting an amount into groups and Year 2 have been developing their knowledge of the ten times table. They have been able to multiply an amount of tens and divide an amount to see how many groups of ten they could make.

In science we have started our new topic about plants. We read the story "Katie and the Sunflowers" by James Mayhew. We then had a look at the different parts of some plants that had been dug up (daisies and a dandelion). We looked at the roots, the stem, the leaves and the flower. The children then labelled the different parts of a plant on a diagram. All the children then planted their own sunflower seed. We will be looking after these seeds / plants over the next few weeks, finding out what plants need to survive. We have already learnt that the plants will need water so we are making sure that we water our sunflower seeds regularly.

In a flash it was Friday and we were at the end of our very first week of the Summer Term! We could hardly believe we had made it and it was time to settle in and hear all about news around the world...it was of course Newsround time and this week we were all amazed to hear about the new interactive Tutankhamun immersive exhibition in the Excel London! 

We were all excited to see how you could actually 'walk' across the deserts and explore the secrets of the pyramids, discovering 4000 artefacts (wow!) and with the use of technology it actually feels like you are in Ancient Egypt!

As our day continued we really did keep that Friday feeling when we started our new Geography topic, which is all about wonderful weather, we even started by watching the weather!

After we had watched today's weather report we walked about why we might find watching the weather useful and we had some really great responses.....

"....because if I didn't know and I put my raincoat on, I might go out and it could be sunny and then I wouldn't need it!"

"You need to watch the weather because you might want to go somewhere for the day"

We then talked about what countries were being shown on the weather today and most importantly what country we live in............ England of course! Kingfishers worked really hard to colour in their maps to show where England is and then labelled their map!

We even had a go at sorting out pictures according to which season they belonged to and started to think about the differences between the seasons. 

We are now firmly within Spring, with Kingfishers currently growing plants and us seeing lots of growth around the school grounds. Why not see what other signs of Spring you can see around your local area this weekend? Talk about it together, discuss the changes that have happened between Winter and Spring and what you might see as we move into Summer.

As we continued to enjoy the Spring weather this afternoon we took our learning outside as it was soon time for our PE lesson and this term we are focusing on Athletics! What a perfect way to start the Summer term but to brush up on the skills that we will need ready for our Summer Sports Day! 

Kingfishers were ready and raring to go this afternoon and could probably and have run around the track multiple times but after once they were all warmed up and ready to hear what warm up game awaiting them, they were definitely not disappointed!

It was time for......sharks and fish!

As our shark took their place and our fish went into the 'tanks', it was the sharks job to catch the fish as they tried to 'swim' between the 'tanks' and if they were caught they had to turn their 'fin' into a sharks fin by wearing it!

Suddenly they were off and the tank of 'fish' was getting smaller and smaller!

Once all the fish had been turned into sharks it was time for us to be taught our first Athletics activity and this one would definitely get us ready for sports day!

Two people needed to get low to the ground and ready to run, with one person in the middle as the referee.....3,2,1 go! They were off, the quickest person to get to their cone and put it in the air won! The person who got to their cone first needed to them put their cone a bit further away, they then started again and repeated the activity.....

We were even challenged to start off from lying on our backs 1st and then after we'd mastered this move onto moving in a bear crawl towards our cone!

We certainly had some tired Kingfishers by the end of our Athletics session!

What a fantastic first three days back we have had and what a great start to the Summer term! It has been lovely seeing everyone come back with such a positive attitude and showing such perseverance in their learning.

Have a wonderful weekend and we looking forward to seeing everyone on Monday!