Welcome to the Squirrel class page! 

If you have any questions please feel free to write in your child's reading diary or ask the teacher at the end of the school day.

A few reminders:

Forest School - We take part in Forest School activities outside every Tuesday afternoon. Please can all children have a change of clothes for this (that you don't mind getting muddy) and also a pair of wellington boots as it can get very muddy down in the woodland.

P.E. - Our P.E. day is a Wednesday each week. Please ensure your child has their P.E. kit in school all week and that all items of clothing including shoes are labelled with a name. The children will also need clothing suitable for outdoor P.E. e.g. tracksuit bottoms. Thank you.

Titanic Day!

As part of our end of topic outcome the children were able to come into school dressed ready to board the Titanic! We had lots of crew members, 1st class and 3rd class passengers and they all had a fantastic day. Thank you to the many parents and carers that came to join in our outcome morning, where the children made little drawstring bags like the ones ladies used in 1912 and also worked together to create some lovely collages of the Titanic. 

We were also able to evaluate our Titanic topic by making our own snakes and ladders boards, used drama to act out different scenarios on the ship and even got to do some ballroom dancing! 

Forest School Week!

We have had a fantastic week outdoors taking part in some fun and exciting activities! We have done everything from looking for minibeasts, to making natural art, map drawing and even having a campfire! The children have been very imaginative and enthusiastic this week - we have seen some beautiful natural art, told exciting stories and been nature detectives looking for all kinds of living creatures and plants. 

We also went on a trip to Basing Woods where we spent the day under the trees, working as a team to build some fantastic dens and following a letter trail. We also used nets to sweep the grass in the woods and looked very closely at the bushes and flowers. We found some really interesting minibeasts including bumble bees, butterflies and spiders! It was a great day!  

Andy Goldsworthy Outdoor Art

We had an amazing trip to the SeaCity museum this week! We learnt a lot about the Titanic and its crew members. Did you know many of the crew members came from Southampton?

We enjoyed a great workshop with different activities; a floating and sinking experiment, handling 100 year old artefacts, deciding which passengers to board the lifeboats, etc. We were able to show a lot of what we had already learnt in school and also learn lots of new facts!

We also got to dress up as different people boarding the Titanic - 1st class and 3rd class passengers, stewardesses, captain, firemen, etc. It was so much fun! We are looking forward to using what we have learnt in our Literacy and History lessons in the next few weeks.

History

Titanic Art! 

To celebrate the end of our termly topic - St Lucia, the children and staff were able to wear the colours of the St Lucian flag to school - blue, black, yellow and white. We were also able to take part in some really exciting and fun activities to celebrate all things St Lucia.

During the day the children created colourful carnival masks and streamers, tasted exotic fruits and drinks such as pineapples, mango juice and guava juice. We also had the opportunity to take part in a super steel pan workshop, in which all children had a chance to play one of the steel drums. We were surprised and delighted by the different sounds the instruments made!

As part of our forest school sessions, we have been able to visit Basing Woods and take part in some exciting activities. This week we visited the pond and were lucky enough to see lots of tiny tadpoles!

The children really enjoyed spotting the tadpoles and watching them swim around the pond. The children knew that the tadpoles had started out as frogspawn, as we had seen some of this down in Fox class' pond. We will keeping an eye out for any little froglets after Easter!

We were also able to take part in a Easter Egg Hunt!

The children were able to explore the area searching for a colourful egg each before exchanging it for a chocolate one back at school.

Snowy fun!

Frozen yoga, snowball throwing, snowy art and snow angels...even the teachers joined in!! We're not sure who was having more fun!

As part of our topic St Lucia, we visited the Living Rainforest and learnt lots about the types of plants and animal that live there.

We were very lucky as we got to see Cinnamon the Sloth, the Armadillo and the Asian Water Dragon, can you spot them in our photographs?

During the last week of term Squirrel class joined in with lots of exciting activities - including some very special visitors! The children followed the map and found two real life reindeers!

We learnt a lot about reindeers and how they live in the wild. We even got to feed them!

We also learnt about how Christians celebrate Christmas using a Christingle. We each made our own Christingle and learnt what each different part represents.

This week the Wild Things visited our classroom!

On Monday morning the children came back from playtime to find their classroom in a terrible mess!

We hunted for clues to try and find out who had done it, and discovered the book 'Where the Wild Things Are' placed in the role play. The children decided it must have been a Wild Thing that had caused such a mess through all of the year 1 classrooms.

We have been keeping our eye out all week to make sure they don't do it again!

The children later explored the woodland like Max from the story Where The Wild Things Are, using their senses and describing what they found.

The children were able to think of some lovely adjectives to describe what they heard, saw, felt and smelt.