We have had a very busy term learning all about castles and many other wonderful things.

In literacy we looked at two traditional stories; Rapunzel and Cinderella. We compared the two stories and also found out that there are many slightly different versions of traditional stories.

We used exciting adjectives and connectives to describe characters and settings.

We looked at the format of in-formal and formal letters and practised writing both. We wrote an informal letter to Cinderella from the witch and a formal letter from ourselves to the owners of Bolsover Castle.

Then we looked at the format of a party invitation and wrote a wedding invitation from Cinderella.

We used all our knowledge of sentence writing to retell the traditional story of Rapunzel.

We tried hard to use exciting adjectives, connectives, time words and a range of punctuation.

Instead on retelling Cinderella we became authors and changed certain parts of the story to create our own version of Cinderella.

If the story of Cinderella was real it would make a very exciting news report. We became news reports and used lots of drama activities to help us recreate and write the story of Cinderella from a newspapers point of view.

In the second week of term we went on our trip to explore Bolsover Castle. We all had a fantastic time. We explored the castle ruins and discovered the castles old kitchens which were actually underground. We tried on clothing that would have been worn centuries ago. In the little castle we discovered many different, exciting rooms. There were paintings on the ceilings and beautiful furniture. It was very interesting to see up close what life would have been like to live in Bolsover Castle. After lunch we explored the fountain garden- drawing and identifying different flowers. Then we sat on the grass in the castle grounds and created observation drawings of different parts of the castle. We finished off a fabulous day with a play in the play area which was set out like a castle. We all learnt many new things.

In history we leant about the life of Sir Charles Cavendish and discovered lots of facts about castles. We learnt what castles were used for, the main features of a castle and made a timeline of a local castle.

In Art we learnt about the life and work of three famous artist; Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh and Jean Metzinger. We used paint, pastels, line, texture and mosaic to recreate some of their most famous pieces of art.

We have had a very busy year and have leant many new and exciting things. We are all looking forward to coming back in September as Year twos.

Mrs Cancellara and Miss Powell hope you all have a fantastic summer holiday!