This term in Maple Class we have had a Science focus and investigated materials.

We have found out the names of materials and used adjectives to describe them. We have sorted them by their properties: rigid or flexible, natural or manufactured, transparent, opaque or translucent and we tested materials to discover which were waterproof or absorbent. We found about two famous inventors Charles Macintosh and John McAdams and how their inventions are linked to material and are still used today. We talked about the importance of recycling which the children then wanted our school council members to bring to the next meeting. From this we now have a compost bin in the playground and a recycling bin for glass, metal and plastic in school. In English at the start of the term we looked at the story ‘The Way Back Home’ then wrote our own versions and finished the term by making bird feeders which we will use as inspiration next term to help us write instructions.  In maths Year 1 having been solving addition and subtraction problems to 20 and have been counting numbers to 50 and Year 2 have been learning about multiplication and division and used money to add and subtract and got to use their knowledge when we visited to shop add our own amounts and work out the change. In RE Year 1 have been learning about what it means to belong to a faith community and Year 2 learnt about scared books. Our artist of the term was Edward Tingatinga and we created our own versions of his art creating two large group collages. In PSHE we have been talking about our dreams and goals, setting ourselves an achievable goal and working to achieving this. Our home corner was set out as a Chinese restaurant and we had fun dressing up, writing out orders and making dinners for the guests. Our curiosity crate was Chinese New Year too and we enjoyed ordering the animals for how they finished in the race and on the creative table we followed the instructions and mixed colours to create a tiger. In PE we have been creating balances using the apparatus and in music enjoyed playing the glockenspiels. We enjoyed staying at school to have a bedtime story in our pjs and a lovely cup of hot chocolate.