VIP club-Clothes shopping and folding skills!

The children spent time feeling the textures, shapes and sizes of different items of clothes. They read the braille and large print labels, then selected and paid for their items.
The activity promoted independent living skills such as: selecting the correct coins for one and sometimes two items of clothes; working out change by both the shopkeeper and the customer; folding clothes for packing the items and storing them at home.

Catch up with Year 1

In Year 1 we have had another busy but fabulous start to a new term.

Here are some of the exciting things we have been doing...

In maths, recently, we have been investigating capacity.

We tried estimating which containers could hold the most and ordering them. 

We then used cubes to test our predictions. 

It was also a great opportunity to practise our counting skills.

Grouping in tens helps when counting to large numbers

We were very surprised to find that, although some containers look very different they actually hold the same amount.

At the moment we are learning about counting in groups of twos, tens and fives, and linking this to multiplication problems. We are looking forward to sharing these skills with parents and visitors during our special maths morning which is coming up soon.

In PE we have started practising some important games skills that will help us get ready for sports day. This week we were practising our dribbling skills and using control to move the ball around cones.

It has also been our turn to look after the chickens this week. We have enjoyed feeding them, collecting eggs and making sure they have enough to drink in this warmer weather.

In geography we have been learning about the weather. 

The children really enjoyed being in role play as weather forecasters. 
Below is the link to the website we used in case you want to try it at home.

http://www.bluesquarething.co.uk/geography/dragdropmap/frontsbigweathermap.htm 

Sensory fun in Year 4!

In Year 4, we have been looking at a book called River Story by Meredith Hooper, which is a narrative poem.  We are working towards writing our own narrative poems based around an imaginary river.

To help us to generate ideas to use in our poems, we took part in a range of sensory experiences.  We will include the sensory vocabulary that we produced in our finished pieces so that the reader can immerse themselves in the river experience.

We had 7 bases with different sensory activities which we rotated around.

At Base 1, we blew bubbles in water.  We looked at the bubbles and listened to the sounds they made.  Then we thought about how and why bubbles might appear on a river.

On Base 2, we carefully observed leaves floating in water.  We looked at how they were floating and how the water moved around them.

We enjoyed Base 3 the most!  We poured water over an umbrella and watched the droplets flow off and fall to the ground.  We then stood under the umbrella and listened carefully to the sounds the water made as it hit the umbrella.  We compared the sounds when we were under the umbrella with those we could hear when we were outside of the umbrella.

At Base 4, we felt the sensation of the water.  To begin with we only immersed our fingertips in the water, then we thought about the change in sensation as we began to slowly move our hands deeper.  We also made different patterns and ripples in the water, thinking about how the movements were made and what might replicate these in a river.

Base 5 was all about rocks which might be found in the riverbed.  We placed droplets of water on a range of rocks using a pipette.  Then we observed the droplet and added multiple droplets. We tried with different rocks and thought about the things that had changed and those that had stayed the same.  We also touched the rocks before and after we got them wet, noting down the change in sensation.

At Base 6, we thought about the sedimentary rock in rivers.  We observe the movement of gravel as we moved our hands in different patterns.  We also gently swished the gravel around the tray.  We thought about how the gravel felt and what we could hear.

Finally, Base 7 involved the transference of water between two containers.  We looked at the shape the water made when we poured quickly compared with when we poured it slowly, and listened to the different sounds.  We also observed how the light shines through the water.

We all had a fun and exciting morning, and came up with some fantastic ideas which we will use in our own River Stories.  We hope to share them with you soon!

River Walk

Year 3 have started learning about rivers as part of their 'Go With the Flow' learning unit. To get some inspiration for what a river environment is like, we took a walk through Manor Farm Park this week to look at the River Hamble.

We used our senses to reflect on what we could see, hear, smell and touch near the riverside. We will be using some of these ideas to write some river poetry.

We used keys to identify the different trees and plants we could find that were near the banks of the river. We needed to look carefully at the plant shape and the types of leaves.

We noticed that the river bank has lots of browns and greens. To help broaden our vocabulary to describe the environment, we used colour charts to identify the names of different shades.

We also had the opportunity to do some sketching near the main channel of the river.

We had a great time exploring a river which is only a short walk from our school! We now have lots of ideas we can use as part of our learning this term. Thank you to all of the adults who also supported us on our visit.