Welcome Hedgehogs and Parents!

We have had a brilliant first week in Hedgehogs! All the children have had a great start to their Year 1 journey and have adapted well to their new environment and a new routine!

This week, we have done lots of activities to get to know each other. We will start our learning formally next week.

On Tuesday, we made some “Mini-Me’s”. This is where we had a card cut out of ourselves and we decorated our bodies with things about ourselves, such as our favourite food, favourite people, favourite things to do and jobs we want in the future.

On Wednesday, the children spent time reading with Mr Armishaw, and we decorated the front of our PSHE book. We each had a puzzle piece and we drew a picture of ourselves on our piece. All our pieces are now assembled on the front of our PSHE book, ready to begin our PSHE learning! We also started our Phonics learning this day and we looked at the ff and zz digraphs.

On Thursday, we started our first proper lesson. We had a Maths lesson where we sorted objects into groups. We thought about how we can sort things in more than one way, and into more than two groups. The children really impressed me with their Maths sorting skills! The children also decorated a “mini-computer” to go on the front of our Computing book. We will start computing lessons next week. In our Phonics, we learnt the ll and ss digraph. We also had our first PE lesson where we did lots of fun games such as cups and saucers.

On Friday, we had another PE lesson where we practised moving at different speeds. We also had an English lesson where we watched a clip of a dragon that was flying above Mr Armishaw’s garden! The dragon spoke to Mr Armishaw about her son, Zog. She told the children about the story of Zog and how he was a dragon who wished for a golden star. The children then watched a clip of Zog and we used the Mighty Writer story map to build the story. In the afternoon, we started to create a Topic page for our History unit – A Century and Me. We will be looking at life in the past 100 years, and how life has changed since the present. We watched a video of what life was like in London 100 years ago and how things look different. The children also thought of questions that they wanted to find the answers too throughout our learning in History.

Well done on a fabulous week Hedgehogs! Make sure to get plenty of rest and I will see you all on Monday.

Key Messages

• We have allocated the children a reading book and a reading record. Please try and read as much as you can with your child. I will be changing books on Mondays and Thursdays. If the children complete their reading book, they will receive a 'Hedgehog spike' to go onto their Hedgehog. Each time they get a Hedgehog spike, they will get 5HP for their house.
• We have PE on Thursday afternoons and Friday mornings. Please send your child into school wearing their PE kits on these days. Please make sure the PE kit is appropriate for both indoor and outdoor PE.  
• We will allocate Spellings to learn for Spelling Tests in a couple of weeks, so please do not worry about them. I will explain more at the 'Meet The Teacher' Information meeting, next Friday.
• I will be having a 'Meet The Teacher' Information meeting next Friday in my classroom from 3:30 - 4:00pm. I would highly recommend coming as there will be lots of information on this upcoming year in Year 1. Even if you have attended one in previous years, each year things change. I look forward to seeing you then!