Goodbye!

Dear Hedgehog Parents,

It feels very strange finally to be saying goodbye to you all. Whaddon has been my second home for the past ten years and I have learnt most of what I know as a teacher during that time. 

It has been a brilliant year in Hedgehog Class. The children work beautifully together and we have had so much fun. They have enjoyed our Mantle of the Expert stories, forest school, maths games, outdoor learning and writing. They have baked bread and biscuits, drawn, sketched and painted. They've told stories and role played to their hearts' content. They've loved books, sung songs and learnt action rhymes. Most of all, they have loved coming into school and learning, and that means the most important part of my job is done. 

Thank you all so, so much for the generous gifts, cards and words you have given me over the past few days. I hope I have managed to talk to you, but if I missed you I am sorry. I have been overwhelmed by your kindness. You and your lovely children have made my last year at Whaddon a wonderful one. 

I wish you all well for the adventures that Whaddon School has ahead - they are sure to be good. 

Mrs Simpson

Two weeks in one! Bread and other things.

Dear Parents,

I am very sorry for the lack of Hedgehog Blog last week. I had written it, but forgotten to press the all-important 'publish' button. 

With that in mind, here is a run down of the past two busy weeks. 

The children made bread!
Year 1 designed, made and evaluated bread as part of their Great Fire of London Mantle. The Reception children were, naturally, keen to join in so they later made their own bread. 

The children have written stories.
Over the past term we have been focussing a lot on traditional tales in our reading ad writing lessons. Last week and this week the children planned and wrote their own traditional tales. Year 1 went one step further and learnt how to smarten up their sentences: following a first draft of the story, they took each sentence at a time and improved it. There were some super stories by the end of this week!

The children have been learning about fractions.
We have looked at finding a half or a quarter of a shape. Year 1 also looked at finding a half or a quarter of an amount. We used the phrases:

    When the whole is shared into two equal parts, each part is called 
    a half. 
    When the whole is shared into four equal parts, each part is called
    a quarter. 

The children were set a scientific challenge.
Last Friday we were joined by Year 2. The children all took part in a nest-building challenge. They learnt the weight of different types of egg - including an ostrich egg, which can apparently weigh up to 2kg. The children handled the different weights to see how they felt. Then they were given the challenge to build a nest that could hold the different eggs - but they were only allowed to use natural materials, found outside. This challenge led to a lot of interesting discussion, experimentation and problem-solving, as well as some excellent team work. 

Each nest was tested at the end - of the  eight that were made, three could hold the weight of an ostrich egg!

We had a storytelling afternoon with Year 2.
One afternoon we were joined by Year 2. The children heard the story of Mouse Deer and Tiger.  They took a part in a range of related activities, such as map making of the forest, creating a clay snake complete with patterns and textures, sketching a tiger's face and telling stories themselves. It was lovely to spend more time with Year 2. 

The children have been spelling, a lot. 
The children have really taken on the challenge of the Great Whaddon Spelling Bee. For the past few weeks they have practised their spellings four mornings per week and have approached the challenge with great enthusiasm. Then, today... they all completed the Great Whaddon Spelling Bee! The teachers will be looking at the spelling bees soon and will be announcing the results next week. 

Forest School has been fantastic.
It is lovely at Forest School at the moment - everything is green and growing. The trees are particularly beautiful - having been planted back in 2014, they are beginning to take the shape of a small woodland. The chickens are happy, the wildflowers are growing, and all is well. The children have been enjoying making dens and spending time with the children from Thornborough. 

The children watched the KS2 production.
On Monday the children were able to watch the dress rehearsal of the KS2 production of Little Red Riding Hood. I was lucky enough to go to Wednesday's performance and I was blown away by the children's acting, singing and all around talent!

I think those are the main headlines. We really have been very busy!

Homework

A good thing to practice at home is fractions. 

YR should focus on sharing a shape/cake/sandwich into halves and quarters. You can do this using food or playdough or paper shapes. The language you use should include: half, whole, parts, equal parts.

Y1 should focus on finding half or a quarter of an amount. There are some word problems here. Always approach the word problems by using concrete objects first. If your child is confident, challenge them to solve one using pictures. 

I think that has caught you up!

Have a great weekend, 

From Mrs Simpson.

PS I'm afraid this week's photos are still on the iPad!

A week of comic strips and cleaver juice.

 Happy Friday Hedgehog parents,

We are feeling very jolly in Hedgehog Class at the moment. Each day starts with a happy sort of song and an (optional) dance, which we have found to be a very positive start to the day. 

The children have completed a fantastic writing project this week. We have been looking at various different traditional tales this term, and this week was the turn of 'The Frog Prince'. We then looked at some simple comic strips showing other traditional tales. After that, the children each created a little comic strip of part of the story of 'The Frog Prince' and learnt how to write speech bubbles and thinking bubbles. The extra challenge for Year 1 (and those Reception children who wanted it) was to use question marks and exclamation marks in the correct places. The children loved this project and their work was lovely. 

We continued this theme in computing, where the children used the 'Doodle' drawing app to create an image and add sound to it - they had fun being the voices of the frog, the fairy or the princess. 

At Forest School this week the main activity was to make cleaver (stickyweed) juice. The Year 1 children requested this activity because they remembered enjoying it last year. Many of the children had a go at making the juice and tasting it, with mixed responses. It did smell delicious, but some children didn't think it tasted so good!

If you want to make some at home:

1) collect lots of sticky weed
2) crush it in a bowl with some water (you might have to start with a little water and add it as you need)
3) using fresh sticky weed, make a nest of it on top of a jug
4) filter your juice through the fresh sticky weed
5) Enjoy! (hopefully)

As part of their Great Fire of London mantle, the Year 1 children completed a DT project this week. They were tasked with creating a new loaf of bread for the re-opened bakery on Pudding Lane. They started by tasting some different breads, deciding which ones looked, smelled and tasted the best. Then they designed and made their own loaves. Finally they evaluated their bread. They brought the remaining bread home - I hope you all found it in book bags and had a taste! Reception children will be having a go at making bread next week, so look out for their  loaves too!

In Maths we have been continuing to learn doubles to double 10 by heart. We also started a new game which you could play at home. It's a race game. Year 1 children need to use 3 dice. Reception can use 2 or 3. 

You can play with as many players as you like. One player rolls the dice. Players add up the numbers as quickly as possible, then shout the answer when they know it. Whoever shouts the (correct) answer first gets a point. The aim of this game, particularly for Year 1 children, is to use what they know to help them to add up quickly. For example, if they roll   5   5   3   they would begin to see that the double 5 helps them - double 5 is 10, 10 add 3 is 13. 

We have also been telling the time to the hour and half hour with Year 1, though Reception have also been joining in the main teaching parts as well. Year 1 have learnt to tell the time using analogue and digital clocks - lots of practice of this would be beneficial. Some children wear a small watch or fitbit to school with the time on, which is a good idea, as they are unobtrusive but help the children to get used to telling the time. 

Phonics has been more sentence-writing for Reception! 

Year 1 have been learning to make a single noun into a plural using either -s or -es. They have learnt that they need 'es' when the plural adds an extra syllable and sounds like 'is'. This usually comes after the sounds:  tch   ch   sh   ss    s    zz   x  

To practise this, write the following words in chalk or in pen on a large piece of paper, and ask your child to turn them into a plural by adding the correct suffix (s or es):

day       catch        witch         bus         sandwich        banana        cup   
church      wish

Then for an extra challenge, write some silly sentences together using them. 

Don't forget also to practise for the spelling bee!

Have a very good weekend,

See you soon!

Mrs Simpson 

Three bowls of porridge and a lot of sun.

 Hello Hedgehog Parents,

This week started with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children enjoyed the story and then followed some instructions to make porridge. They chose which toppings to add and even made some for Mrs Davies and Mrs Ferfecka, who were very complimentary. 

From there, the children gave baby bear (Mrs Abery) some clear instructions and the Year 1 children wrote down a set of instructions using time openers (such as first, then, next, after that...), bossy verbs (put, pour, stir..) and adverbs (carefully, gently, quickly, slowly...). They did a brilliant job. Reception children also had a go at writing a few of the instructions. 

In Mantle of the Expert Year 1 learnt about the changes that occurred as a result of the Great Fire of London, in particular due to the Rebuilding Act of 1667. Using this knowledge they re-designed Pudding Lane to make it fire-safe. 

It was lovely to have so many daddies in this morning - I hope you enjoyed the sausages and the sun!

In Maths the children have been looking at capacity, using the three bears' bowls of porridge for context. They have learnt to identify full, half-full and empty containers and how to measure the capacity of a container using a non-standard measure (they used a small pot to compare the capacity of three different containers). This weather is a great opportunity to get some water out and practice this, filling up containers, making predictions about which one will hold more and measuring capacity using, for example, a plastic cup. 

We have also been learning doubles to double 10 by heart. Reception really only need to learn to double 5, but it doesn't hurt to start reciting up to double 10. For this, we have been learning a rhyme that goes something like this:

Reach down and touch your shoe
Double 1 is 2
Knock on the door
Double  2 is 4
Tap your sticks
Double 3 is 6
Open the gate
Double 4 is 8
Cluck like a hen
Double 5 is 10
Dig and delve
Double 6 is 12
Ghosts are a-haunting
Double 7 is 14
We are all mixing
Double 8 is 16
Now we are waiting
Double 9 is 18
Sweets a-plenty
Double 10 is 20. 

There are, of course, actions. See if your child can remember the actions, and practise the rhyme together. If your child is fluent in their doubles to double 10, you can see if you can make up a rhyme about halves (eg Fun in the sun, half of 2 is 1...). I would love to see it if you do. 

In Phonics:

Reception have been doing more memory sentences (see last week's blog). It has been a great way for them to start to apply the high frequency words they've been learning, as well as their phonics. Again, you can practise this skill at home by giving your child a sentence to write (make it a silly one, that usually helps) which includes simple words that use our phonics and the yellow or orange word list - they memorise it with your help, you both write it out from memory (you with some deliberate mistakes) and then see who has spelled the highest number of words correctly. 

Year 1 have been learning the prefix un-  in the context of Mr Men and Little Miss. We made, for example, a Mr Kind and a Mr Unkind character. We have also started to look at plurals, making sure that we write a whole word before adding -s to make a plural (for example, to write 'oats' many children would first write 'oas' but we are learning to write the single 'oat' first before adding -s). 

You could write a story about a cast of un- Mr Men and Little Miss, giving them names using the un- prefix and writing a story about them with a good beginning, middle and end. Bring them in if you do!

Have a good weekend - see you soon!

From Mrs Simpson

An outdoorsy sort of week.

 Happy Friday Hedgehog Parents,

We've had an absolutely lovely week. There has been some rain, but there has also been a lot of sun and a lot of time spent outdoors. 

The children have some new equipment in their outdoor area, including but pots, large identification posters, and tubes and funnels for water learning. They have found some fascinating creatures outdoors already. Forest School on Thursday involved a campfire and 'smores - we even cooked fried three of the chickens' eggs!

The Year 1 children continue to enjoy the Great Fire of London Mantle with Year 2. This week they have been working on firefighting in the 1600s, learning about the equipment and the methods used. This included taking part in a bucket chain to put a fire out. 

The Reception children have been having a wonderful time with our new water equipment. They've been experimenting with how to arrange funnels and tubes to help the water to flow.  

Phonics.

Year 1 children took part in the phonics screening check this week. I will let you know how your child got on, once the pass mark has been released. They have done a wonderful job of their phonics! There is no phonics homework this week, just enjoy reading together. 

Reception children have started to write memory sentences (this is something the Year 1 children do regularly). This is where we give them a sentence using the sounds and words they have been learning. We read it together, spotting sounds and spotting tricky words. The children then look at the sentence for a minute, before it is hidden. Finally, they have a go at writing the sentence from memory. 

Writing sentences in this way helps children with their spelling, their phonics and their sentence structure (such as putting spaces in).

If you would like to practice this at home, this week's sentences were:

My frog can float and swim. 
I was going to the zoo.

If your child is a confident writer, you could make the sentence longer. 

Maths.

Year 1 children have been learning to recognise coins and notes this week. They set up a shop with and for the Reception children and played some coin and note recognition games. 

The best way to practise this is to get your child using real money! I know we don't really use money much these days, but if you are able to give your child some coins to spend in a shop or at an ice cream van (for example) it will give them some real-life experience of what we have been learning. 

Reception children have been joining in with the Year 1 maths, and so could also do the same maths homework!

Have a lovely weekend, and I shall see you next week!

From Mrs Simpson

Happy Holidays

 Good morning Hedgehog parents, 

Happy half term holiday! I don't know about you, but this academic year seems to be flying by. In a few weeks' time it will be the summer holidays and the children will be getting ready to move into their next school year. 

We have had a lovely week. On Monday the children all took part in an introduction to cricket session, and heard about opportunities for them to play cricket. 

For most of the week, the children took on the role of the Big Bad Wolf (from the Three Little Pigs), making ears and carrying out their day. It wasn't a good day - all three pigs got away. After half term the children will be writing diaries in role as the wolf. 

We have also, of course, been celebrating the Platinum Jubilee. From Thursday afternoon until the end of Friday, the children got involved in a range of activities:

• creating their own Jubilee medals
• making a crown
• creating a commemorative Jubilee postage stamp
• sketching some (un)official portraits of The Queen
• plotting the route of the Jubilee relay baton on a large map
• playing rounders

All of this ended with a lovely Jubilee street feast and games on Friday afternoon.

I am not going to set much homework this half term. Please:

•  keep reading
• Reception children, practice subitising to 5 and you bonds to 5
• Year 1s, practice your bonds to 10 and counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s
• Year 1s, also prepare for the phonics screening check:

The Phonics Screening Check
This is a compulsory test that all Year 1 children take part in at the end of the academic year. It is to test their knowledge of phonics and how well they can use phonics to decode words. The children read 40 words, 20 of which are real and 20 of which are 'alien' words. They do this on a 1:1 basis with myself, and do not know it is a 'test' - there is absolutely nothing for them to worry about! 

We have been practising at school. Year 1 parents, please help your child continue to prepare for this test by:

• Practising the phase 3 and 5 sounds using this powerpoint, or phonicsplay.co.uk 
• Using these powerpoints to practise reading alien and real words
  Powerpoint 1
  Powerpoint 2
  Powerpoint 3
  Powerpoint 4
• Asking your child to draw some aliens, then writing them alien names (using the phase 5 digraphs that we have been learning) and seeing if your child can read them

I hope you all have a good week - see you next half term!

From Mrs Simpson

Summer Week 4: incredible writing and lots of maths too.

 Hello Hedgehog Parents,

This week the children have been working incredibly hard to complete their leaflets warning
local goats to look out for trolls. They all put a lot of effort into their writing and thanks to them the local goat population should (hopefully) be safe. 

The Year 1 children have been setting themselves up as Londoners in 1666, following the Great Fire of London. The city needed rebuilding so the children, along with Year 2, have been learning about different trades and have set themselves up in their chosen trade. As they were going about their daily life they learnt that Thomas Farriner, the baker, had been
arrested and was going to be put on trial for causing The Great Fire of London. The
children began carrying out some investigations to find out whether he was, in fact, the 
main cause of the fire. We will put Thomas on trial on Tuesday and will let you know the outcome. 

The Reception children have been spending a lot of time outdoors. They are particularly
interested in plants at the moment, so they learnt about all of the different parts of a plant and what each part does. Following this, they produced some lovely drawings of plants. 

Forest School was lovely on Thursday - the weather was just right. A few children went
on a litter pick around the village and managed to find 63 pieces of litter. Some children
made some beautiful mobiles to go in trees, by tying strands of ribbon and wool to a stick. 

In other learning...

Maths.

Reception children have been revisiting number bonds to five and six. By the end of the year, the aim is for them to know bonds to five off by heart and to be able to recall them quickly. To do this we had some races: each child was presented with number cards 0 1 2 3 4 5. On 'go' they had to pair up the bonds to 5 as quickly as possible. The record was 7 seconds... you could see if your child can beat this record over the weekend. If they do, they can come and tell me their score! All you need is a phone timer and large number cards 0 to 5 (card rather than paper, which can be tricky to pick up and move quickly!)

Year 1 children finished off their unit of work on multiplication and division - at this stage, it involved lots of equal sharing and equal grouping. To practise this, you could give your child one or two of these word problems and help them to solve it using concrete objects (so where there are 3 5p coins, your child will need to find 3 groups of 5 to work it out if they are not already familiar with counting in 5s).  For an extra challenge, they could do a pictorial representation of the problem as well. 

Phonics.

Reception children have continued to work on consonant blends at the start and end of words. To practice this, you could play these games:

ccvc game
cvcc game
tricker game for more confident readers

Year 1 children have continued their work on suffixes and have learnt that you can add 'er' to a verb to change it into a noun. 

help - helper
shout - shouter
dance - dancer

To practise this, write a short poem together. We wrote some about the troll. You could write some about yourself

For example:

I am a fast runner
I am a horse rider
I am a funny joker
I am a loud laugher

If you do one, please bring it in for me to read to the class!

I hope you all have a good weekend. Next week is full of interesting things, such as some cricket coaching and some Jubilee preparations!

See you soon!

From Mrs Simpson