Reading
We have put your new shared reading book ‘Hunt the Specs’ in your book bags today. Please take a little look over the weekend to familiarise yourself with the text ready for our first shared read on Monday.

Doodle Maths
Please try and spend 10 minutes, 3 times a week answering questions on Doodle Maths to ensure that you are in the Green Zone!

Handwriting
We have been working so hard on our letter formation in our handwriting sessions and the children's letters are continuing to improve. We have been focusing on making sure that we can distinguish between our tall and small letters, and are practising sitting our letters on the line. Any opportunities to practise those alphabet letters at home would be fantastic, we appreciate any time you can put in.

This Week
In English this week we have been preparing for our 500 word stories! The children explored character – what they might look like, be like and what special objects they may have to help them in their adventures. We had a variety of animal characters, with rocket boots, magic backpacks and transporting sunglasses! We then explored what a setting is. We looked at a range of settings, from the ocean to outer space and the children decided where their character would go on their adventure. Your child should come home with some fantastic characters and ideas for their adventure – we hope that some of you decide to write and submit your entries!

In Maths, we have been looking at one more and one less than a number. The children used a range of resources to show one more and one less, we know that ‘more’ means the number will get bigger and ‘less’ means that the number will get smaller. We used our Numberblocks friends to show one more and one less than a range of numbers within 10.

In Science, the children explored their sense of touch. We played a game of ‘what’s in the bag?’. We closed our eyes and had to use our hands to feel a range of objects, describing what they felt like. The rest of us used those words to try and work out what the object in the bag was – the children had some great guesses and used some brilliant scientific vocabulary to describe.

In DT this week we began thinking about how structures are formed. We looked at how structures are made up of more than part, and these parts are joined together. The children were set the challenge of joining two pieces of paper – the children had some great ideas and some even made a 3D structure! We then learned what a ‘tab’ is, how they are made and how we can reinforce these tabs to make our structures even stronger. We will be using what we’ve learned about joining, tabs and reinforcing to design and make our own prototypes of classroom tables! Thank you to those who have already brought in cardboard – another plea!! If you have any cardboard lying around (cereal boxes would be ideal as they are thinner and therefore easier to cut), we would be very grateful as we will be designing and making our tables in the last week of term.

Have a lovely weekend.
The Year 1 Team