KS1 News

Read on to find out what we have been up to in Years 1 & 2 this week.

Year 1

We have had a delightful and sunny 2 weeks in year 1! We are getting ready for the Festival of Sports by learning all about the track activities. We have been practising running and having lots of fun. The sunny weather has been lovely, and we have enjoyed story and learning time in a cool, shady spot with a nice gentle breeze.

In English, we have started a new book called Iggy Peck, Architect. It’s a fun story about a boy who loves building amazing structures. This links nicely to our learning about fact files, as Iggy builds real-life landmarks from around the world, helping us understand how to write facts about these buildings, including the Notre Dame, the Sphinx, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We have started drafting our own fact files to share interesting information about these famous structures. We have made sure to use capital letters for proper nouns like names of places and always remember to add punctuation to finish our sentences.

In maths, we have been learning all about money. We’ve been recognising different coins and notes and understanding the value of each one. We’ve enjoyed sorting them, naming them, and ordering them to help us count and solve simple problems. It's been a fun way to practise our number skills!

Thank you for bringing in lots of shoeboxes and toilet rolls for our stable structures – we’ve had great fun starting to build them! We also learned about Amelia Earhart and why she is a significant person in history. To explore Jewish celebrations, we tasted Challah bread, which we all enjoyed and wanted second helpings of! In our Changing Me topic in PSHE, we have been learning about how we change as we grow. We talked about the physical and emotional changes that have happened since we were born. We are also getting ready for an exciting new change that’s coming soon – moving up to Year 2!

w/b 30.06.25

Keywords: facts, one more, one less, greater than, less than, equal to, Amelia Earhart, significant, physical changes, Challah bread, plant growth

Sounds: recapping all sounds

w/b 07.07.25

Keywords: coins, pence, pounds, notes, compare, emotional changes, worries, goals, Torah, signs of summer

Sounds: recapping all sounds

Messages:

Please drop children off to their classrooms by 8.45am. If you are running late, do not go to the classrooms after 8.45 and instead go through the office as this can be disruptive to the learning.

Bring reading folders (reading records and spelling books) on Monday.

The reading record should be signed by an adult five times.

Your child will receive their reading folders back on Tuesday.

As we reach the end of Year 1 and will be continuing to enrich our Year 1 learning environment, we would be very grateful for any donations of items to support our continuous provision areas. If you’re having a clear-out or have any spare resources, we would love to receive:

Role Play: Dressing-up clothes, puppets, small chairs, old handbags or toy kitchen items
Construction: Small cardboard boxes, Lego or building sets, wooden blocks, toy tools
Creative: Paper, ribbons, buttons, fabric scraps, paints, crayons
Outdoor/Mud Kitchen: Old pots and pans, spoons, buckets, gardening tools
Small World/Loose Parts Play: Toy animals, vehicles, natural materials like shells or pebbles, wooden rings

All donations help make our learning spaces more fun and engaging for the children. Thank you so much for your support!

Dates:

Every Monday - homework club

07.07.25 - INSET day (no school)

10.07.25 - Festival of Sports Day (Year 1 - 9.30 - 11)

22.07.25 - Last day of school (school closes at 1.30)

Year 2

We’ve had a busy and exciting couple of weeks full of fun learning, creative projects, and new discoveries. The children have loved the warm weather and have been very sensible about wearing hats and drinking lots of water.

In English, we have been exploring the wonderful world of libraries and discovering lots of fun facts about them — did you know that a Lunar Library, with 30 million pages of human knowledge, was sent into space in 2019? Alongside this, we have been reading our new book, Speak Up, which is all about saving a local library. In their writing, the children have used commas to list all the wonderful aspects of our school library and used the conjunction ‘because’ to explain why reading is great!

Over the past few weeks, we have been learning about time in class. The children have created their own clocks to help them practise telling the time. We have focused particularly on telling the time past and to the hour. It would be great to see the children practising these skills at home. They are also encouraged to wear a watch with a clock face to help them apply their learning throughout the day.

In History, we have been learning about the Tudors and the amazing palaces they lived in. There are some special Tudor places close to Richmond, such as Richmond Palace, which was once home to Queen Elizabeth I. Hampton Court Palace is very famous and was where King Henry VIII lived. He loved spending time there doing sports such as jousting and tennis, and the palace has enormous kitchens and beautiful gardens. We also looked at Syon Park House, near the river, where King Henry VIII died. These palaces help us understand what life was like in Tudor times.

In DT, we have continued our Windmill Making Project by exploring different types of sails and how effective they are. The children have also designed their own colourful windmills, which we will be building next week. Please, could all families bring in some clean recycling materials that the children can use for construction? Thank you for your support!

In PE, we have been preparing for Sports Day! The children have been practising teamwork for activities like tug of war, as well as individual skills such as throwing and running races. We are looking forward to seeing families there, cheering on our fantastic Year 2 children!

w/b 30.06.25

Keywords: Time, minutes, hours, to the hour, past the hour, commas, because, Tudors, King, Queen, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Catherine Parr, jousting, windmill, sails, movement

Spellings:

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

w/b 07.07.25

Keywords: Time, minutes, hours, hours in a day, minutes in an hour, position, direction, movement, turns, Royal, Tudor, lifestyle, palace, servant, estate, Windmill, sails, base, materials, structure, colours

Spellings:

September

October

November

December

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