The Hedgehogs

Year

1

The Squirrels

Welcome to year one’s page

To support our children’s transition to year 1 from reception, the first few weeks of the autumn term are structured in a similar way to the days in yr R.

As the children become more confident we move to a more structured day.

All children at Devonshire are encouraged to read regularly at home and they can change their reading books daily.

Book boxes are out on the tables during ‘Good Morning’ time every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for children to choose a new book and share a book with a parent or friend.

PE days for both Squirrels & Hedgehogs are Monday and Wednesdays.

Their kit will be sent home half termly and always need to be returned to school on the first Monday after a holiday.

We aim to make learning as much fun as possible for our pupils and cover interesting topics such as dinosaurs and pirates during the year.

This really encourages the children to engage fully with their learning.

Here you will find information about the topics we have covered over the year and the trips and events that we have undertaken.

Take a look at what we have been learning about and enjoy viewing the photos of our trips and events.


	Spring Term 2024

Circus Week

Yet again, Circus Week was fantastic.

The children built on the skills they were introduced to in YR, as well as learning new ones such as juggling with clubs and hats!

Ernest Shackleton

We loved finding out about the amazing life of the explorer Ernest Shackleton and how him and his crew survived on the ice for two years!

We talked about a wide range of things that they would have needed to survive.

We acted out his great expedition and discovered how brave and determined he was.

Walk the mile

We took part in the Red Nose Day, ‘Walk a Mile to Raise a Smile’ and the children did a wonderful job raising money to help others.

It was a long way for some of those little legs but we all managed it and finished with a cheer and a song.

Fairy Tales

Next, we learnt the stories of the Gingerbread Man and Jack and the Beanstalk.

We acted out the stories and had the opportunity to discuss what we thought of the different characters.

We then decorated a gingerbread biscuit each and created our own gingerbread character.

We wrote descriptive sentences to describe our gingerbread person using year 1 writing skills.

Science

Alongside learning the story of Jack and the Beanstalk we grew our own beans. As with all nature, some of them were wonderful, while others didn’t do much at all.

However, we enjoyed spotting any changes that we noticed and talk about the different parts of a plant.

We took part in a cress investigation to find out what the best conditions are for a plant to grow.

Each flower table gave their seeds different conditions.

One had no water, one had no cotton wool to lie on, one had no light and one went in the fridge!

It was really exciting to see the results!

Art – L.S. Lowry

Finally, in art we studied the artist L. S. Lowry.

We found out all about his work and the type of art that he made.

We looked at techniques that he had used to create his work and experimented with different media, such as charcoal, art pencils, printing and painting, to create pictures in a similar style.

Autumn Term 2023

We have had a very exciting half term and learnt lots of new skills.

Animals

Our first topics were ‘Ourselves and other Animals’.

We had great fun experimenting with our senses to find out if we could identify something using only one sense at a time.

We looked at the similarities and differences between a wide range of animals and learnt about the characteristics of different groups.

We then used this knowledge to sort animals.

ZooLab

We were very excited when Zoo Lab visited bringing lots of animals for us to see.

This included a frog, a snake and a giant hissing cockroach!

Toys and Materials

Our next topic was all about toys and the different materials they are made from.
We found out the properties of different materials and thought of adjectives to describe them. Then we sorted materials according to different criteria.