The Hedgehogs

Year

1

The Squirrels

Spring Term 2026

Art – Yayoi Kusama

We enjoyed finding out about some fabulous artists this term. We investigated Yayoi Kusama and the children had great fun creating their own pictures in her distinctive style.

As you can see, she loves bright colours, spots, pumpkins and mushrooms.

History - 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.

English - Fairy Tales

We learnt the stories of the Gingerbread Man and Jack and the Beanstalk this term.

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

We learnt some spelling rules and patterns including the -ed suffix and the un- prefix, and how to join words and ideas with ‘and’.

We are extremely proud of our fairy tale writing.

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 talked about the different parts of a plant.

We also learnt the features and names of some common flowers and trees that we might find in our local area.

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

Each group 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!

Geography

We have been using maps, atlases and the internet to locate and name the 4 countries of the United Kingdom.

We had great fun looking at and learning about the flags.

We have been learning about the capital cities and in the UK, using capital letters for the proper nouns in our writing.

Art – L.S. Lowry

At the end of the term 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.