The Hedgehogs

Year

1

The Squirrels

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.

SpringTerm 2025

Art – Yayoi Kusama

We enjoyed finding out about some fabulous artists this term.

This was the first year that 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

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 talked 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 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!

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.

Autumn Term 2024

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

Drawing Club

In English we have continued to enjoy Drawing Club as the children were so enthused by this approach to writing and drawing in Year R.

We have been amazed by their progress and creative imaginations.

Drawing Club developed into Curious Quests when Professor Klunk left his Magic Mustard Tin portal in our classroom.

The children love receiving messages via the portal in every English lesson.

Professor Klunk sends us skills to learn, which we then send back to him to help the Great Big Story Dream Machine to fill with magnificent writing.

As you can imagine, the children are really motivated to draw and write every day.

We also had the most fun bringing this to life by building our own Great Big Story Dream Machine in class.