The Hedgehogs

Year

1

The Squirrels

Summer Term 2023

English – Pirates

We really enjoyed our topic on pirates. We found out lots of interesting facts as well as some rather salty pirate language from this great book,

The Pirates Next Door.

We designed a pirate of our own and thought of adjectives to describe him or her.

We then used them to write interesting sentences about our characters.

‘Dress as a pirate day’ was great fun!

We made pirate hats to really help us get in the swing of things, ate sea biscuits and drank grog (not real of course!)

History and DT - Castles

This topic was so much fun and the children really enjoyed learning about what life was like hundreds of years ago.

There were so many different jobs in the castle including a ditcher, cook and knight.

We talked about which job we thought would be the worst and which would be the best!

In DT we learnt how to make a free-standing tower and how to join walls. We also practised making a drawbridge.

One of the DT focuses behind this was to make our castles as strong and secure as we could.

Finally, the children worked in teams to create a castle of their own using all the skills they had practised.

We were delighted to see how well the teams worked together, sharing ideas and being supportive, just like the Together Twins.

We finished the topic with a trip to our very own castle in Southsea!

We met Henry VIII, well, his statue and saw all of the cannons and cannon balls.

It was very interesting to see how incredibly thick castle walls really are!

The Portsmouth Book Awards

Every year Year 1 children around the city are invited to take part in a book competition, when they often get to meet the winning author.

Four books are shortlisted and the children listen to them being read in class.

After they have heard them lots of times and have really got to know the stories, they vote for their favourite.

And the winner was ….Tiny Crab is a Tidy Crab, which we LOVED!

Victorians

We had great fun going back in time and finding out about what life was like 100 years ago.

We looked at Victorian household artefacts and tried to guess what they were used for.

We had a very exciting trip to Manor Farm.

We didn’t think it was much fun to go to school in Victorian times and all agreed that life is a lot easier now than it was then.

We all enjoyed ourselves enormously and had great fun with the hands-on learning we experienced.

Sports Day

We had a really enjoyable Sports Day morning. There were a great variety of activities such as hurdles and ball balancing.

Thank you to all of the parents who came to cheer us on and support us.

Sewing 

All the children were tasked with making a purse using a running stich.

It had to carry money, which wouldn’t slip out, be attractive and have a working button to close it.
We all created a plan and were very lucky to have lots of parents who volunteered to come and help sew, which they all enjoyed!

Everybody made an amazing purse which they took home to use.