Mrs Gilham will be teaching in this class this year and Miss Ashmore will also be working with us. We are really looking forward to working with the children and supporting their progress as we go through the school year. We have some wonderful topic and learning experiences planned. 

This half term we will be focusing on the topic "How Things Grow". We will be learning all about the journey of a seed to a plant, as well as the Science behind pollination and germination. We will be working on sentence writing and improving our writing with adjectives, including writing stories and setting descriptions. Our stories for the half term are 'The Tiny Seed'  and 'The Leaf Thief'. There are links below to both of them if you wish to listen to them with your children.  We'll also be developing our skills in Maths by learning about place value, measuring length, mass and volume, as well as working on our 2, 5 and 10 times tables.  

Children have taken home a Library Lodge story book to read please return this on the following Friday so we can change this for a new one. If you do have any other books from the library at home please do send them back to school. Please try to read these stories with your children and write in their reading diaries every evening is possible to win raffle tickets for the prize draw every Friday. Reading books will be sent out as the children progress in their Phonics skills. 

If you have any questions or queries, please either contact the school office, or speak to me on the gate during drop off or pick up times. 

We look forward to working with you this coming year.

Mrs Gilham and Miss Ashmore.

Our class bear, Huggles would love to spend the weekend with you! If your child receives 'Star of the Week' they will be able to bring Huggles home. Please use the book provided to document the fun things they have done for us to share with the rest of the class.

The children have enjoyed exploring the classroom and the activities available this week. We are so lucky to have our own Westwood Doctors Surgery that is proving to be very popular! We have also enjoyed lots of literacy and maths activities, as well as creating our own self portraits.

In Science we have been learning all about the human body. Year One have been naming and labelling body parts, while Year Two have been learning about the positive effect that exercise has on the body.

We had picked lots of apples off our school tree so decided to make a healthy (ish) Joe Wickes inspired snack! The children chose apple flapjack and researched a recipe. We had lots of fun making them!

Year 1 have been learning all about the five senses in Science. We conducted an experiment to use our senses to guess what the items were. We used our smell to identify orange juice, coffee and pepper and our touch to feel objects such as pine cones, pom poms and conkers. We even used our sense of taste to identify rice krispies and our hearing to identify the sounds of different musical instruments. 

The class have created a beautiful Harvest Festival display full of a variety of fruits and vegetables! Fabulous drawing and painting skills!

We packed all of our wonderful food donations up and took them to St Mary's Church where they were greatly welcomed. We had a lovely Harvest Festival service and sang our favourite songs and thought about what we are thankful for. The children then took part in a craft session where they made cards to say thank you to the special people in their lives.

We love inviting our Westwood families in to share an activity with the children. This half term we chose to sketch portraits of each other as the children have been working on this in their weekly Art lessons. It was so lovely to see the children using the skills they have learnt- and teaching the grown ups too! The finished portraits were all fantastic! Thank you to all involved.

We were very lucky to have two fantastic local Police Officers come into school to talk to the children. We discussed all of our fantastic emergency services and what to do in an emergency. We also learned about safer strangers within our local community. The children listened so well and asked some great questions! Then they all had the chance to sit in the Police car! We even listened to the loud sirens and saw the flashing lights which the children loved.

Year 1 and 2 were amazing, walking every day to raise money for a wonderful charity, Angel Small Paws. We raised over £1000, as well as donating a huge amount of food and accessories for the charity. Well done to everyone involved!

Our role play area has been transformed into a mystical place full of wizardry and magic! The children are enjoying creating magic potions and spells, pouring and mixing a variety of ingredients together to make their creations. This links to our half term topic of "Fairytales" where we will explore fairytale stories, settings, characters and magic!

We enjoyed learning all about the Hindu festival of Diwali in our RE lessons, and took part in some craft activities to celebrate the special event. We made Rangoli patterns with bright, symmetrical colours and our own diya lamps out of clay which we painted.

The residents at Amber View Care Home enjoyed a visit from our classes to sing some lovely Christmas carols. We had a lovely morning and it certainly got us all in the Christmas spirit. We also made the residents a Christmas card signed by each child which was greatly received. 

We enjoyed a lovely Christingle service at St Mary's Church where we all made a Christingle and sang songs to remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus. Our friends and families also joined us for the service. Thank you to all who attended, it was a lovely afternoon.

We had a fantastic time at our yearly pantomime. This year it was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We also had the opportunity to have a sing and dance!

Our role play area has been transformed into the children's own Chinese restaurant, even serving delicious fruit tea! Our topic this half term is Oceans and Continents so we will be doing lots of learning about the largest continent, Asia. The children have enjoyed dressing in traditional Chinese dresses, making and drinking fruit tea and making and serving Chinese food.

In Music we have been learning all about Reggae music so we decided to get some instruments out and try to re-create some reggae sounds! It was lots of fun and we enjoyed playing with beats and rhythms. We also listened to and sang some Reggae songs from the 1950's up to the modern day.

After reading the book 'A Planet Full of Plastic' by Neal Layton, the children made posters to warn others of the dangers of plastic and why we should reduce, reuse and recycle.