Another fun week!

Pandas were really lucky to have a surprise visit from fire fighters on Friday morning. They brought their fire engine and the children all had a sit inside. Friday afternoon was very busy too! Pandas and Snow Leopards invited special ladies in to celebrate Mother’s Day. Cakes and sweet treats were enjoyed in the sunshine.

Pandas have been exploring patterns – they have been continuing patterns, identifying patterns in everyday life and creating their own patterns. On Tuesday we created decorative crosses to hang up at Easter time. The children were great at winding wool and thread around twigs to make their crosses.

Super Writer of the Week is proving to be very popular and is really motivating the children to be brave and have a go at writing independently! We have seen some amazing examples of using phonic knowledge to sound and write familiar and unfamiliar words. Keep up the great work Pandas!

Amazing animals!

Pandas had such a busy week last week. As part of their journey into the lives of pets and vets, they were lucky enough to have a range of furry (and not so furry) visitors. The children were excited to meet fun and energetic sausage dogs, a wonderfully calm cockapoo, a beautiful pony, a terrific tortoise, a lovely lamb and a little piglet too! Wow! Very lucky Pandas!

The vets role play is a popular choice during child initiated time. Pandas are really enjoying all of the enhancements around the classroom and outside. The outside area is taking shape and it’s lovely to see some beautiful plants growing in a variety of pots. Pandas are making sure they are watered and well cared for. The construction area is being developed along with a fun, outdoor creative station. Pandas are making great progress in their phonics and they have been trying hard to use their phonics knowledge to write sentences – even using capital letters and full stops! They are all working really hard to be ‘Super Writer of the Week’.

Keep up the great work, Pandas. We are looking forward to another fun packed week.

People who help us

Pandas have had such a busy few weeks learning all about people who help us in our community. The dramatic ‘biscuit thief’ break in was something we all had to investigate! We had to search for clues and try to work out who or what had been in our classroom. The panic was over once we had discovered that it had been Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs. There’s us thinking it could have been Mrs Williams eating all of our custard creams! Luckily, we did have a visit from a policeman and a PCSO. They made sure we all had a sit in the police car and they told us what being on the front line helping people is really like.

Finding out about how doctors and nurses help us was exciting. We had great fun dressing up and running our doctor’s surgery. Teddy had to be bandaged up and we made sure we recorded appointments and took telephone calls from patients.  Another important role in our community is a firefighter. Our role play was transformed into a Fire Station and we had to make sure we were ready to help people in need. We found out about dialling 999 in an emergency and what to do if there was ever a fire. We enjoyed making hoses from pipes and tubes and created some lovely fire themed art work.

Most recently, we have been finding out about the important work of our local Farmers. We discovered that our farmers are so important to us and people all over the world. We explored jobs on the farm, how and where food grows and how it gets to our local farm shops and supermarkets. We enjoyed having our very own farm shop in our classroom and even had lots of vegetables to find in the soil in our outdoor tuff tray.

We are looking forward to learning all about Pets and Vet next week. Caring for animals is as important as caring for each other. We are hoping to have some very exciting pet visits too!

Well done Pandas – you are all amazing and are doing such a great job at working together as a team!

New Panda Class teachers

Dear all,

After interviewing last week we would like to welcome to the team Mrs Emma Billington and Mrs Laura Conde, who will be our new Panda class teachers from January, until Mrs McGrath comes back. Mrs Conde will teach Mondays and Tuesdays and Mrs Billington will teach Wednesdays, Thursday, Fridays. Both ladies are very experienced EYFS teachers and will liaising with Mrs Mayle to ensure a smooth handover. They will be spending Wednesday afternoon with the class to get to know them as well. If you’re collecting tomorrow after school, come and say hello if you can!

Making bread and butter

Yesterday, we listened to the story of the Little Red Hen. After we discussed how the Little Red Hen made the bread talking about each stage of the process. We then had a go at following a recipe and weighing out the ingredients to make our own bread.
In the afternoon, we discussed where we think butter comes from, some children suggested milk and some said cream. I showed the children a pot of cream and asked them if they thought we would be able to turn the cream into butter ourselves. We made our predictions and then had a go. First, we poured the cream into some jars and then we had to shake until we could see the cream getting thicker. This was very tiring but the children displayed excellent teamwork sharing the jars around. Eventually, the cream turned solid into butter and we enjoyed the butter on our bread rolls.

Storyteller Visit

This afternoon we had our story workshop from Shropshire based storyteller Sally Tonge and what a fantastic afternoon we had! Sally told the children some stories and rhymes based on traditional tales to reinforce our learning from before half term. She told the story of the Three Little Pigs using her amazing props and through song using her guitar and she had the children hooked from start to finish!
We also all joined together with Snow Leopards at the end to take part in a big sing where we sang the song: The Wheels on the Bus, however our bus was no ordinary bus as we had unicorns, princesses and ghosts on it and we had to think of noises and actions to represent these characters. Such great imagination and creativity this afternoon from all of Snow Leopards and Pandas – well done everyone!

Meet Daisy the cow

This afternoon, we started learning about our new topic: Food & Farming.
We started by discussing the question: where does our food come from? Then, we discussed where milk comes from. We read a story all about how milk comes from cows and looked at how farmers milked today using machines vs a long time ago milking by hand.
We then had a special visit from Daisy the cow and the children had a go at milking her by hand. The children had so much fun and very quickly realised that it takes a long time and lots of hard work to get just a small amount of milk by hand.

Such brilliant learning today Panda Class – Well done!

 

 

 

 

 

Extra Tickets – Panda & Tiger Performance

All performance tickets that have been paid for will be coming home tonight with your child. Look out for a brown envelope!!

Please double check the tickets you have received carefully. You should only have received the amount of tickets that you have paid for on School Gateway.

IF you returned a slip asking for extra tickets when they were made available, you have been added to a new payment in gateway named “Panda & Tiger EXTRA Tickets”. Please access this and purchase the extra tickets you requested.

These  tickets will be issued once payment has been received,  and priority given to the time/date of each transaction until the tickets are all gone.

If you cant see this EXTRA Tickets payment please drop Mrs Smith an email on admin@myddle.shropshire.sch.uk

 

 

Learning about Remembrance Day

This afternoon we have been learning all about Remembrance Day. We found out and discussed why we wear poppies. We watched a lovely Cbeebies video called ‘Poppies’ and the children had a great discussion about the meaning of this video. We then explored lots of poppy themed activities such as; poppy painting on cling film, printing poppy wreaths with apples, making clay poppies and drawing poppies.

Panda and Snow Leopards have had lots of fun this afternoon and have done some super learning – Well done everyone!

Panda Class Science

Over the past few weeks children in Panda Class have been exploring the subject of ‘Animals Including Humans’. 

Year 1 have worked very hard to compare a range of animals, talking about their similarities and differences. Next, children investigated 5 different animal groups – mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and birds.  Then, they had a look at animal diets, again, comparing what animals eat, and then discussing which animals are carnivores, omnivores or herbivores.

Reception joined in by discussing animals, and then made a range of different animal homes, according to the animals size and needs.  They used Dear Zoo as a starting point and were very busy constructing the homes and painting some wonderful animals too.

Next we will be exploring our senses, with a range of different investigations to find out more. .

Well done Panda Class