They have started our people who help us topic and this week we have been focusing on how their families help them. They also enjoyed their very first Russell House swimming lesson and their instructors Tom and Phil were very impressed with the children's confidence and swimming ability. They all had a wonderful time and even the ride on the minibus there and back was exciting. The children returned to school tired but happy and ready for their milk and biscuit!

When discussing how our families help us, the children were able to think of some lovely ideas about how their parents look after them, cooking their favourite foods, giving them cuddles, playing with them and reading to them.  Grandparents were included in our discussion as children said they helped take them to and from school and made them feel loved.

In literacy, the children drew pictures of people who are in their family and how they help them and then wrote a sentence to accompany their drawing. The children are growing in confidence when completing activities and loved using their very grown up literacy books!

The children have been focusing on recognising numbers and matching them to amounts this week in maths. They have been making sure they count carefully and have been exploring how to make teen numbers using our Numicon resource. The children have been developing their number formation and shown great focus, taking great pride in their work which is lovely to see.

Form 1 have been continuing to think about how they can help each other and discussing their feelings using the book Colour Monster. The children have each made their own monster and enjoyed placing it on the feeling that they are experiencing. This is a valuable morning routine as the children have the opportunity to say what they are excited about, what is happening in their families, things that are important to them and also provides the opportunity to discuss any feelings that they might need help with. This develops their emotional literacy which is of course so important for young children.

The children have also been thinking about how they can show they are good friends to each other and had some great ideas such as, asking others to play if they look lonely, telling jokes to make others laugh and being kind. We now have a lovely display in the classroom to remind them how they can be good friends.

Some children in Form 1 have been really interested in Paw Patrol, which fits well with our topic of people who help us. They have been chatting about all the different characters and how they help others and discussing that although the characters are all different they make a great team. This has helped the children make connections to other learning and been a fun child-led element of the week.

The children have also had fun in French and enjoyed starting all their lunchtime clubs such as ballet, tap, modern and Spanish. It has certainly been a great first full week in Form 1!