What an exciting and busy half term Year 1 have had! This half term, we began by developing our scientific skills when learning about Magnetism. Although Year 1 did find it interesting learning about what materials are magnetic and which are not. We have also been learning traditional Welsh Folk dances; Jac Y Do and Y Delyn Newydd, in celebration for St David’s day we will be celebrating soon! Additionally, what we have been very enthusiastic about is our new topic Julia Donaldson and exploring her fascinating stories. We have explored Stickman, the Smartest Giant in Town and Room on the Broom so far. We enjoyed learning about Julia Donaldson and created iMovie News Reports to share facts we learnt about her. Not only this, Julia Donaldson’s stories are often set in woodlands with woodland creatures being the characters, therefore, there is no better way to celebrate this than having a visit from Animals Encounter! We were ecstatic being introduced to animals we have not seen before, such as an indigo snake, a cane toad, a lesser tenrec, an elongated tortoise and a binturong! We were very brave to touch and hold the animals and reflected on our experience in the afternoon. The skunk, indigo snake and elongated tortoise were a few of the favourites we saw! Furthermore, we celebrated National Storytelling Day in Year 1 by having our Immersion Day. We voted for a story we wanted to perform to the other Year 1 classes, drafted an email to send to the Year 1 teachers, designed our tickets to sell using pretend money (which developed our financial skills), created our puppets, learnt our lines and ended the day by performing our chosen story to the other Year 1 classes and Mrs Hill in the hall. It was a fun, exciting way to celebrate this special day and Julia Donaldson!
We were very fortunate in Year 1 to not only have one visitor, but two! We went to visit the author Steve Anthony at the Beaufort Centre. Steve Anthony is an author and illustrator of popular children’s books such as, “The Queen’s Hat”. During our visit, Steve Anthony read two of his stories to us, these were “Please, Mr Panda” and “Cat Nap” which we loved seeing and listening to! Steve Anthony also drew and signed an illustration of the character from his story ‘Please, Mr Panda’ for each class, which we proudly display in each of our classrooms. We also got a preview of his new story being released in May 2026 called, “Super, Mr Panda!”. Steve Anthony was not the only author we were fortunate to meet, we also met an author who we are more familiar with…Mrs Sier! We were lucky to be introduced to Mrs Sier’s book, “Magic, Mum and Me” when Mrs Sier spent an afternoon visiting each class to read her story to us and answer any questions we had about her being an author. We recorded our very own podcast episode with Mrs Sier and Miss
Thomas, which is a short episode including questions about Mrs Sier’s story and discussing Mrs Sier’s inspiration for the story, as well as what it is like being an author!
It has been an incredible start to our Spring term and new topic Julia Donaldson, which we are looking forward to continuing into the new half term.
