Category: Year 1

Newspapers

Good morning, Cannon Park! I hope you all feeling well and you had a lovely weekend. This is our second week of learning at home. By now, you might be in more of a routine to help structure you day and you might be getting a little more used to that routine. However, your new routine won’t last forever – we will be back at school before you know it!

One thing that I’m doing more than usual at the moment is reading the news. In school, we subscribe to First News, which is a newspaper written especially for children. Fortunately, they are creating free access to their products for a limited period of time, to help parents and children during school closures.

First News is a weekly newspaper aimed at 7 to 14-year-olds that aims to get children talking about the news in an easy to understand and non-threatening way. They cover issues which are relevant to children and which specifically affect them. Inside you’ll find a mix of world news and UK news, but also loads of fun stuff, such as entertainment, games, animals, sport and puzzles.

News is all around us and children pick up on news wherever they go. But not all news is bad and they passionately believe there are lots of positive stories out there. They love to cover the nice news too and celebrate what is good about the world.

For today’s activity, why not encourage your child to read through First News. Following this, they could:

  • write their own newspaper article about current events
  • create a short news report to film like CBBC Newsround
  • share a ‘good news’ story with a family member to spread positive news
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Dance Dance Dance

Oti Mabuse has joined Joe Wicks in launching live lessons for children during school closures. Strictly Come Dancing dancer Oti will provide education for youngsters currently at home as the pandemic continues across the country.

Oti, who won the BBC talent show alongside Emmerdale star Kelvin Fletcher last year, will provide children themed classes, with Trolls on Tuesday, followed by Shrek on Wednesday and Mary Poppins on Thursday. Friday will see her engage in Jungle Book-themed activities, and there’s no letting up at the weekend, either. She will provide an Aladdin themed lesson on Saturday, with High School Musical on Sunday.

Click on the picture of Oti below to go to her official YouTube channel, where all the videos can be found:

Moon Watch

As the skies have been clear at night recently, have you looked up and spotted the Moon? At the moment, there isn’t much Moon to see! The New Moon phase started on 24th March so currently we can only see a small part of the Moon. However, each night, we will see a little more.

For today’s activity, be a scientist and start a Moon chart. One key skill of being a scientist is making observations and recording results. Think about how best you can record how the Moon changes over time. At some point over the next two weeks, we see a full Moon. Make sure you note down that date and we can compare when we get back to school, or add your observations to your Google Classroom.

For some of our older children, if you’re really up for a challenge, think about why the Moon looks different each night. Does the Moon change size? Why is this happening?

Create a game

With the announcement of the postponement of the Olympics, I thought for today’s activity, we could think about the different games we play in PE. Today, try to create your own game.

Think about:

  • The aim of the game (how can it be won?)
  • Equipment needed
  • Number of players
  • Rules

Write it all up into one poster and maybe we can play the game when we all get back to school. Who knows, maybe one day, your game will be an Olympic sport!

Salt Dough

Another day, another activity! Making salt dough is a really fun and easy activity for children and the chances are you will have all of the ingredients in the cupboard ready to go. Children, if you’re reading, you’ll need to ask an adult’s permission! Children will love using their imaginations to create all sorts of exciting objects (although simple shapes do seem to work best) and hours of fun painting their creations, but do take care to remind little ones that the salt dough is not edible.

Ingredients:

  • 250g of plain flour
  • 125g of salt
  • 125ml of water

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to its lowest setting and line a baking sheet with baking parchment.

2. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the water and stir until it comes together into a ball.

3. Transfer the dough to a floured work surface and shape into your chosen model. You can roll it out and cut out shapes, numbers or letters using biscuit cutters, or make any kind of model you can think of. We made some fruit and veg shapes plus cupcakes for a teddy bear’s picnic.

4. Put your finished items on the lined baking sheet and bake for 3 hrs or until solid.

5. Leave to cool and then paint.

Top tips

• Simple designs work best, as the dough isn’t sturdy until baked. If your child can’t decide between a tall giraffe or a flatter gecko, for example, steer them towards the gecko. Also bear in mind that the bigger/fatter the model, the longer it will take to harden in the oven.

• Try using silicone baking sheets to roll out the shapes without the need for extra flour. This saves on cleaning up your kitchen. Silicone sheets are also a quick way to bake without needing baking parchment.

• If you want to make salt dough ‘cupcakes’ like we did, pop your shaped dough into cupcake cases before you put it in the oven and bake the pretend cakes in cupcake trays.

The dough then sets firmly stuck to the paper cases, ready for painting with pretend icing, cherries or sprinkles.

Thank you to the BBC for this idea.

 

Outdoors Art

Yesterday, the first day in our new routines, it was great to see so many of you starting your new independent learning in such a positive way! Across the Google Classrooms, it was great to see children working together to solve their maths problems, writing stories together and just generally being positive and encouraging each other! Teamwork, Respect, Integrity, Enjoyment and Discipline are all very much alive and well!

It looks like it’s going to be a sunny day today – Spring is definitely here! For today’s activity, if you can, why not try some outdoor artwork in the garden today. One idea is to use chalk and masking tape to create some unique designs.

First, pick an area to tape up. If you have a paved area with flagstones, one flagstone is perfect. Next, put some masking tape across the area. Using different colours of chalk, colour in each section before removing the tape to reveal your masterpiece! If you are up for a challenge, try and tape up your initials!

If you can’t do this activity outside or you don’t have any chalk or tape, you can still join in! Instead, use plain paper or a page in your exercise book. First draw out some straight lines going from one side to the other, crossing across the page. Then use colouring pencils or felt tips to colour each section.

As always, send your photos in to website@cannonpark.coventry.sch.uk

Rainbows

Good morning Cannon Park!

I hope you’re all safe and well. Today is the first day of a very different routine for many of you but I know you will all continue to demonstrate our school values wherever you are this morning.

Each day, I will posting an activity on the website – an activity that many of you will be able to join in with. I will also add useful websites to further your learning. If you join in with the activity, please feel free to send in a photo to our new website email address website@cannonpark.coventry.sch.uk  and I’ll add some to the website.

For the first activity, I thought we’d start with one about hope and positivity. With social distancing and lots of places including many school closing, children are connecting with each other by painting colourful rainbows and putting them in their windows for others to see. Today, why not create your own rainbow and stick it in your window. You might want to use felt tips or paint or even do a collage.

We may not all be in the building but we are still all one school.

World Book Day

Everyone in school enjoyed celebrating books yesterday for World Book Day. The children, who were dressed in their PJs with their favourite bedtime story, enjoyed doing a variety of bookish activities. Mrs MacDonald rang the bell several times throughout the day, which meant the children had to ‘drop everything and read’.

Thank you to the families who sent in cakes as part of our Great Bookish Bake Off. The money raised in the cake sale at the end of the day will go right back into buying books for our library, which the children will enjoy.

Finally, a big thank you to all the parents and carers and grandparents who came in to join us for the Big Read at the end of the day. It was lovely to see so many children enjoying stories!