We have had a fantastic half term continuing our focus on ‘Julia Donaldson’ and her fantastic books. This half term, we have been reading and using ‘The Gruffalo’, ‘Room On The Broom’ and ‘Zog’ to enhance our learning. Throughout this half term we have participated in so many wonderful new experiences.

At the start of the half term, we were reading and learning all about ‘Zog’. This was a great book and provided us with plenty of opportunities to explore fire safety and showed us how to become resilient by trying and trying again and never giving up. We were reading this book during Welsh week which fitted in great as we noticed the Welsh flag has a dragon on it too! During Welsh week we designed and created fantastic pieces of art work at home ahead of our competition entries. We also worked very hard in class to understand and follow the creative style of artist Rhiannon Roberts. Here work inspired us to create our own eye-catching pieces of work which were full of colour ahead of the Eisteddfod.

We also celebrated World Book Day during this half term and many children in the Year 1 classes dressed up as characters from Julia Donaldson’s books!We were extremely lucky to be visited by a mad scientist recently. We participated in a very engaging and interesting workshop which focused on making potions! We demonstrated great listening skills and explored the materials used. We have also been across to the local library. We chose a book and brought it back to our class. Every morning, we have been reading and sharing our chosen books with our friends.

This half term has been packed full with exciting experiences as you can see! We were lucky enough to have a visitor come to all Year 1 classes from UpBeat and lead an African drumming workshop. It got very noisy but it was great fun!

Year 1 have been very busy in the kitchen during this half term. We have been follow recipes to make Easter nests, Gruffalo crumble, Bara Brith and Gruffalo cookies. We made sure we used the correct ingredients, measured them carefully and the overall result was very tasty! As the end of this half term approaches and with the Easter bunny nearly stopping by, we have been displaying our creativity skills across the curriculum in many tasks. We have been designing and creating Easter cards and gifts to take home, retelling the Easter story and participating in a Palm Sunday workshop. We are very lucky to be able to participate in fun workshops and activities like this!

Finally, Year 1 had a fantastic start to the last week of this half term with a school trip to the Mountain View Ranch… home to the Gruffalo and his friends! We followed the trail, found some of our favourite characters along the way, climbed into a tree house, explored the fairy garden and met 4 friendly goats, Twm, Socks, Gary and Hugo. Every part of this experience was wonderful and we all had a lot of fun!

We have already been discussing our new theme for next term and we are very excited. Have a fantastic week off and we look forward to seeing you all back at school soon.