Year 1 immersed in Take One Picture project

This week we have immersed ourselves in the Take One Picture project. Our painting is “Amatungula in Flower and Fruit and Blue Ipomoea’ by Marianne North. We have followed her journey around the world, painting interesting and unusual flowers. We learnt that she had her own gallery built to display her paintings at Kew gardens.

On Tuesday we had a live video link to Australia, set up by Mrs Wingrove. We learnt about the endangered animals there such as the Bilby, Koala and Tasmanian Devil. In science we talked about what we already know about the parts of plants and what they need to grow, we set up our own experiments to find out how plants take up water and how much water they need to grow.

On Wednesday we learnt that Marianne North visited Australia at Darwin’s suggestion and painted a picture of a Koala and Australian Pears! We looked at an old map which showed where she had visited and we tracked her journey by boat to Australia. We wrote a letter from Marianne North to her family, describing all the wonderful things one might see in Australia.

On Thursday Year One were lucky enough to have visit from Mrs Thompson who, like Marianne North, is an expert on plants! The children had previously composed their questions to ask Mrs Thompson earlier in the week and they were all to do with plants and what the children would like to find out about. We have been learning to punctuate our questions with question marks. Everyone asked their question, some were very interesting, Lewis and Toby asked 'Why do flowers smell strongly?' All the children were captivated by the answers that Mrs Thompson gave and listened very carefully! Mrs Thompson kindly gave us a pot of Narcissus each to take home and look after. Maybe one day we will be botanists too!

Next week: we will be mentoring with the children. So we will be thinking about what we enjoy about school, what we would like to change about school to make it better, what we have learn this term and what we would like to learn next. It may be helpful to discuss these ideas with them at home over the weekend.

At home: we will beginning rehearsals for our Celebration Assembly so your child might like to read through their lines with you at home.