A message from Mr Copeland
I cannot believe that it is the last half term of the year already. It has been an incredibly busy term with so much that has been achieved by the children in school.
We have celebrated the 80th VE Day anniversary, wore green to promote Mental Health Awareness Week and the Year 1 and 2 pupils have taken part in a House Swimming Gala. In the final two weeks of the last half term we were lucky enough to see four ducklings hatch and grow.
I cannot quite remember a project that has evoked such enthusiasm, enjoyment and interest from children, staff and parents alike. The children learnt the importance of caring for living things and experienced an immense sense of awe and wonder for nature, new life and growth. The ducklings visited each classroom, some of us were lucky enough to see them hatching and the experience developed the
understanding of incubation, animal life cycles and the needs of living things. Each year group was challenged with providing a name for each of the ducklings and we are delighted that Cutie, Poppy, Crystal and Quackers are not moving far after kindly been homed by a Pre-School family.
All year groups hit the road over the last few weeks for their annual school trip. Year 2 headed to Eureka, the National Children’s Museum, Year 1 enjoyed the Yorkshire Wildlife Park and Reception and Pre-School both headed
over the Humber Bridge to Hall Farm Park and Pink Pig Farm respectively. In an assembly prior to the trips we discussed the importance of the school CARE Code and how we should follow these values when representing our school. This is something that all of the children took on board and a number members of the public and staff working at the venues commenting positively on the behaviour and manners of all year groups. Each trip provided the benefit of a hands-on learning experience, broadened the children’s understanding of the world and helped to support their personal growth. This year, a new record was achieved with no less than 19 Pre-School pupils asleep on the journey back to school! At the end of the half term we said farewell to Mrs McIntyre who has been working in a temporary position in PreSchool and Reception over the last two academic years. I would like to thank Mrs McIntyre for all of her hard work and wish her well in the future. We were also delighted to welcome Miss Chapman back into school following her maternity leave.
We are all eagerly anticipating a number of events this half term including the Year 2 production, Sports Day and the Pre-School graduation. There will also be further opportunities for transition coming up as we approach the end of the academic year. Please read the key dates section. We look forward to welcoming you into school for some of these events.
We had a fantastic first half of the summer term in the PreSchool as we look forward to many sunny days to come, our class trip, Sports Day and graduation. A huge thank you and well done to all the children for how kind and friendly they are with each other.
We have been thinking about changes and how these are happening all the time as we continue to grow and learn. We were able to reflect and think a little about how much we have changed in our learning because we can do so much more now compared to earlier in the year.
In our stories we were introduced to a creature who goes through enormous changes from being a Very Hungry Caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly!
It is a wonderful story for us because it helps us to remember the order of the days of the week as well as reinforcing healthy foods that we might like to eat. As we became more familiar with the story we were able to put the sequence of changes into order to learn about the life cycle of butterflies. We began with enjoying making a ‘POP!’ sound as the egg hatched and also made a large yellow egg for our display wall. Then we decided to make a caterpillar so we mixed paints together to make interesting colours for the body section. After that it was time for a large chrysalis to be decorated with lots of fine colourful painted lines and finally everyone helped to create a gorgeous symmetrical butterfly. We also looked very closely at pictures of real butterflies to see their gorgeous patterns.
Reception had another busy half term; our topic was minibeasts.
We started the theme by learning about lots of insects that live outside in our gardens and enjoyed using the information books to find out lots of facts! We went on a minibeast hunt in our woodland area with magnifying glasses and found lots of creepy crawlies! We found worms, snails, wasps, ants, bees, butterflies and woodlice.
We discussed how to handle minibeasts and how we should care for all living things. We then found out about the
Following on with the theme of minibeasts, some of us have begun to spot green aphids and the occasional ladybird in the woodland area. We read about The Very Lazy Ladybird who was so sleepy that she did not ever learn to fly. As we got to know the story we found out that it was her friends’ help that made it possible for her to fly in the end.
Studying ladybirds has given us many opportunities to practise our fine motor skills cutting around circles to make dots as well as further developing our sketching of circles and ovals as we had a go drawing some of our own. We learnt that a ladybird is an insect with six legs, two wings and varying numbers of spots. If we are very observant we can even count its many spots.
life cycle of a butterfly and a frog and sequenced the different stages. The children enjoyed looking at symmetry and making their own symmetrical butterfly pictures in our forest school session.
In Maths the children have had fun learning how to add and subtract two numbers using the mathematical language first, then and now, and have even been writing their own number sentences! In Phonics they have been learning lots of new digraph and trigraph letter sounds and practising how to write their own words and sentences.
We are now starting our new topic on farm animals. In preparation for this we thoroughly enjoyed our recent visit to Hall Farm Park where we were lucky enough to meet and feed lots of different farmyard animals including cows, pigs, ducks, donkeys and sheep, and a real highlight was taking goats for a walk. We also enjoyed a ride on the back of a tractor and a visit to the cow sheds to feed the cows lots of delicious potatoes!
This half term we will be finding out more about farm animals and the produce that they provide. We will also be learning about summer and all about creatures that live in the sea.
With another half term over we cannot believe how much we have managed to squeeze into the last few weeks!
We have grown bean plants, observed ducklings hatch from their eggs and created some wonderful artwork. Our English work has seen us focus on two stories – The Secret Sky Garden and The Ugly Five, which we will continue to look at after the half term break when we will be writing our own stories!
The children enjoyed learning about why we celebrate VE Day and took part in a range of activities throughout the morning, such as making Union Flag bunting, designing a VE Day medal and listening to music from the 1940s. We also came to school dressed in green to recognise Mental Health Awareness Week, which led to some good discussions about our feelings and what to do if we feel unhappy.
Alongside our usual lessons, we have taken part in a number of exciting events over at the main Hymers site. The Year 1 children represented
part in the Year 1, 2 and 3 Swimming Gala! The children were nervous but excited and we were so proud of how well they faced their fears and gave it their all. We are sure all those in attendance would agree that the everyone did a wonderful job and should feel very proud. The term came to a close with a fantastic visit to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park! This eagerly anticipated trip was amazing from start to finish, with the children taking part in a workshop and seeing the different animals across the park. The weather was very kind to us, which made the day even more
enjoyable. We are sure the children loved telling you all about our super day out!
The children have been really interested in the latest sculpture trail in Hull and the East Riding: A Mischief of Rats! We have challenged the boys and girls to see if we can locate and photograph all 45 of the rats over the coming weeks. We have a gallery wall in Miss Smith’s classroom which we would love to add to. If you had the chance to explore over the half term holidays and found some of the rats, please email us any photographs as we would love to see them!
YEAR 2
Year 2 certainly packed a lot into the last half term!
We finished our study of the Katie Morag stories and the Big Boy Cousins getting up to mischief and writing letters of apology to the whole island. Then we moved on to Jacqueline Wilson’s Cliffhanger. We wrote postcards in the voice of different characters and enjoyed writing and performing our own playscripts based on events in the story.
In Maths we learnt a lot about fractions, including equivalent fractions and fractions of numbers, and we also looked at time where we have done incredibly well at reading and writing the time to five minute intervals.
In Geography we studied islands, including designing our own dream island and then making them out of mod roc… you may know which day we made these because of how your child’s clothes came home! Sorry about that!
A definite highlight during the last half term was our brilliant trip to Eureka! We had a great time exploring the different areas of the
museum and learned so much about so many things; we saw how our skeleton works when we ride a bike, put our feet inside the shoes of the world’s tallest man and spoke to a Bot who asked us funny questions! A very popular activity was cracking the codes of the bank vaults to discover the treasure inside. We had a fascinating session in the Gross Lab where we learned a lot about how our digestive system works and why scabs form! We were very proud of the way the children conducted themselves throughout the trip; they were polite
Key dates for this term
and respectful to the staff at the museum and other visitors, incredibly enthusiastic about everything we did and great fun! There were a lot of sleepy children on the journey home. We also cannot wait for our performance of A Hint of Snow White after the break. The children have been working hard learning their lines and the songs, which are sounding fantastic! We look forward to seeing you there!
June
Thu 12 - Year 2 Performance - A Hint of Snow
Fri 13 - Reception Swimming at Hymers am Wed 18 - EYFS & KS1 New Parents’ Evening (Junior School Hall) 5pm Fri 20 - HHM Sports Day (Junior School Field) 1:30pm
Fri 27 - Pre-School Performance and Graduation 2pm Mon 30 - Induction Day (New Reception - Year 6 classes) all day
July
Wed 2 - HHM Summer reports to parents
Thu 3 - HHM End of Year Party 3pm Fri 4 - Last day of Summer Term half day Pre-School & Reception 11:30am, Year 1 &2 11:45am