Hedgehog Class 2023-2024

Week beginning: 15th July 2024

We had a really busy start to the week, learning all about our bodies and how to keep ourselves clean and well.

We then had great fun exploring our senses...

On Thursday, we used our senses as we went on our last seasonal walk around Stretham. We spotted lots of signs of summer and ended our year together with a fun time on the rec, enjoying the field, the playground and a very welcome choc-ice!

Thank you for a BRILLIANT year everyone! We have been so busy, learned so much and had such a lot of fun together! Have a wonderful summer holiday everyone!

Week beginning: 8th July 2024

We have been very busy in Maths this week, learning all about money! We have learned the value of each coin and been adding up different amounts too.

On Tuesday, we had a wonderful final visit of the year to Forest School! So much fun was had (and quite alot of mud enjoyed! Sorry parents!).

On Thursday, we all enjoyed our sponsored walk to Little Thetford! We all walked so well, stopping for a drink and biscuit when we got there and then turned round and walked back! A delicious cake was waiting for us on our return! We hope we raised lots of money for the school! Thank you everyone!

Week beginning: 1st July 2024

Having watched our caterpillars transform into a chrysalis, this week we saw them fly away as butterflies! It has been wonderful to watch and learn!

In Science this week we have been learning all about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. We sorted animals according to what they eat!

We have also been learning about 'Reptiles' this week, our final animal group. In English we read the story 'The Selfish Crocodile' and wrote letters to the animals from Crocodile to apologise and invite them back to the river. We are very good now at checking our own writing to make sure we have used capital letters and full stops, as well as checking our spellings.

Week beginning: 24th June 2024

We had a fabulous time at Forest School on Tuesday, with Mrs Connolly and Mr Froment! We explored the area, looking carefully for different minibeasts and made s'mores on the fire! Yum!

In Maths, we have been learning about place value to 100. We spent time looking closely at number lines, working out the missing numbers.

What a lovely hot week to enjoy a cool swim! It has been so refreshing to splash and enjoy the pool!

Week beginning: 17th June 2024

What a glorious day we had on Thursday at South Angle Farm, in Soham. The weather couldn't have been better, the children were enthralled and so well behaved and Zoe, our farm guide, was great fun! We learned so much to reinforce our learning about animal groups. It was a very special day at the end of our year together! Look at these photos to see how much we crammed into the day!

Week beginning: 10th June 2024

This week Hedgehogs have been learning about the animal group 'fish'! In English, we have read 'The Rainbow Fish' and 'Rainbow Fish to the Rescue.' We compared both stories realising the theme of kindness is in both. On Friday, we wrote our own ending to a Rainbow Fish story; our vocabulary and descriptive phrases are very impressive!

In out Art unit, collage and sculpture, we enjoyed collaging our own Rainbow Fish!

Hedgehogs had a wonderful time swimming this week! We are all so confident in the water and have been practising our kicking and front crawl arms.

We had wonderful time pond dipping at Forest School on Tuesday too! Did we find any fish in our pond?

Week beginning: 3rd June 2024

We hope you all had a wonderful half term! Everyone has come back refreshed and ready for another busy half term of learning! We have really enjoyed playing lots of different phonics games this week, becoming more and more confident at recognising and blending the digraphs and trigraphs.

In Science, we have started learning about the different animal groups. This week, it has been BIRDS! Ask us about the features of birds - we can tell you lots of important facts! In our Art lesson, we started our new unit - sculpture and collage; we all made our own 3D model bird; we had to make sure they had the scientific features of birds (a beak, 2 eyes, 2 legs, 2 wings and feathers) and they look amazing!

In Maths, we have now finished our unit on fractions; we have learned about QUARTERS and have been finding a quarter of different shapes and quantities.

Week beginning: 20th May 2024

This week we have read the book 'Gregory Cool' by Caroline Binch. We have really enjoyed reading a book that is set in a different country - a contrasting country to the UK. We have thought about the feelings of Gregory, who went out to visit his Grandparents in Tobago, and how they change in the time he spends there.

We then wrote postcards as if we were Gregory, writing to our parents to tell them all about our holiday.

On Tuesday, we had a wonderful time at Forest School, making popcorn on the fire and planting sunflower seeds, to support out Science learning.

Week beginning: 13th May 2024

In Geography this week, we had great fun locating the UK on different maps, atlases and globes.

In DT, we have finished making our model windmills. They are brilliant and all of them fulfil the design criteria: able to stand up on their own, have three parts, and have sails that turn!

Week beginning: 6th May 2024

Hedgehogs are really enjoying our PE unit 'net and wall games'; we are learning lots of ball and racket skills.

We have really enjoyed reading some Katie Morag stories; this week we compared the two Granny characters, using lots of adjectives. We then wrote character profiles about each one, using our punctuation and spelling knowledge as well as some of the adjectives we had collected.

In Computing, we have been learning about how we must be careful sharing information about ourselves online.

Week beginning: 29th April 2024

Another busy week in Hedgehog Class!

The week started with a visit from Tim from Rhythmicity! He did an amazing drumming workshop with us, called 'Sammy the Spider'. We listened carefully, followed instructions and really enjoyed playing the instruments to different rhythms and dynamics.

In our Religion and Worldviews lesson this week, we learned all about prayer mats in Islam. We learned how they are used by Muslims when they pray 5 times a day.

We had a lovely time in the sunshine at Forest School on Tuesday. We made May Day crowns and explored new life growing in the pond.

On Thursday we went on our first welly walk this term, exploring the village. We were looking for signs of spring, as well as human and physical features of the village. We saw SO many different features: cow parsley, wheat growing, bluebells and an orange tip butterfly too! We also saw lots of human features - the shop, park, pub, church, houses and physical features - trees and fields. It was a beautiful walk which inspired us to draw our own maps when we got back to school. We even draw them using aerial views, imagining we were birds looking down on the buildings.

Week beginning: 22nd April 2024

This week, we started our new topic 'Where my wellies take me!'. We started by looking at a map of Stretham village, identifying the human and physical features. Weather permitting, we are hoping our wellies will take us for a walk around the village next week, to find each feature!

In Maths, we have continued our unit on Place Value to 50. We have been partitioning numbers into tens and ones, and finding numbers on empty number lines!

In Music, we have been learning about 'timbre', the particular tone that distinguishes a sound. We played a couple of games to identify different musical instruments and our friends voices! We were very good at working out the different timbres!

Week beginning: 15th April 2024

Welcome back everyone! We have had a very busy few days back at school. In Maths, we have been using all sorts of different manipulatives to help us make different numbers up to 50. We have been learning about the number of tens and ones in each number, and realising that when we are counting large numbers of objects grouping them into 10s to count can be very helpful!

We have also been finishing off our model vehicles - don't they look amazing! Our wheels turn because we built super axles in axle holders. We have evaluated our vehicles this week too, thinking about how easy or hard they were to make and what we might do to improve them.

Spring Term 2024

Week beginning: 25th March 2024

Well, what a week and what a term! We have had such a fun busy term 'travelling around our wonderful world'. This week we really enjoyed the LKS2 production of 'The Bee Musical' and ended the week with lots of Easter fun, learning the Easter story and all about the traditions of Easter!

We wish you all a restful and very happy Easter!

Week beginning: 18th March 2024

This week, Hedgehogs have been busy measuring in Maths. First, we compared length and heights using the language 'longer than', 'taller than' and 'shorter than'. Then we measured objects using non-standard units (cubes) before using centimetres on a ruler.

In DT, we have been carrying on making our model vehicles. After painting our boxes, we stuck on our axle holders, carefully cut dowel using a hacksaw and attached our wheels. Then we added details to our vehicles, such as lights, windows and doors. We hope to finish our models next week!

We had a wonderful time at Forest School on Tuesday too, exploring and tasting hot cross buns!

Week beginning: 11th March 2024

It's Science Week this week! We have had a wonderful week exploring our theme of 'time'. We had been set a whole school challenge of creating a pendulum that swings for 30 seconds. We all worked together to investigate ways of doing this and thought about making the string longer, changing the height or altering the swing. It was lots of fun! We came joint third in the school!

On Monday, we had a wonderful dance session with Jack, from JSDC Dance Company.

In Maths, we have been continuing to learn about subtraction and 'finding the difference between' two numbers.

Week beginning: 4th March 2024

What a wonderful start to our animal themed 'Book Week' we had this week, with the visit from The Animal Experience. Our favourite animal was definitely the meerkat!

On Thursday, World Book Day, we all dressed up as different animals, or people linked to animals, and had a wonderful book themed day!

We enjoyed reading lots of different stories, thought about our favourite books and who we would like to share them with, made book marks and did a wonderful book scavenger hunt! We also had a live story read by author Laura Henry-Allain, who wrote the 'Jo Jo and Gran Gran' series. It was a very busy World Book Day!

We also enjoyed a wonderful Forest School session on Tuesday! It was very muddy but lots of fun! Thank you to everyone who helped us.

Week beginning: 26th February 2024

We hope you all had a super half term holiday! We have had a very busy first week back, with a focus on boat travel and water! We have learned all about the seas and oceans that surround us and read a lovely story called 'Grandma Bird by Benji Davies' in which a little boy called Noi, gets rescued in his Grandma's boat. We read the sentences of the story and then ordered them carefully.

We then wrote some super letters to Grandma as if we were Noi, to say thank you for letting him stay, Look at our amazing writing...

That lead us on to be inquisitive scientists, working scientifically to explore objects that float and sink! We had great fun and recorded our findings.

Week beginning: 12th February 2024

We've had a very busy week this week, with our learning being themed on 'buses'! We have learned about buses today and compared them to those in the past, made our own role play bus with tickets we made, drawn buses today and from the past, explored different printing styles to create bus art, and enjoyed reading the story 'The Hundred Decker Bus', by Mike Smith. This wonderful story ends with the bus being carried away by many hot air balloons, which inspired us to write our own hot air balloon adventure stories! Wow - a busy and fun week! We are very ready for a holiday after all that hard work! Have a great half term everyone!

Week beginning: 5th February 2024

We have been continuing our exploring of vehicles in the past and this week, we were lucky to have a visit from Mr Sheldrick, who bought his vintage Austin 7 saloon, to show us. We all had lots of questions to ask him and learned so much about cars in the past. Did you know that only the front window opened, there were no seatbelts and no indicator either - the driver had to put his arm out of the window to show he wanted to turn left or right! What a brilliant morning we had! Thank you Mr Sheldrick!

We wrote some wonderful letters to Mr Sheldrick to say "thank you"!

We had wonderfully wet time at Forest School on Thursday! We LOVED the puddles and mud! We then had early pancakes and hot chocolate to warm us up! Delicious!

Week beginning: 29th January 2024

In Dance this week, we have been changing direction and speed to create different pathways and make our dances look more interesting. We have been creating 'weather' inspired movements!

In Science we have been investigating how fast toy cars travel down a ramp. Do they travel faster if the ramp is steeper? We were brilliant at predicting and then investigating to see if our predictions were correct.

In Maths, we have been ordering and comparing numbers within 20 using < > =.

Week beginning: 22nd January 2024

This week in Science, we did a wonderful investigation, thinking about how we could rescue the people trapped in ice. We made some wonderful predictions and had fun seeing if we were right!

In History, we have been investigating bicycles used today and those used in the past, looking carefully to see how they have changed.

Our school Art Gallery was open this week! We really enjoyed seeing the art through the school, as well as seeing our own displayed there.

We had a lovely time at Forest School on Thursday. What a busy week we've had!

Week beginning: 15th January 2024

What a busy week we've had in Hedgehog Class! We have been learning all about the seasonal changes in Winter - a what wonderfully winter weather we've had this week to enjoy!

We read the story 'Here comes Jack Frost' and this inspired some very wintery artwork. Do look in our cloakroom to see our fabulous paintings.

Thursday was perfect wintery weather for us to get out and explore the seasonal changes we could see in our village. We put on our coats, hats and gloves - it was very cold. We saw bare trees against the wintery blue sky, a farmers field with no tall crops, red berries, glistening frost on the leaves, ground and cars and walked on the crunchy mud! Our wintery writing on Friday was wonderful, full of descriptive sentences.

Here is some of our super writing...

Week beginning: 8th January 2024

Happy new year everyone! We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are ready for a busy Spring Term!

We started the year with Mr Sweeney launching our new school rules:

~ Be Ready ~

~ Be Respectful ~

~ Be Safe ~

We are all getting very good at keeping these rules! Do talk to us about them and ask us what we have to do for each rule!

In Maths this week, we have been consolidating our understanding of place value of the teen numbers. We have been representing the numbers using lots of different manipulatives.

In Computing this week, we have been programming Beebots with simple instructions. It was so much fun!

In our art this week, we have completed watercolour paintings inspired by Kandinsky, ready for the Babylon Art Gallery competition. We added card and tissue paper to enhance the colours. We are very proud of our finished artwork, and hope you will come and see them in our very own art gallery in school in a couple of weeks...more info to follow!

Home Learning - Monday 8th Jan 2024

Autumn Term 2023

Week beg: 11th December 2023

We have had SO much fun this week performing our nativity...'The Twinkly Nativity'. With the lights, props, staging, our wonderful costumes and fabulous singing everyone found it a very special time!

In Computing this week, Hedgehogs have been comparing painting a picture on paper to on a computer.

In DT, having designed our own hand puppets, we have been busy making them this week. Some of us chose to glue our puppets and some sewed them. We love our puppets and can't wait to play with them!

Week beg: 4th December 2023

We've had a very Christmassy week in Hedgehog Class this week. We have been busy rehearsing our nativity and can't wait to perform it to you next week. We all had an amazing time on Thursday at the Pantomime at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, watching 'Mother Goose'; it was so funny and the singing and dancing had us all mesmerized! On Friday, we enjoyed wearing our Christmas jumpers, doing a fun Christmas Santa dash to keep fit, and doing some Christmas crafts! What a busy week - we are all exhausted and very glad its the weekend!!

Week beg: 27th November 2023

We have been working very hard in Maths, carrying on with our addition families and now linking this knowledge to subtraction facts. We have been using part, part whole models to help us calculate missing numbers in addition and subtraction sentences.

We had a wonderful afternoon on Tuesday creating lots of wonderful Christmas crafts with our families! The school looks so festive now! Thank you to everyone who came to join in the fun!

We also enjoyed decorating our classroom on Friday and putting up our class Christmas tree!

Week beg: 20th November 2023

What a wonderful day we had celebrating the end of our castle topic, enjoying our Castle Day! We danced, crafted, and feasted! Look at all the fun we had...

Week beg: 13th November 2023

What a very busy week we have had, with so many curricular enrichment activities and visits!

On Monday, we walked to St James' church to look for all the features of a Christian church we had been learning about. Thank you to Ellen Leeke for your talking to us about the church.

On Wednesday, we had a wonderful visit to Soham Village College, attending a cup stacking event. It was so exciting going on a double decker coach and we learned so many skills during the afternoon.

This week has been 'Kindness Week' in school, a chance for us to learn about situations that are 'not nice', 'mean' and 'bullying', as well as spending a lot of time thinking about kindness. We learned how we need to fill each others buckets by doing kind acts, which prompted us to do a random act of kindness for our neighbours in Stretham village. We each planted a pansy plant, and delivered it to different doorsteps around the village. It made us feel very happy being kind to others.

We ended our kindness week, with Children in Need day, a chance for us to spread some kindness wider afield. We all wore spots and stripes, put pennies on Pudsey and entered a cake competition. Thank you to everyone for your generosity!

Week beg: 6th November 2023

This week, Hedgehog Class have worked so hard in Maths, continuing to use part, part whole models to support our addition calculations. We then moved on to number bonds, investing all the different ways of making each number up to 10. Some of us are becoming really systematic in our methods!

We have travelled back in time again this week, not as far back as Guy Fawkes this time, to learn about Remembrance Day and the end of World War 1 on 11the November in 1918. On Thursday, we walked around the village to find the two war memorials and also look at the wonderful poppy display in the village. We learned that 24 men died from Stretham in WW1 and 11 in WW2. It inspired some fabulous writing and creative poppy making!

Week beg: 30th October 2023

This week, Hedgehogs have been learning all about the Gunpowder Plot and Guy Fawkes. We learned all about the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and then worked with our friends to come up with lots of different adjectives and phrases to describe Guy Fawkes and the plot. At the end of the week, we used our ideas to write super sentences to create a 'wanted' poster' for Guy Fawkes!

In Maths, we have been using 'part, part, whole' diagrams and bar models to represent different addition facts. We have got so confident at writing the four addition facts in a family!

On Friday, we were very lucky to have Tara from Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust come to visit us. She told us all about the different wild animals they rescue; we were particularly interested in learning about the hedgehogs and hoglets! We gave Tara all the wonderful donations of dog and cat food that we had collected. A big thank you to everyone for your generosity, Tara really appreciated it!

Week beg: 16th October 2023

This week, Hedgehogs have been out and about noticing seasonal changes! We had a lovely walk spotting different leaves, conkers, acorns, berries and fungus!

In our Art, we have been colour mixing, making secondary colours from primary colours. We are expert colour-mixers now!

After our Art lesson, we then had a go at colour mixing independently, painting autumn trees with leaves in primary and secondary colours. Don't they look so colourful!

Week beg: 9th October 2023

This week in Maths, Hedgehogs have worked so hard learning to use the greater than >, less than < and equal to = signs to compare numbers.

In English, we have been reading lots of non-fiction books all about castles. We then wrote our own non-fiction books, using a contents page, headings and page numbers. We are very proud of our books!

We had a wonderful time at Forest School on Thursday, carrying on making autumn crowns and baking apples on the fire. We also used palm drills to make holes in conkers and thread them onto string to make conker strings. We will use these in our Maths lessons next week!

Week beg: 2nd October 2023

This week in Maths, Hedgehogs have been comparing numbers using the vocabulary 'more', 'fewer/less' and 'the same'.

In Art, we have been exploring different lines to create a group piece of art around the theme of water. Our large pictures were amazing and had such lovely detail.

In Music, we have been learning about 'pulse' and 'rhythm'. On Friday, we had lots of fun using some instruments to play different rhythms.

Week beg: 25th September 2023

This week, we have fully immersed ourselves in castles: we read 'The Paper Bag Princess', sequenced words from the story to make super sentences, made our own paper bag princess independently, labelled the parts of a castle, drawn castles and dragons on the computer using the Paint program and built castles in the sandpit! Wow - we have been busy!

On Thursday afternoon, we had a wonderful time at Forest School; we became Kings and Queens of the Forest making our own Autumn crowns, and we baked apples filled with sultanas and cinnamon. They were DELICIOUS!! Thank you to Mr Galbraith and Ms Rowlands for helping us!

Week beg: 18th September 2023

We are really enjoying our swimming in Hedgehog Class! Look how amazing we are!

In our Maths this week, we have been practising counting on from any number and working out one more. We've had lots of fun doing this!

In our Art, we have been looking at how artists use line in their work. We had a go at exploring all different sorts of lines ourselves - diagonal, horizontal, cross hatch, wavy...

Week beg: 11th September 2023

We've had a very busy week in Hedgehog Class, this week!

In Maths, we have been counting and reading numbers as numerals and as words.

In English, we read 'King Jack and the the Dragon', by Peter Bentley, a wonderful story about some children who build a fort den and pretend to fight dragons and beasties! This lead onto us doing some wonderful writing, building our own fort dens and model castles using blocks, and making up our own castle adventures with puppets!