Kingshill Church School Barn Owl 2023 to 2024
Barn Owl Class
Teacher: Mrs Mackie
Adults in Class: Miss Grainger (Mon, Wed) Miss Mathews (Tues, Thurs, Fri)
Welcome to Barn Owl Class. We are a Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 class and we love learning! Please keep visiting our class website page as we will update it regularly. Our most recent learning will be at the top of our page.
Please see the documents below for our yearly overview and our planning pathways.
Barn Owl Class Pathway Autumn Term 2024
Barn Owl Class Pathway Spring Term 2025
Kingshill Church School Barn Owl Class Yearly Overview 2024 2025
What a great world book day!! We had some amazing and creative costumes! Our highlights of the day was having a story from Mrs Wilson and also sharing our stories with our Eagle buddies!
We had a great time on our class trip to We the Curious. We took part in the destination space workshop, it was amazing! We made rockets to shoot into space and went on a space walk to fix the solar panels on the ISS. After our work shop we explored the rest of the museum and we learnt so much! We made rainbows using prisms, mad ourselves invisible and took photos of our shadows. The children had such a good time they already want to go again!
Our class book this half term is ‘Tiddler’ by Julia Donaldson, we have enjoyed learning how to follow along in our own books to the story and thinking about how the characters are feeling and how we know this. We had some great insights, ‘Tiddler is embarrassed because no one believes him.’ ‘Little Johnny Dory is worried because Tiddler is missing and he’s his friend.’ We look forward to exploring the story further!
Our topic this term in Barn owls is ‘How did we learn to fly.’ This week we have been looking at airports in our role play. We enjoyed scanning our passports, putting our bags through security and waiting at the gate for our flight, the most exciting part was boarding the plane and ordering lunch from the flight attendants.
We had very exciting visitors at school on Wednesday. The police horses from Clevedon rode over to share with us what their jobs are and why horses play such an important part of the police force. We met Mendip and Platinum, both very experienced members of the force, and learnt so much! We even got to have a pat and chat with the horses, their noses were so soft!
In English we have been creating our own stories using our story creator. We have had lots of wonderful creative ideas such as a Smelly alien in a spooky mountain and a clumsy superhero reading a book! We have been focusing on using adjectives to describe the different characters and settings. We have enjoyed expanding our vocabularies.
In maths we have been exploring numbers using addition and subtraction symbols. As part of our continuous provision we have been playing a game using cubes. If we land on the plus we add cubes if its – we lose cubes. The person who has the most cubes at the end of the game wins! We had a lot of fun!
We had a special visitor at the end of term 2. Santa came to the Kingshill grotto so we could share all of our Christmas wishes with him. He challenged us to name all of his reindeer and we definitely impressed him with our knowledge. Santa gifted each of us a special present of an activity book and chocolate! It was great way to get into the Christmas spirit.
For our community group morning we got into the Christmas spirit and made hats to wear while we ate our Christmas dinner. We got to work with other children from across the school in our groups. The hats were creative and very sparkly!
The adults in Barn owl are very proud of our children and all the effort they put into the Nativity. We had superb sheep, Amazing angels, Cool Kings, Marvellous Mary, Joyful Joseph, delightful donkeys, confident camels and Super Stars! They put a lot of dedication and time into learning all the songs and actions. The reviews are amazing from everyone who came to watch!
Thankyou to all the parents who came to our showcase. The children really enjoyed sharing our class story of The Three Little pigs. It was great to see all the parents joining in with activities inspired by the story, building houses of bricks and sticks as well as some children in need inspired activities too.
Barn owls really enjoyed putting their gross motor skills to work in our sports work shop. We had the opportunity to try lots of different activities, like bowling, throwmington and kubbi.
What a great way to start term 2 in Barn owls. We have had a visit from the local PCSOs who told us all about what they do and how they help our local community. They bought their uniforms for us to try, We really enjoyed pretending to be police officers. They even bought the police van for us to explore. We heard the siren and got to see what it was like in the cell. We really enjoyed our visit and cant wait to use what we learnt in our role play and other learning about our community and who helps us.
We were very lucky to have Avon Fire service come to visit us in Barn Owls class. They told us all the ways to be safe and what they do for the community. We were very interested to hear they don’t just fight fires, they save animals and people from lots of different dangers. They bought lots of great activities for us to use and even let us try on their uniform. It was a bit big! We have really enjoyed using the information we have learnt from the Fire Service in our role play area. We have been fighting fires and racing to help people in danger!
This term we are discovering where we are in the world. This week we used google maps on the iPad and found our school and our local area. We really enjoyed finding our homes and comparing our journey to school with each other. We supported each other in pairs to explore different areas of the world. We really enjoyed exploring big cities like London and New York.
As part of out topic ‘Where in the world are we’ we went on a listening walk through the local green. We noticed local landmarks that we could include in our map making in Geography. As Geographers we observed the different terrains and asked questions about why things grew in those areas. We did such good listening on our walk that we finished in the park. We really enjoyed climbing and balancing on the different equipment.
In our expressive arts area we have been making barn owls. We have used a variety of different materials and explored how we can change the shape and size of our barn owls. We are working to create a display in our classroom. We can’t wait to share it soon!
We had a great time seeing Loki the guide dog this week. We always enjoy Loki’s visits and this time was no different. We introduced Loki to our outside area and enjoyed involving him in our play. This is the first time our reception children have met Loki and he has quickly made friends with them all! Loki helps us to understand how to look after animals and show them respect as well as supporting us in our communication. We look forward to seeing Loki again soon!
In art we had a session of painting to music. We enjoyed listening to the composition of the four seasons and had a great discussion about what it made us think of in our head. We had lots of ideas, from flowers to a beautiful beach. We then let the music continue to play while we painted our master pieces.
Barn Owl class really enjoyed trying archery with Mr T. We had to practice how to hold the bow and where to put our feet. The trickiest part was loading the arrow onto the bow, however we soon got the hang of it and our arrows soared through the air! We really enjoyed this new experience and it was great to combine our gross motor skills and fine motor skills that we have been developing in our funky fingers sessions.
In music we have been exploring pulse and rhythm. We use our hands to find the beat within our on names and the names of our friends. We then used the instruments to copy the pulse of the rhythm and create a tune.
In art we are exploring how we can use nature to create pictures. This week we used natural resources and paint to create a collaborative picture. We found leaves, grass, stones, twigs and flowers.
The first term of the year has started with a lot of excitement in Barn owl class. We have welcomed our new reception children, who have all settled in so well! Our Year 1s and 2s have been amazing role models and have really helped our new friends settle in.
This week Reception children have been practicing writing their names with water painting as well as exploring all our different areas of learning. We have had dinner parties in Barn owl cottage and some incredible train track designs. Reception have also started phonics and have impressed us all with how well they are doing with our first sounds!
Our year 1s and 2s have hit the ground running in English with our story the little red hen. Using hot seating to put ourselves into the shoes of the different characters, we interpreted how each character was feeling. In maths we have been securing our knowledge our two digit number using number lines and numicon. We noticed that all the numbers greater than 10 needed to include a 10 numicon.
