During Term 1, we have been exploring the super story of Vlad and the Great Fire of London by Kate Cunningham. This story is about Vlad the flea and his friend Boxton the rat, who love eating and biting their way around London in 1666. But one night in Pudding Lane they are caught up in a fire that threatens to destroy them, along with most of the City of London. Through this book, we learnt about how the fire is believed to have started, how it spread and what Londoners did to fight it and escape it. We also learnt about the famous diarist Samuel Pepys.

We loved getting to know the characters in this book and used our knowledge of the story and the diary of Samuel Pepys to write a series of diary entries as Vlad the flea. For a whole week, we were a class of fleas! We decided that Vlad's actual diary must have been the size of a speck of dust, but we were glad that we wrote ours in our English books!

We used 'Colourful Semantics' to help structure our sentences.

See if you can follow our Colourful Semantics plan below:

During Term 1, the children in Amazon Class have been doing a lot of team building, together with developing our focusing and attention and speaking and listening skills. 

Developing these important skills is a big part of transitioning in to Key Stage 1, ensuring children have all the skills they need to learn and play cooperatively alongside their peers, access the learning and voice their ideas and opinions. 

This term, the children have thoroughly enjoyed using the parachute as a creative and immersive way to develop these skills.

As you can see, at the end of a session using the parachute, the children enjoy going underneath the parachute altogether! Lots of fun and giggles for all!