Dear Parents and Carers,
Happy New Year! We hope you had a lovely Christmas break and are feeling refreshed for the exciting term ahead. Our new topic this term is The Misty Mountains Sierra, and we have lots of fun and engaging activities planned for the Balmoral Class!
In English, we will listen to a range of stories, poems, and non-fiction texts to deepen our understanding of Misty Mountains. Balmoral will explore calligrams, reading and analysing Emily Dickinson’s poem The Mountain. We will also look at poetic features like personification, similes, metaphors, and rhyme. The children will create their own informative leaflets about the water cycle, writing their own explanations. We will continue to improve our handwriting and word-processing skills along the way.
Balmoral’s favourite Maths, will focus on money, learning to recognise coins and notes, make amounts, and calculate change. Weather permitting, we’re planning a trip to the local supermarket to put our skills into practice! We’ll continue working on multiplication and division, learning to group quantities, double and halve numbers, and explore odd and even numbers.
In Geography, the children will explore the world’s most amazing mountains and mountain ranges, plotting them on maps and learning about their geographical features.
In Science, we’ll dive into the water cycle. We’ll explore the key events like evaporation, condensation and precipitation and learn about the change of state of matter. The children will take part in lots of fun experiments to bring these concepts to life and reinforce new vocabulary.
In Art, we will continue our focus on the water cycle. The children will learn through rhymes and songs and create their own to help remember the key features. They will then sketch and make a 3D mountain model using clay, paint, and glaze, bringing their creative ideas to life!
Finally in PE, we will explore orienteering and climbing. The children will learn to use a compass and understand the 8 directions, complete hunts, and work as teams. In climbing, they will use equipment to change position and navigate obstacles by walking, crawling, rolling, and propelling themselves! This will be incredibly fun!
It’s going to be a busy and fun-filled term, and we’re excited to share these wonderful learning experiences. As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or concerns at Gemma.spon-smith@paces-school.org.uk
Kind regards,
The Balmoral team