St Joseph's Catholic Primary, Brighton

Welcome St Anne's Class 

Class Teacher - Mrs Thompson

Teaching Assistant - Mrs Mulholland
                                                               Our class is named after St Anne. She was Mary's mother and Jesus' grandma! 

Welcome to St Anne's Class page. Here you can see what learning is going on in our class and at home.

Well done to all the children that have already had fun trying out all the activities on their activity passport. See photos below!

Reading Letter 
This letter introduces our Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme (SSP) Essential Letters and Sounds.

Bookbags

Please make sure your child brings their bookbag to school everyday. We will collect library books and reading diaries on Mondays and return them to you on Tuesdays. We read with children throughout the week and need their reading books. Children often have letters, homework and their own creations to bring home and will need their bookbags to transport them safely. Remember to read your child's book with them 4 times. They should read their book quite fluently after 4 sessions.

PE

Our PE days have now changed. We will have PE on Tuesday  and on Wednesday. Please make sure your child has their PE kit on their peg at all times.

Summer Term 2

I can't believe we have already reached the last half term of this fantastic year! It has flown by.

Under The Sea

Click here for the new Topic Leaflet.

04.07.22

We have been continuing our work on floating and sinking. last week we were predicting which objects wouldd float and which would sink. There were some surprises when we tested them. This week we are using our knowledge to try and build a boat to carry 3 lego people safely. We found it very tricky!

We have also been playing in our new pirate role play and reading lots of pirate stories.

04.07.22

This week the children have been having great fun practising their balance bike skills. They all passed the course led by Sustrans. Amazing!

29.06.22                                       Outside Learning Day

The rain didn't worry us today, it was a good opportunity to try our waterproof tarpaulins. They worked a treat. We knew the sun would come out eventually. We learnt how to whittle using potato peelers revealing beautiful wood underneath the bark of ordinary sticks. We learnt about green wood and the best wood for a fire. We made some beautiful "Summer Wreaths" for our outside area. Toasted crumpets were a lovely treat after all of our hard work. 

It was the best day!

20.06.22

We have been talking a lot about changing states of matter and learning vocabulary such as melt, melting, melted, frozen and freezing. Unfortunately some of our animals got frozen in the ice. It was our job to set them free! We had lots of idea and we chose 3 to test.

1. Pour a hot kettle over it (Delilah's idea!)
2. Smash it up (quite a few children thought of this!)
3. Leave it in the sun (Freddie's idea)

We found out that even though they all worked, the kettle was the fastest way to melt ice.

We rescued the underwater animals! Hurray!

13.06.22

This week we have been decorating our own buckets to make them special and writing poems about them. 

15.06.22

What an amazing day. Everybody was so engaged at the Sealife Centre. I can't wait to see what the children can remember about underwater animals. Next week we want to build our own rock pool at school so if you visit the beach this weekend, see what you can find to put in it. You might choose, shells, rocks or seaweed. What else can you find?

06.06.22

This week we have been working in our new role play area our "posh" Fish and Chip Restaurant where we can order seabass or mackerel with chips of course! 

We also started our new book called Billy's Bucket about a boy who wanted a bucket for his birthday! We found his birthday present and what a surpise it was! None of the children thought a bucket was a very good present.

We have also been working with watercolours this week to make some beautiful paintings of tropical fish. The children worked so hard and so carefully. They really looked at the photographs. Can you spot "Nemo" the Clown Fish? What about a Lion Fish? There is a Sea Slug and a Shark too.

We started our new topic today with some first hand experiences. We handled sea bass and mackerel. The children were fascinated with the fins, teeth and skin. We explored the different features of a fish and then we barbequed it. All but 2 children tasted  both fish. Those that did children loved it!

Summer Term 1

Down in the Garden 

Click here for the new Topic Leaflet

Summer is here! Please provide your child with a hat and a water bottle. Apply suncream before they come to school. 

Thank You

23.05.22

We celebrated the Jubilee and had a wonderful day. First we set our butterflies free! We watched them change from tiny caterpillars into full grown butterflies. Off they went!

We loved making jam tarts for the queen of hearts on Jubilee Party day, we had many kings, queens, princes and princesses.

16.05.22

This week we have had many questions about worms and minibeasts. We answered our questions through observation, books and videos. We have learnt so much about minibeasts that we decided to make our own class non-fiction book called "The Worm and other Minibeasts". We have been practising saying and writing non-fiction sentences to add information to our book.
We set up our wormery  this week and can already see the tunnels our worms have created. Some children have become very interested in snails and have been observing them too!

Our clay worms needed to be carried home carefully so the children made envelopes to carry them in. They were all different sizes so the children needed to make sure their worm would fit. It was a good chance to practise our stapling skills and remembering how to use a sellotape dispenser safely.

09.05.22

This week we have been making lots of observations of animals that live in the garden. Our class caterpillars have already begun to spin their cocoons so we are very interested in what will happen next.

We have been handling earthworms and learning all about them. We can learn facts by watching videos, listening to information on the internet and reading non-fiction books. We learnt a lot by observing the worms too. We drew some worm diagrams, labelling the parts we could and couldn't see.

Watch this video with your child and see if you can find out more. Maybe you can do some research. Bring in any facts you find out!

Find out about earthworms

09.05.22

Today to welcome the month of May the children took part in a Maypole Dance Workshop.

03.05.22

Outdoor learning today was the beginning of our Down in the Garden topic. We had our first fire together and the children were amazing and so well behaved. We enjoyed bug hunting, the mud kitchen and trying some Japanese Art techniques using hammers . The camp fire popcorn was delicious.

25.04.22

Everyone has settled back in to our new term. It's Summer hooray and we have been enjoying our new role play areas this week. We have been working in our garden centre: counting seeds, planting and buying flowers. If you have any seedlings at home that need a place to grow send them in and we will see if we can grow them for you. We have started some carrots and some chard from seed this week.

We are also working in our builders yard with large bricks to support our work on understanding shape.

It’s amazing which shapes you can find in your environment if you look for them. We tried it around school and look what we found! Can you name all of these shapes? Try it at home.

                                           Spring Term 2

                  Welcome back St.Anne's Class

                                                            Click here for the new Topic Leaflet

                                                       "Off on an Adventure".

04.04.22

This week we have been developing our understanding of the world. 

We began with a question. "What happens if you put a Gummy Bear in water?"

The children made predictions about what they thought might happen. Some children thought he would dissolve, some thought that he would change colour, we had so many different ideas.

Next we designed our experiment together and waited...

The children noticed 4 things :

• The water had changed colour.
• The bear had changed colour.
• The bear was bigger.
• The bear was soft. We came to the conclusion that the water had gone into the bear and the bear had gone into the water!

27.03.22

This week we have been data handling. We found out that Bertie had never been on a picnic before or even had a sandwich! We decided to have a picnic for him. First we had to find out which sandwiches were the most popular in our class. We chose from jam, ham, cheese and chocolate. Now we are writing instructions for making a sandwich so that Bertie can make his own.

St.Joseph's Day 19th March

The lily is a symbol of St.Joseph. We made lillies out of food.

We know that St.Joseph was a carpenter so we worked with wood to make Easter fridge magnets.

17.03.22

We went on an adventure to Stanmer Park today. We followed the map. We found the treasure and Bertie, the lost teddy. What a beautiful day! We all had fun and walked a lot. Look at our beautiful weaving. We chose interesting things from the environment to weave into our work. 

07.03.22

We have been investigating percussion instruments, especially ones you shake. By listening to them we tried to decide what was inside them. Some made loud noises and some made quiet noises. We made our own loud or quiet shakers.

Our new RE topic is about Lent. We photographed signs of Spring and made some lovely pastel drawings of our emerging Easter garden.

This week we have been writing some amazing sentences about our monster adventures. The children have been practising using fingerspacers. They all know they need to begin a sentence with a capital letter and end it with a full stop. They just have to remember to do it! If you are writing sentences at home please remind them.

World Book Day 3rd March 2022

St.Anne's Class celebrated together.We all love Michael Rosen's "We're Going On a Bear Hunt" so we spent our whole day delving into the text. We read it together making up our own actions along the way. We took off our shoes and enjoyed a sensory bear hunt. We ventured into

the long, wavy grass,

the deep, cold river,

the thick, oozy mud,

the big, dark forest

the swirling, whirling snow storm.

Until we found a BEAR! (He was a friendly one.) Don't worry we put our feet in lovely hot water afterwards. Ahhhhhh!

We made story maps using collage and had great fun making bear masks and scaring each other.

28.02.22

This week we have been continuing with our work on journeys and maps. The children began by making their own houses and adding them to our 3d map. We realised we would need shops and entertainment in our town and that we would need different paths to get there. So we added ASDA, Brighton Palace Pier and the Sealife Centre. The children added their own roads in order to travel around. I love the way the children worked in a team discussing their work.

Power Project

Well done to all the children that have finished their Power Projects. Take a look at a few of them.

21.02.22

This week we are starting our new topic and thinking about paths. We have been making different paths and trying to draw them.  We have started our new story too all about monsters and have made our own monsters. We have been thinking about their personalities and what they might be like.

Welcome back to school for the Spring Term.

Click here for the new Topic Leaflet  "Once Upon A Time".

07.02.22

In maths this week we have been learning about heavy and light. The children had fun exploring the balance scales and practising their new vocabulary heavy, light, lighter and heavier.

We also finished our current Power of Reading book "No Dinner!" by Jessica Souhami.

Have a look at some of our big writing below. It is wonderful to see the children using all of the skills learnt in phonics to write emphasising the parallel relationship between learning to read and learning to write.

It's Official! The chocolate biscuit is the best for dipping in your tea. We had lots of fun finding out and counting how many dips before the biscuit fell into the tea. It was hungry work.

24.01.22

This week's traditional tale is The Gingerbread Man so of course we had to bake some of our own!

The children have been sequencing the story and retelling it. On Friday we will be carrying out an experiment to answer a big question!

"Which biscuit is the best for dipping in your tea?"

Watch this space!

We have also been using our new skills, of using tally marks to count, to help us with our capacity work. We have been comparing bottles and ordering them by size. We measured their capacity by counting how many small cups each one could hold. We worked in small groups and listened to each other.

17.01.22

This week we have been working on our new Writedance picture of a butterfly! Our traditional tale this week is Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack had magic beans. We have planted some beans on the windows in plastic bags to see if they will grow. We want to see roots, stems and leaves.

11.01.22

Look at our great monoprints. The children experimented with drawing different pictures on the trays and then used paper to lift off their prints.

In Maths we have been learning to use tally marks to count how many beanbags we can throw into a hoop.

In RE we have been trying to make a model of a church. We enjoyed making stained glass windows out of tissue paper.

3.1.22

This week we have been thinking about Traditional Tales and reading lots of them. Our role play area is the 3 Bears Cottage and we have been busy looking after baby bear and making breakfast. Mummy Bear is always at work and leaves notes for Daddy Bear. Sadly he did not know how to make the porridge so we experimented to find out how to make it. We tried eating oats on their own, with water, flour and finally milk. After tasting, Whitney realised that we forgot to cook it! Eventually we discovered milk tasted the best and we made some tasty porridge. Now we are designing our own recipes for porridge. What do you put on yours?

Outdoor learning day 3 also had a bear theme. We went on a bear hunt and found it really difficult to find green bears because everything was green! We made 3 bears out of sticks. We made sure we had big, middlesized and small sticks to make our bears. Hot chocolate and cookies warmed us all up half way through. Good fun was had by everyone.

Click her for our second (Autumn 2) topic leaflet Night and Day.

13.12.21

What a fantastic party day! Everyone had great fun. We enjoyed a Christmas Treasure Hunt, Christmas crafts and activities in the classroom. After lunch there were party games in the hall and Delilah was the winner of musical chairs! Then we danced the afternoon away. Try these dances at home Minions and  Move it.

10.12.21

The annual Santa Dash was lots of fun, ho ho ho!

8.12.21

What a busy couple of weeks we have had! We performed our Nativity play four times in costume and all the children were amazing. We enjoyed our outdoor learning making mud pies,  creating evergreen leaf necklaces and our cheerful owls, made of carefully chosen and measured sticks, to hang on your Christmas tree. 

Thank you for supporting us at our Christmas Fair. We managed to raise over £100 for St.Anne's Class with our handmade products and our Teddy Tombola. We have decided to spend it on some more playmobil toys for the classroom!

21.11.21

The children have been enjoying our new space station role play! What can you see in the sky at night? What else is up there?

We have been visualising the dark creepy woods and using collage to make our representations. The children have been thinking of words to describe their woodlands. We then used our words to create a poem to perform. See one group’s performance below.

I have been very impressed this week with the children's ability to write cvc words. We are having great success with our phonics. This week we learnt sh , th, ng, nk!

15.11.21

This week we were putting our robot write dance onto paper. See some of our fantastic robots! We finished our RE topic about Baptism and learned about the sign of the cross. 

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit work together to make God. Three things make One amazing thing just like milk ( the Father) , angel delight (the Son) and the whisk ( Holy Spirit)!

08.11.21

Firework pictures made by printing with string and cotton buds, very fun, very messy and very colourful!

01.11.21

We have been busy grooming our pets in our new role play area. We are really enjoying writing their names and their treatments on their tickets. 

We have started a new story "Owl Babies". The children have been investigating how to make places darker and using torches. How do owls see in the dark? 

The children have been trying to paint owls. We wanted to make them look fluffy so we used our brushes in different ways. Then we tried painting with feathers to get a soft and fluffy effect. We think it worked.

In maths this week we have been matching labels (numerals) to sets of objects and trying to recognise Numicon shapes too.

Click here for our first (Autumn 1) topic leaflet  Marvellous Me.

18.10.21 

This week we have been using 10 frames and trying to represent numbers up to 10.

Our tricky words have been 

into  as  is   his   of   put   pull

Outdoor learning was an amazing day ! It was wonderful to see the children outside developing their skills. As the day went on they became more confident and adventurous, setting challenges for themselves. We can't wait for the next one!

11.10.21

We have been so busy this week.It was Judaism week and we learnt about a Jewish Festival called Hanukah. We learnt how Jewish people light a Menorah at Hanukah and that it is a sacred object. We made potato latkes too.

We enjoyed our Welcome Mass and loved seeing many of our parents there, thank you so much for coming. 

We have been learning about our bodies this week; trying to assembly a skeleton, drawing around each other and even labelling body parts! The children are very keen to write so we praise their mark making efforts everyday.

In phonics we have been practising our "tricky to read words". The children will receive a set of flash cards for homework. Please cut them up and practise reading these words with your child. Some children may be able to begin writing them.

I    no    go    to    the

4.11.21

This week we have been sorting objects by type and by colour and counting them. We are learning to tidy up before we start counting by putting objects in a straight line and pointing to each one. We have been looking at models of different numbers.

This week we learnt our first digraph ck, 2 letters stuck together that make 1 sound!

We also learnt e u r.

Most children should now have a decodable book in their bookbags please help your child to blend and read to you.

27.09.21

This  week we have been working in our new role play area. It is a Doctor's Surgery. We have been writing our names and making appointments. 

We are learning to read Phase 2 set 3 letters g  o  c  k.

Play Buried Treasure  with your child to help them blend. Remember only play the version

phase 2 set 1 and 2 and 3 sounds.

We have been thinking about our Families in RE and enjoyed having some of our Grandparents in school. We painted their portraits. The likenesses were amazing!

20.09.21

This week the children have been working hard learning their first single letter sounds. We constantly revise them in a range of ways in order to get them into their long term memories. You can help at home by making sure you practise them too! The children should know s a t p i n m d.

They also started Funky Fingers this week. They will have 3 sessions each week where they are all, squeezing, twisting, pinching and developing fine motor skills in order to have a strong pencil grip.

13/09/91

Well done! All the children have successfully completed their first week of full time school and they all did an amazing job. They have spent the week settling in and getting used to the environment. They have learnt the classroom rules and are getting to know each other. Our first RE topic is "Myself" and the children have been painting their own portraits.