Crookhill Primary School

After our 'Little Nativity' we got dressed into our lovely party clothes.

Once the music started there was no stopping us!

We danced...

and danced...

and danced!

Until it was time to play games.  We played Corners.

Musical Bumps.

And Pass the Parcel.

We had lots of delicious party food.

  We just about had time for our traditional Conga around the WHOLE school.

On Thursday Year One and Reception had a very exciting trip! Everybody was very excited to go, especially Reception as it was their first school outing.

When we arrived the rain was falling but the children didn't mind as Reception were greeted by a conductor and a very old bus. Year One had a tram waiting for them.

We had an action packed day ahead of us so Year One and Reception both went their seperate ways.

First of all Reception headed to the Pit Cottages, when they got there they participated in a variety of activites. Year One repeated these activities in the afternoon.  They had to bake Cinnamon Christmas Biscuits, make paper chain decorations and play fun, Victorian Christmas games.

First of all Year One explored Beamish town.  They found an old fashioned sweet shop.  The sweets were delicious.  Some children bought some broken biscuits.  The children liked the story of the delivery boy dropping them on his way. After that Year One visited Santa.  Reception visited him in the afternoon.  The children who visited Santa were very excited to see him. 

The children all received a magic gold coin and a small gift.  The children in return promised Santa they would be extra good and leave him and his reindeers little treats on Christmas Eve.

Reception and Year One were very excited to eat their packed lunches.

After we spent all of our pocket money we headed back to school. 

Reception and Year One were so well behaved, we hope there will be lots more trips planned soon.

This week in Year One we are looking at the twisted tales. We are focusing on the Traditional Tale 'Cinderella'. 

The children have been looking at two different versions. The children thought that the Disney princess Cinderella was the one and only but are now enjoying looking at other versions of the story with a little twist.

Yesterday afternoon we decided to add own our little twist to the story. We were given the task of designing Cinderella a new shoe. Everybody knows that Cinderella wore glass slippers to the ball but Class One have some super new ideas for a new twist within a Cinderella story.

Here are some of our designs, we made biscuits to show our designs off. They were scrumptious!!

Emily designed high heels with some beautiful red laces.

Lewis thought Cinderella would love new wellies.

Hannah thought Cinderella would like a pair of trainers so she could run away as fast as she could at midnight.

Miss Welsh thinks Class One are very creative. Do you?

Today, we kick started our Creativity Week off with a special production of Jack and the Beanstalk.

Looking pretty normal so far?

We were all very excited to see Buttercup.  She had some super dance moves.  We liked the way she moooooooooooved!

Can you spot what flavour milkshakes were on offer?

It all still looked like the original Jack and the Beanstalk UNTIL...

They climbed the beanstalk and ended up in...

NURSERY RHYME LAND!

Oh no it wasn't just any old Jack and the Beanstalk, it was Jack and the Beanstalk with a twist!  All the nursery rhyme characters came to life! 

Everybody loved it including Miss Welsh and Miss Teasdale who couldn't resisit joining Numpty in a bogey on down with Squire Bogey!

But in true panto style it all had a happy ending.

Please look in the gallery for more pictures and keep checking the website next week for more Twisted Tale fun from Creativity Week.

This term in Year One our topic is Treasures and Pirates. On National 'Talk Like A Pirate Day' we all came to school dressed up as Pirates.

The costumes the children came in were fabulous! It was very hard to tell who the children were! They looked like real pirates!!

We had a fun filled day and the activities were for pirates only! We answered the register in our best pirate voices...

We read our favourite pirate story 'The Night Pirates' and loved that grown up pirates were scared of girls! Mrs Grant and Miss Welsh were terrified all day!! The children were brilliant at role playing the story.

After lunch we had a delicious treat! We had to go on a treasure hunt. Throughout the hunt we found lots of different things like bowls, spoons, sugar, butter, flour, eggs and best of all some yummy jelly tots. We decided to make some treasure chest biscuits and use the sweets as our treasure.

The finished biscuits were terrific!

Class 1 have been looking at lots of different fantasy stories! We know that fantasy stories have very unsual settings, good and bad characters, fantasy objects and lots of special powers!

We were given the problem of Max trying to escape from the Wild Ones, but when he ran to his boat it was no longer there! The children were creative in deciding what had happened.

Look at our photographs and see if you can see what new characters were added to the story!

I'm sure you will look forward to reading our changes on parents evening in our reading journals! They are fantastic!!  

Last Wednesday, Class One were given an extremely hard mission! They were all given an egg! Yes a real egg! The class were very puzzled at why they were been given an egg but then all was revealed....

Class One had all turned into Super Heroes and Miss Welsh had turned into an Evil Villain! Miss Welsh was going to drop all of the eggs of the side of the decking! The children had to think about how to save the day and protect their egg! The children had to think about what they had been learning about in our Science topic 'Sorting and using materials'. They had to protect their egg by using whatever resources they wanted to give their egg a super save landing!

The heroes all thought about using extremely soft material and being very gentle with their egg! They worked well in teams just like real heroes! Unfortuntely a few eggs did crack just as we were starting, but this just made other children even more protective over the eggs!

Some children were very creative and began to name their eggs! My favourite was 'Egward' and the activity was also described as very 'egciting'!!

The children were extremely creative and also made parachutes! They were very tricky to make!!

As time passed the children got extremely nervous! As we went outside onto the decking the children got extremely excited... could they defeat evil Miss Welsh?

The eggs were dropped and the children waiting in suspense as all of the layers were unwrapped to reveil the egg.....

Can you guess by the pictures if any eggs survived?

There were lots of smiles and cheers when the eggs survived!!

At the end of our mission, we found out that the bigger the parachute the slower the egg fell down! We think this gave the slowest landing! We also found bubble wrap was used on all of the winning eggs!!

Look in the gallery for more pictures! Thank you to Callum for being cheif photographer.

On Friday, Class One took on the mission of 'Super Hero Training'.

All of last week we thought about powers that Super Heroes needed to defeat a variety of Villains.

We had some fantastic ideas!! We thought about:

• Being super at jumping to be able to jump across buildings and over baddies
• Having a fantastic aim to be able to catch the villains with ropes and webs
• Brilliant balancing skills for going along the edge of extremely tall buildings
• Needing speedy feet to be able to the scene of a crime, at the speed of light
• To be able to spin fast to make the baddies fly away

These are just a few of our super ideas!! Miss Welsh set up 'Super Hero Training' which all of Class One managed to complete!

Take a look in the gallery to see some of our super skills!

On Tuesday afternoon, Class 1 and Reception took to the field in search of some famous vilains. We started at the campsite where we found our first clue. The children were better at working out the answers to the clues than some of the adults.

When we had worked out the clue we wrote down our answers on clip boards. We were very good at it.

Crookhill were in for a treat this morning as they were transported to the Magic Kingdom to listen to the Music Workshop perform music from some of the greatest Disney movies. We were given clues about the movies ranging from Snow White which was the 1st feature length film to come out of Disney Studios to a finale of Toy Story.

In true Crookhill spirit we joined in and even got to sing into the microphone.

Some of us were dressed as characters from the film. Can you tell which Disney Movie we are from?

If you look closely you will see Bashful, Sleepy, Happy and Grumpy. Can you tell who is who??? We played our parts well.

The whole school (especially the teachers) thoroughly enjoyed being whisked away into the magical world of Walt Disney. We can't wait for the music workshop to come back again!  

Today Reception class, class 1 and 2/3 were visited by 'Team C'. They have been to see us lots of times but today they brought two friends with them - 'Mel' and 'Dee'.

Today we were taught how to make musical melodies. We got the opportunity to play lots of instruments...

and dance to songs with some interesting actions.

After a fantastic morning we ended the day with our Christmas Party. We got dressed in our best party clothes and got ready to show off our fantastic dance moves. We played lots and lots of party games.

Some of us found love on the dance floor...

and for some of us it was just a bit too much.

but one thing is for sure... we all had a fantastic afternoon.

Thank you to all the parents for sending in our delicious party tea. I think we are going to be eating sausage rolls for a few more days yet!

Take a look in the gallery for more of our fab photos.

Today Reception and Key Stage 1 performed their Nativity 'Old Uncle Sam' for their parents and grandparents. Old Uncle Sam looked after all the sheep on the hills of Bethlehem but one day he loses one. This was the where our Nativity began.

We have all worked so hard to learn the songs and remember our lines especially our two narrators, Rohan and Abby and Old Uncle Sam played by Oscar.

Despite the disruptions in rehearsals with the snow, school being closed and many children being off sick, the children we had today put on a fabulous show and sang beautifully.

We are very proud of you all. Well Done to Reception and Class 1. Photos will be posted in the gallery nearer the end of the week but here's a few to remind you of how fabulous they looked.

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Thank you to all the parents and grandparents who came to support our youngest children and a big thank you to Miss Welsh and her Mum for making amazing costumes. .

Today in Class 1 Ella brought her new guinea pigs Fudge and Toffee to visit. When they got to school they were in a box, Ella and her mum had to put them into their cage. They were very scared when they saw lots of new faces. Once the Toffee and Fudge had settled into our classroom, Ella got Toffee out for us all to see. We have her a chocolate drop.

We used Toffee and Fudge for our Science lesson. We compared ourselves and animals to see what was similar and different. It really helped to have an animal to compare ourselves to.

Toffee and Fudge were very happy in our classroom and were squeeking a lot! They were watching us do lots of hard work!

Look in the gallery to see more pictures of our class with Toffee and Fudge.

We hope Ella's guinea pigs settle in well.

This terms music workshop was all about mini-beasts. The music team helped us to find patterns in music. We used our eyes to look for mini-beasts and then sang songs about each one. Each mini-beasts had a different beat. Look at the size of this spi-der.

We used lots of different instruments that sound like the mini-beasts we looked at. 

We had lots of fun making musical patterns. Take a look in the gallery for more pictures.