Year 1: How can we discover the UK by investigating its maps and features?

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Feb 4, 2026

We have had a very busy half-term in Year 1, we have been delving into the United Kingdom with our learning question of the term - ‘How can we discover the UK by investigating its maps and features?’ We were lucky to start the term off with an exciting trip to Henley, where we explored the River of Life workshop delivered by the River and Rowing Museum team. We studied UK river wildlife, such as birds, fish, mammals and insects, and explored how animals adapt themselves to UK weather and river conditions.

We had the opportunity to examine a variety of museum learning animal artefacts to solidify our learning of UK wildlife.Additionally, our museum learning artefacts in school helped us to develop our knowledge of the UK. We have explored different objects used to help travel across rivers and oceans to reach the 4 countries within the UK. In particular, artefacts like a life ring, the life jacket, a model of the RMS Queen Mary boat and oars have made us think deeply about how the UK and its features have changed over time. We have also thought carefully about these nautical artefacts in our stories ‘Lost and found’ and ‘The Storm Whale.’ These have helped us to write our own creative finding tales.Furthermore, this term we have had a fantastic time making a deeper connection with Museum Learning, as each class adopted an artefact linked to their class country. As Chile class explored the rain shaker, and Costa Rica studied Palm Tree shakers, we were able to feel, learn and connect our artefacts to our everyday lives in the UK.

In our High Stakes Project, we took on the role of scientists as we invited other year groups to take part in our scientific investigation about the 5 senses. We worked collaboratively as a team to carefully select clues to help the children smell, touch, hear, taste and eventually see what our mystery object was! We also able to discuss with them our learning on the 5 senses, and how different parts of the human body enable us to experience life through the 5 senses.