Week Beginning 29.1.2018

This week BIG QUESTION was "What lives at the bottom of the sea?"
It was very interesting to hear what the children already knew about life under the sea.
We watched a video clip on some sea creatures and made some lovely pictures of them inspired by a famous artist.
Can you guess what sea creatures we have made?

Jellyfish

                                                              Octopus

                                                              Seal

                                                                 Turtle


We then observed the differences between fresh water and salt water.
Did you know that the ocean is very salty?
With this project, we explored what happens to salt when is mixed with water and how it dissolves. We also tasted the two samples and pretty much everyone agreed that salty water is not very nice...

           'They look the same'.

'That's salty!'

Thursday was a busy day, we completed our Circuit training activities for the NSPCC sponsored events.  Much fun was had by all as you can see...

Please remember if you have collected any sponsor money to return it to the school office by 31st January, many thanks.

Friday, we had our internet safety themed SHARE, following a talk for the parents in the hall, we continued with some activities in class.  Thanks to Smartie the Penguin who reminded us....

Before you tap and click,

You need to stop and think

And tell someone!

 

 

Finally we finished today with a baking creation.  We made and enjoyed our very own sea snail cinnamon scrolls-yummy.

 

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to Kimberley, our Golden Book winner today for taking the next big leap in your road to becoming a reader.

 

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Week Beginning 15.1.2018

The seas....the waves....the land...
This week we have worked on different questions however they were still related to water.
We started the week by locating the seas and oceans in our planet and found out that there is much more water than there is land. From there we talked about waves and how they are made. All of the children had something to say about waves:
They come in different sizes: big, small, medium....different strengths: strong, weak, gentle, choppy, and different looks: frothy, flat, shiny, foamy.

We also continued with yoga and experimented with more new positions. take a look at the children efforts in achieving the 'Sliding Board' position. It seems very easy but it took some time before we got there...

 Palms on the carpet, behind our back.

 Straight legs and toes pointing away from our body.

 Breathe in and lift your body.

  Hold the position for five seconds and breathe out lowering the body.



We had the perfect weather to test our rain gauges so after a rather wet and miserable morning we went outside and checked how much rain had been caught.

We were quite disappointed to find out that most of the bottles had been knocked over by the wind and those still standing had hardly any water in them.
We looked, talked, thought and shared our ideas and came to the conclusion that because the gauges were placed a bit too close to the fence that might have stopped the rain from falling into the bottles.

We came up with a Plan B:

The rain gauges should now be safe from the wind and because we have moved them to the middle of the playground nothing should be in the way of the rain....

 

Following one of the children's questions about what happens when the sea meets the land, we decided to spend the afternoon investigating wet and dry sand.  We felt the difference in texture, we looked at whether you can change the shape and how easily it holds a shape.  We then introduced 'waves' using water dropped from a pipette to see how it changed any structure that had been made.  Children were very inquisitive and came up with some fantastic conversation about how and why they thought things happened.

 

 

 

 

 

A volcano with a lava eruption.

 

This week saw the start of our 'independent challenge' book.  The children are introduced to a number of different tasks that they are expected to complete independently and then add their name to the finished list in our book.  Everyone enjoyed this and are already looking for ward to whatever they may have to do next week.

 

 

 

Have a lovely weekend everybody.

Week Beginnig 8.1.2018

Happy New Year and Welcome back to you all! We hope you've had a happy and restful holiday.

We have started the new year by introducing children to yoga.
Through these sessions children will hopefully develop their concentration skills as well as becoming more aware of their breathing.
Children really enjoyed their first session and put a lot of effort into it.....

Lots of good breathing techniques...

"I can do it with my eyes shut...."

 

 

 

Our focus this week was to answer some of the questions children asked about the rain, why does it rain and how?

We learnt about the water cycle in class and on Wednesday we went for a walk in the Common to find signs of winter and to closely look at the sky. As it started to drizzle we talked about how the rain feels and...taste (yes, we stuck our tongues out....!)
We have also made our own rain gauges which are now in our outdoor area for us to see how much rain falls.  Thank you for sending in the bottles.

Most trees have no leaves during the winter months.

Some trees are always green.

"It's really cloudy and cold today"

 

The children seem to have come back rested from their holidays and ready to write.  Mrs Webb's phonics group this week decided that they didn't even need her to give them a sentence or a question but would rather make up their own.

 

PE with Mr Knights and we had a fantastic dance session, we were learning all about 'beats' and how to move in time to these.  The children thought carefully about different ways of moving and how to keep in time with the beat create by our big African drum.

 

Our water themed classroom is beginning to take shape and the children have enjoyed transforming their role play area into a submarine this week.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally to finish the week we had a lot of thinking to do in maths today.  The children were set the challenge of using the same shapes, a square, a rectangle and two triangles to create different things.

 

 

Congratulations to Ruby, our Golden Book winner today for all of the super artwork you have created in class this week.

 

Have a lovely weekend everybody, see you all Monday.