‘Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread man!’ What a busy Gingerbread themed week we have had. We sequenced the story of the Gingerbread Man using story maps, making sure we had a beginning, middle and end; using our phonics skills to write key words and even sentences. We definitely have some super star writers amongst our Robins. On Tuesday we used The Gingerbread Man a transient tale as inspiration to create our own Gingerbread man transient art. What amazing imaginations our Robins and Wrens have. On Wednesday the Little Wrens went to visit the Artisan bakery in town where they make bread, biscuits and even gingerbread. Dotty told me that they make 20 different types of bread, wow! Cassian wondered if they made green bread. We then made our own gingerbread men and had great fun decorating them. On Thursday we used our fine motor skills to sew our own Gingerbread person. We will be continuing to develop our sewing skills on a Thursday . As part of our RE this week we visited Church to find out more about how we celebrate in Church and looked for different items that you may see inside a Catholic Church. Father Thomas helped us with our treasure hunt and we enjoyed learning about the different holy oils and the holy water font. Next week I hear three bears may visiting… we best make sure we don’t eat all of their porridge!
For me, this is an excellent example of what Early Years Provision is all about. Not planned or expected, just learning based purely on the interests of the child. This morning Jacob brought in a book, from last weeks visit to the library all about Titanic, and the rest of the morning went from there… absolutely fantastic. Here is the annotated observation Mrs T shared with me this morning, when she herself said ‘ I have had the best morning ever!!’
”We are making the titanic. It’s not ready yet.” Jacob
“The titanic crashed into an iceberg to the bottom of the sea.” Ben
”Mrs T. I need the titanic book please. Guys we need to look at the book. Hammer the screw in Erika.” Jacob
”Casper don’t break the whole thing. We need people to survive.” Ben
”Pretend there’s an iceberger.” Casper
”We need to build it before we go sailing.” Erika
”Oh no, I don’t want to sink. But don’t worry you won’t hit the iceberg. We need more life boats.” Ben
”How about we don’t set off until all the icebergs have gone.” Jacob
”Sadly the titanic crashed.” Ben
”I’m the captain.” Jacob
”I’ll be the look out. Mrs T you can help, you can be the grown up!” Erika
Well where to start? Larks have had a fantastic week . We became researchers in our English this week and found out facts about Captain Cook. We worked in groups and used technology to help us find out something new. We recorded our findings and used this information to write our own fact files. In craft, we made binoculars and telescopes to help us explore, and we made maps just like Captain Cook. We also built the Great Wall of China as we are still celebrating Chinese New year. We became explorers this week too, we flew to Asia and we visited Russia, China and India as part of our Geography. We tried their foods, listened to their music and had clues which we used to guess where we were. Mrs Box had to guess too- she enjoyed tasting the delicious foods from two different countries; China and India. This also linked to our RE learning this week as we have been learning about Islam. We have heard all about Muhammad and he has taught us how to care for all living things.
This week the Swifts have been learning all about air resistance this week in science. Their scientific enquiry was to find out whether the size and shape of an object could effect the level of air resistance. The children had a lot of fun designing parachutes and comparing their results.
The children also went on a measuring journey outside and measured many items outside from puddles, leaves, sticks to even the outdoor classroom. Some of the children began converting from cm to mm using their knowledge of multiplying and dividing by 10. Very creative learning this week!
We have developed our teamwork skills and our understanding of fair tests as we investigated ways to make shadows change. We learned that the closer the light source is to the object, the bigger the shadow. We also concluded that the higher the light source is, the smaller the shadow.
Our topic work has focused on the Moon, this week. We knew lots of facts already, but we didn’t understand why the Moon appears to change shape every night. We were also intrigued to know why the Moon disappeared for a few days. Do you know why? And do you know what the different shaped moons are called? We have loved investigating and have created some wonderful collages to show how the moon orbits the Earth and now understand that we don’t always see the whole half of the moon that is facing the sun. We sometimes only see a small part of the illuminated side of the moon – a crescent moon. Tricky stuff!