“Give me the joys of summer…“
Winifred Sackville Stoner,
Summer 2
Week beginning 12th June 2023
This week we have been on a mission to catch Hefty Hugh and Lanky Len from the book ‘What the ladybird heard’. We created WANTED posters and displayed them all around school in the hope someone else might have caught a glimpse of the two robbers! In Forest School we found some clues to where the two might be, including one of their hats, boots and a jumper. The next day we wrote some instructions on how we thought we might be able to catch Hefty Hugh and Lanky Len, including digging holes and setting traps!
In Maths we have been learning about sharing objects out equally.
In Art we have continued to learn about sculpture and took inspiration from Andy Goldsworthy to create our own sculptures using boxes, glass beads, pebbles, wooden blocks to name but a few.
In Science we worked in groups to each study a different area of the school to find minibeasts. We recorded what we found and then compared the results with the other mini habitats seeking for any patterns. We did find lots of woodlice in the dark damp places and flies and bees nearer any flowers.
This week Henrietta delivered the story ‘What the ladybird heard at the seaside’, by Julia Donaldson and Bertie the Bee left us the rhyme, ‘Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home’ in his garden. We soon discovered we were learning about some new topics: ‘Fun at the Seaside!’ and ‘Living things in their habitats’, so on Monday we started with a minibeast hunt around our school grounds. There were lots of bees around the flowers and we soon realised we needed to look underneath leaves and stones to find other little creatures hiding underneath in the cool, dark places. We found a lot of woodlice but we also found a poorly butterfly. However, with a spoon of sugary water it was soon revived and flew off! Back in class we enjoyed finding out more about bugs and explored a range of activities linked to minibeasts.
We used the watercolours to paint pictures, we made homes for bugs in the construction area, we enjoyed counting the plastic bugs and we also continued hunting for them in our outdoor classroom.
On Friday, we finished the week by attending a Music Festival. We travelled to Badsey First School on a coach to join 6 other schools to sing, dance, draw, move, make music and have fun, all based around the theme of pirates and the sea. We had an amazing time and we have learned lots of new songs and thoroughly enjoyed dancing the pirate conga to round off the morning!
In our Art lesson, we have started to look at mouldable materials and explored clay, plasticine and play dough and what we could do with them. We made ‘crazy minibeasts’ while we explored lots of different techniques, such as pinching, pulling, twisting, burrowing, bending and pushing.
Week beginning 1st May
This week saw Henrietta deliver the story of the Train Ride by June Crebbin. We have been retelling the story in the small world tray, acting out our own train rides in the role play area and in Art we have been printing with different shapes to create pictures of trains. We made mini train tracks in the finger gym and used the bee-bots as trains to send on a journey to the beach.
In our Understanding of the World lesson, we continued to explore forces, by using marbles, sand and water with the guttering, wheels, pipes and tubes. We compared the different resources and how the marbles, sand and water moved through and down them.