'Allo 'allo 'allo....what's going on here?!

Today we had ANOTHER visit from some special people who help us.  After meeting the Fire Service last week, the children were very excited to meet two of our local Police Officers, who help to keep Sandridge safe.

 

We have been learning about question words: we put our skills to good use to ask lots of sensible questions about what the Police do, what uniform they wear, and how they get about the village. 

 

We found out how the Police radios worked.  We even had a chance to speak to the rest of the class over the radio!

 

Afterwards, we went to have a look at the Police car and the Police van, we saw the lights and heard the sirens - they were very loud!

 

The children told us, "there is a jail on the van!"  They had a turn at standing in the van...

...and being closed inside!  Thankfully the children were all let out again!

 

We said a very big thank you to PC Wilkes and PSCO Stokes for coming to see us.

 

 

People Who Help Us

 

The children have really enjoyed our topic on People Who Help Us, especially our visit from the fire fighters who showed us their fire engine and explained their jobs to us.  The children especially loved exploring the fire engine and spraying the hose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We role played being fire fighters

 

 

 We made our own fire engine from crates and boxes.

We made registration plates for our fire engines using our name cards and those of our friends.

 

Some of our children have loved the Frozen film so we set up some Frozen learning opportunities.

 The children explored the ice and investigated what it was made from and how we could make it melt. We tried wrapping it in cotton wool, holding it in our hands and putting it on the radiator to see if it would melt quicker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butterflies have dancing feet!

In our PE lessons this half term we have been learning about dance.  Each week we have used a different piece of classical music linked to our topic or theme to help us learn about different types of movement.  There is a link to each piece of music we have used, so you can hear the music and even try a few moves at home too!!

Week 1: Music for the Royal Fireworks by Handel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7vJ2UFbeXA&safe=active

First of all we learnt about responding to music.  We used firework words such as crackling, whizzing, flickering and exploding to help us think about how we could move our bodies.

Week 2: Mars, The Bringer of War by Holst
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0bcRCCg01I&safe=active

Next we used movements that were very slow, but very big to stage our own battle.  We learned about working with a partner, and how to respond and react to other children's movements.

Week 3: The Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsakov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYAJopwEYv8

This week we had com eup with our own ideas about how a piece of music made us want to move.  We decided on movements that were quick, small and light to reflect a busy bumblebee. 

 

Week 4: Waltz of the Snowflakes by Tchaikovsky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLXu9QZmb-I&list=RDNLXu9QZmb-I#t=87

 

This week we had to combine all of the skills we have learnt to make up our own movements with a partner.  We thought very carfeully about the music, how to respond, and how to make our bodies move.  Mrs Ledger was VERY impressed with everything that we'd learned.

We have some super videos of our dances that are sadly too big to load onto the website, but you will be able to see them if you come to one of the Learning Journal drop-in sessions on Wednesday 10th December.  Afternoon session from 2.50pm - 3.10pm, or evening session from 5.30pm-5.45pm.

That's not my Rocket ship, it's too.....

This week we moved onto even bigger texture activities - a textured moon outside (hopefully some of you spotted it hanging up!)

We drew our own rockets, stars and comets

In Butterflies we even wrote our own rocket book!

On Tuesday we joined in with Remembrance Day by making our own poppies.



Zoom Zoom Zoom

We're going to the moon

Zoom Zoom Zoom

We'll get there very soon

Climb aboard our rocket ship

And we'll get there very quick

Zoom Zoom Zoom

We're going to the moon

Our theme has been Space.

 We made firework pictures using pipettes to squirt the paint onto our paper. It helped us develop our fine motor skills.

 We read a story called Whatever Next! by Jill Murphy. We re-enacted the story with props.

 We counted down from 5 to 0, saying one less each time as we sang our favourite space song - 5 Little Men in a Flying Saucer.

 We went on a shape treasure hunt, finding shapes hidden around our classroom and matching them to the right poster.

We made textured space planets with different materials - "Bumpy Planet", "Scatchy Planet", "Soft Planet" and "Crinkly Planet"

This week we are continuing our space theme as the children have enjoyed it so much!



Shapes, shapes, everywhere!

Today, Butterflies class started learning about 3d shapes.  We went on a shape hunt around the school to see which shapes we could find...

We found lots of cylinders.

Some cuboids high up the air!

And even some cones!

I wonder if you can find any 3d shapes at home?

Autumn in Early Years

 

 

Conker rolling to make wonderful pictures!

 

 

Scientific Enquiry in Early Years

 How far can you make your conker roll? How can we measure that?

Why do some conkers roll further than others? What we can we change to make our conker roll further?

 

 

 

 

 

                  We listened to The Bear Hunt story. We retold it using instruments for sound effects.

 

 

 

 

 

We explored how different objects make different sounds such as rice, conkers, lentils and fir cones. We asked why they made different sounds and how we could change the sounds they made. The children suggested that feathers wouldn't make a sound because they were "soft and fluffy". 

We used what we found out to make choices for our own shakers which we had lots of fun playing in rhythm to our favourite songs and rhymes.

 

 

We explored making different sounds with our voices too.