Mini Beast Ant-ics!

This week we have been learning about mini beasts.

We have enjoyed holding stick insects and a giant snail. We talked about how they looked and what they felt like.

"slimy"  "hard shell"  "tickly"  "wiggly" " soft"  "slippy"

We played guessing games, using language we have learned to give clues about the mystery mini beast.

 

 

We learned that insects have 6 legs. We made our own insects with 6 legs.

 

 

We had lots of fun making our own stick insects with the help of our Year 5 buddies.

 We made symmetrical butterfly patterns.

 We worked on our drop and dragging skills using the lap tops to make symmetrical butterflies. You can try at home if you would like:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/games/charlie-and-lola-butterflygallery

Our number work included jumping back and forwards on a large chalk number line to think about adding and taking away. What number will we land on if we start at 7 and jump on 2 more? What about if we jump back 1?

Making towers using blocks to make the right height.

Over the half term holiday, you could take your stick insect out and about with you and take a photo of him in different places with your child. We will be displaying these photos in the classroom.

Please could you make sure your child has a named sun hat. The sun is finally making an appearance and for safety's sake, the children need to keep their heads covered.

Have a wonderful half term holiday!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Planting and Healthy Eating

Growing Vegetables

This week we have been exploring the theme of healthy choices. The children have had lots of hands on experience planting vegetable seeds which will hopefully grow ready to eat by July.

 

 

We have planted radishes, spinach, carrots and lettuce.

 

 

We have been tasting different salad ingredients and deciding which ones we wanted to use in our own salads. We talked to our friends about how the vegetables looked and tasted.

" crunchy"  "tasty"  "delicious" "yummy"  "fresh"

 

We will be using fine motor skills of chopping, tearing, grating and slicing.

We will be sharing our salads with our Year 5 buddies.

 We have been making marks to work to represent how many sweets were on the tray.

 

 

We used play dough to think about taking away and adding.

Next week we are thinking about mini beasts, we will go on a mini beast hunt, use language to describe what we find and focus on non fiction texts.

Just for your information Highfield Park in  St Albans is holding a mini beast hunt for young children: http://www.highfieldparktrust.co.uk/mini-beast-safari-21st-may/

After our farm visit, the children have been recalling the animals we saw and what we did.

We made our own big book about our farm visit, using whole sentences to describe what we had seen.

We have been learning the name of adult farm animals and their young by playing snap and building adults and babies with our Duplo blocks. The children were very interested in a question asked by one of our children "What is a baby turkey called?" We talked about where we could find out. Some children suggested asking a farmer, others said that we could look on the internet or in a book. Why don't you see if your child can remember what we found out or if you can find out together?

 

Our beans are really growing now. We have made observational drawings of how they have grown, using words like roots, stem and seed. 

We have used Numicon to make number sentences, as well as making our number sentences using loom bands slipped onto a lolly stick.

 

 

 

We also used Numicon in the playdough and used a toy hammer to flatten each bump as we counted to make sure we counted all the bumps to find out how many each Numicon was worth.

 

 

We've had lots of fun with our letters this week. We used the alphabet stones to spell our names in the digger tray. We had lots of fun on our alphabet treasure hunt around the Early Years Garden, spying all the letters hidden around the outdoor area and marking them on our alphabet sheet.

Thank you to all the children and parents for the fantastic Super Hero dress up for Unicef. We really appreciate your generosity and will let you know about how much money we have raised when all the classes have completed their fundraising!

 

 

 

Farm Visit

This week, The Early Years have had a fantastic time learning about farm animals and their babies.

We have played games matching animals and their young, read farm books as well as making our own. A visit from Ark Mobile Farm ignited the children's interest and made all their learning come alive. The visit gave lots of opportunities for speaking and listening activities based on hands on experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please share this blog with your children and talk to them about their favourite animals, what the animals looked like, felt like and sounded like. You could play Guess Who? games, taking it in turns with your child to give clues about an animal while your partner guesses what animal is being described.

We are continuing our theme of life cycles and growth next week.