Igniting Children’s Curiosity

Inspiring children's imaginative speaking and listening

 

This week, we have focussed on inspiring children to extend their imaginative speaking and listening skills through providing ‘magical’ opportunities and experiences.

We read a book called "The Blue Balloon" by Mick Inkpen and thought about where our balloons would take us. Some of the children's ideas were:

"Into the mud with the crocodiles"

"Through the jungle with cheeky monkeys and mean dinosaurs."

"My balloon would take me to a party with all my friends."

"My balloon would take me to space to meet some aliens."

We made some magical mixtures using vinegar and bicarbonate of soda and were very excited to see what happened when the ingredients reacted.

We made some wizard's hats to help us make our potions

 

We wrote labels for our bottles

"My magic will be beautiful . Its going to be good and make stars!"

"I'm using water and fairy dust. I'm going to make a magic potion. Abracadara...make me a rainbow unicorn."

We used the language of capacity, thinking about whether our bottles were full, half full or empty, as well as developing fine motor skills by using pipettes to fill our bottles.

We read a story called The Magic Bed by John Burningham

We thought about where a magic carpet might take us and described the animals we saw, the noises they made, the land around us and how it felt to be there.

We made up our own stories using a story box.

"Once upon a time, the pirates looked for treasure, they sailed across the sea. They met a whale. "Let's be friends" said the whale. The crabs chased away the pirate and the whale. They find the treasure...1,2,3,4,5,6,7 jewels, and go home and take it to see mummy and daddy."

We looked inside small secret bags and boxes to discover what was inside. We thought about who might use these special objects and what they might do with them.

 

 

 

This week we did our PE lesson outside.

 We practiced throwing, relays and running races.  

 

 

 

 

Next week is our half term holiday. Have a relaxing break and we look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday 5th June. Please remember that Monday 4th June is an Inset day.

 

 

Growing Up

Ourselves and how we grow

This week, as part of our growth topic, we have been thinking about how we ourselves grow.

We had a visit from a baby and thought about all the things we can do now that we are big, that the baby still needs to learn to do.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for all the baby photos we have received. We have had great fun guessing who the baby pictures were.

Our writing using our phonics and key words

Our beans have been growing and we have planted them in the nursery garden. We have built some plant pots from Duplo and hope to see our cress growing soon.

 

In Maths we have been matching Numicon to the dots on our dice. We have been learning that the number in the set is the last number we have said. 

 

 

 

We have also been making our own addition sums using the dots on either side of the dominoes.

This Friday (18th) the children are allowed to come to school in their own red, white and blue clothes to celebrate the royal wedding for a £1 donation.

Next week we will be thinking about growth in frogs and studying some tadpoles.

 

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

Who is that trip trapping over my bridge?

Early Years and Year 1 had a wonderful visit from Widershins puppet theatre who put on a magical show of The 3 Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the 3 Bears and The 3 Billy Goats Gruff.

The children really enjoyed themselves and found the show funny, exciting and very entertaining.

 

 

 

 

 

We have used this experience to lead into lots of other learning opportunities such as understanding and using positional language playing hide and seek with the troll under the bridge and retelling the story ourselves with goat puppets and a big troll.

 

Next week we will be thinking about how we ourselves have grown. Please could you send a baby photo of your child to school. We will look after it very carefully and return it to you.

Many Thanks

Healthy Eating

The Enormous Turnip

This week our text is The Enormous Turnip. We retold the story and acted it out.

We are learning about where foods come from and which foods are good for us.

We tasted different salad ingredients and chose which ones we wanted to include in our salad. We recorded our preferences on a chart. We chopped, sliced, grated and mixed. The best bit was tasting our salad.

 

 

 

 

 

We also thought about what kinds of food we should put inside a healthy eating lunch box. Which would you choose?

Which foods can you have often and which should you have only sometimes?  Why?

We have been observing the growth of our beans and made observational drawings of them.

 

 

 

Mrs Ivory has bought in some stick insects which we have watched growing bigger and bigger.  Can you spot one?

In PE we have been performing some dance. We have been listening to the difference between fast and slow music and how to move our bodies differently to each piece. We also moved like fast and slow animals to the music.

Next week our book will be The Three Billy Goat's Gruff. We are very excited to have a puppet performance of the story on Wednesday 9th. We will be engaged in various activities based around this theme.