Weather reporting

This afternoon we practised and started filming our weather reports. We didn't quite have time in the afternoon to film all of them, so we are going to finish them on Monday and then we'll post them on our blog so you can see all the super learning we've done on weather!

As well as learning about different types of weather, our weather reports have helped us learn about temperatures, countries of the UK and compass directions as well as developing our speaking skills. Miss Worsley came in this afternoon to see a couple of our reports and was very impressed with our learning!

Being weather reporters!

This afternoon we have been weather reporters! We are working this week on creating weather reports, and today we learnt about different parts of the UK and practised using the words north, south, east and west to describe different places. We put symbols on the map and then had to say what the weather is going to be like in different places, for example, "In Scotland today it is going to be cloudy," "In the south of England there could be some storms," "In Wales this afternoon it will be sunny and warm."

We are going to build on this over the next two days so we are ready to deliver and record a super weather report!

Measuring weather

Today we have been talking about measuring weather. We talked about what 'measuring' means and different ways we could measure the weather. Harry said we could measure how hot or cold it is (we remembered that this is the temperature) and Matthew said we could measure how much rain there has been. We looked at the numbers on a thermometer and talked about temperature, and we looked at tape measures and talked about how many mm or cm of snow or rain there might have been.

Then we talked about how we can measure how strong the wind is. We learned about the Beaufort Scale, which goes from 0 to 12. We acted out the different stages, from 0 (Calm, smoke rises vertically) through light breezes where you can feel the wind on your face, stronger breezes when trees begin to sway, gales where it is difficult to walk, storms where trees are uprooted and buildings may be damaged, through to 12 - hurricane.

In Play and Learn time some of us painted the Beaufort Scale by making blue paint darker and darker and painting each section a different colour. This shows us that the wind is getting stronger.

Aaron is adding the numbers 0 to 12 under each section on his Beaufort Scale.

Wonderful Writing!

We've been seeing lots of super writing in class this week, whether it's on paper, whiteboards or the computer!

Emily did some mark making in the role play area and asked me to help her write some sentences.

Matthew wrote different types of weather on the whiteboard.

Rhys wrote a fantastic story on the computer about a lonely elephant. He used the words on our writing wall to help him. Super work Rhys!

Sunshine Writing

On Friday afternoon we talked about the sun and different words to describe it. We made a class list of 'wow' words to describe the sun. Then we each wrote a word on a yellow strip of paper and stuck them onto yellow circles to make yellow suns with our lovely describing words! The words we used were sparkling, yellow, orange, boiling, golden, shiny, dazzling, warm, glittering, beautiful, hot, bright, shining and shimmering.

Making ice cream!

This week we're learning about the sun and things we like doing in sunny weather. We talked about what we like doing when it's hot and sunny and everyone said they like eating ice cream, so today we made some! We borrowed Miss Groves' ice cream maker and made two flavours, strawberry and banana. We chopped up the fruit and had to add sugar "to make it sweet" (Hope) and cream. We ate the strawberry one - it was yummy! The banana one needed a bit longer in the freezer so we're going to eat that tomorrow!

Sunrise and sunset

Yesterday we learnt how the sun gives us night and day. We used a torch and a sphere and learnt how the Earth spins around, so that sometimes part of it is facing the sun - then it's daytime - and part of it is facing away from the sun - then it's night. We talked about what 'sunrise' and 'sunset' means and looked at some pictures.

Here are some of the things we said:
"When the sun sets it's our bedtime and Australia's breakfast." (Grace)
"It's sunrise in the morning." (Maddie)
"The sun sets at night time." (Olivia)
"When the sun goes down it's called sunset, when it goes up it's sunrise." (Harry)
"The sun makes it light. When it's dark it isn't shining on us." (Aaron)
"We can't always see the sun." (Trystan)
"The sun goes down slowly in the day." (Lexi)

We explored different materials to make sunrise and sunset pictures including colouring pencils and chalks. We also used paint - we mixed different shades of red, yellow and orange and made some really effective pictures.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

Today we have been learning all about the seaside! We talked about things we like to do at the seaside - lots of us like building sandcastles and some of us like making mazes and other things with the sand! We all like eating ice cream, some of us like sunbathing and most of us like going swimming in the sea!

We used blue and yellow blankets to make a seaside role play and played with the buckets and spades in the sand. We also made some textured seaside pictures. We used blue cellophane for the water - it's really smooth. We used yellow paint with sand in it for the grainy, bumpy, gritty sand - it's rough.

This afternoon we have been doing history and learning about seasides in the past. We were learning to talk about similarities and differences and we compared two pictures - one from the seaside in the present day, and one from the seaside in the past. Maddie noticed straight away that the picture from the past was old - "That picture is old because it's black and that one's got colour so it's now." We had to read statements and decide if they applied to seasides in the past, seasides now, or both. We learnt that beaches were crowded and popular places in the past and still are today, and people enjoyed digging in the sand and building sandcastles in the past, which they still do today. People also still use umbrellas to give shade from the sun, like they did in the past. In the picture we looked at of the seaside in the past, people were wearing dark clothes and keeping themselves well covered from the sun. Now, people wear bright swimming costumes and enjoy the sun.

Sunny weather!

This week we are learning all about the sun and sunny weather. This afternoon we talked about what we know about the sun - for example, it's very hot - and what we know about staying safe in the sun. We read a book about a girl getting ready to go out in the sun. She made sure she was covered up, had a hat on and put suncream on. We also talked about wearing sunglasses to protect our eyes.

Then we looked at some things from our clothes shop role play and talked about whether they were for sunny days or not.

Then we thought about things we like to do when it's really warm and sunny. We played a game where we had to mime doing something and everyone else had to guess what we were doing. We had people miming sunbathing, swimming, digging in the sand and eating ice creams, and even miming putting on a summer dress - well done Maddie for a super mime, and well done to Grace for guessing it right!

After that we drew a picture of what we like doing on sunny days on our sunshine writing paper and wrote about it. When we had finished our pictures and our writing we shared our work with the rest of the class. First we read our work - we had to stand at the front and practise our speaking skills by speaking in a loud, clear voice and not rushing. Then Miss Ayres put our work under the visualiser so we could all see each other's drawing and writing.

Let's go fly a kite!

We've made some lovely kites this week and have been learning all about wind. Miss Ayres has bought us a real kite to fly, but it hasn't been windy enough yet!

This afternoon we watched a bit of the film Mary Poppins when the children fly their kite. We listened to the song Let's Go Fly a Kite from the film - well done to Olivia, who already knew most of the words and joined in very enthusiastically! We talked about some of the words sung in the song, such as 'soaring' and 'breeze'. We also thought of some words of our own to describe how a kite might move, such as 'gliding' (Trystan) and used some adverbs to describe its movement, like 'slowly' (Matthew). Miss Ayres also taught us the word 'gracefully'. We used words to describe the kites, such as 'beautiful' and 'colourful' and words to describe the sky, for example, 'bright' and 'cloudy'. Then we put all our words together to make a sentence to describe a kite. Our class sentence was: The colourful kite soared slowly in the bright blue sky.

After that we had some kite pictures to decorate. We thought of some words to describe the kite and put one word in each of the four sections of the kite. Some of us then wrote sentences using the words we had chosen. Next week we are going to finish colouring and decorating our kites. Well done to Lucy, who wrote a brilliant sentence - The beautiful kite is soaring gracefully in the gentle breeze.

It was such a nice day today we were even able to be outside to do all of our work and our Play and Learn time!

Star Writing!

Well done to Grace, who is star of the week this week for her super writing. Grace is a keen writer who is really working hard to improve her writing. She is drawing on her experiences of stories and books and coming up with fantastic ideas for her own stories. Here is the brilliant story she wrote this week:

Once upon a time there was an elf who told a lie. He told the king who wished for his own crown. One day the elf told the king to do all the chores. On the next day King Roland tried the shoe on. It fitted.

Well done Grace - we're all very proud of your work and look forward to reading what you're going to write next!

Wild weather!

This week we have been learning about wind. Today we were learning about extremely windy weather - hurricanes and tornadoes! We watched some videos of hurricanes and tornadoes and talked about the movement. Outside, we used our bodies to make the movement of hurricanes and tornadoes. We thought about how we could use our arms, legs and the rest of our bodies, whether we would be spinning around (like a tornado) and how we would have to use our eyes to avoid bumping into other people!

Then we practised using our arms to make big, circular movements. We used the chalks and made this movement to make pictures of tornadoes all over the playground! I wonder what the rest of the school thought when they saw all our pictures at playtime...?

Some of us made more hurricane and tornado pictures in our Play and Learn time. We used different materials on paper and we used the iPads and the whiteboard to draw our pictures.

What blows in the wind?

This afternoon we were doing some investigative science to find out which things blow in the wind. We had a stone, a feather, a coin and a piece of paper. We went outside to test if these things would blow in the wind, but it wasn't windy enough! So we came inside and used a fan to make the wind instead. We had to make predictions about what we thought would happen and why, then we tested each out to see if they did blow or not. Here are some of the things we said:

"The paper will blow away because it's light." (Grace)
"Feathers blow around. I've seen them in the playground." (Jamie)
"Leaves are light, that's why they blow." (Lilly)
"The penny and the stone are too heavy." (Trystan)
"The paper and the feather are not heavy. The coin and stone are heavier." (Harry)
"The paper flew because it was light." (Aaron)

We found that the paper and the feather both blew, and said this was because they were light. The coin and the stone did not blow away because they were heavier. We then talked about whether smaller stones might blow away and whether paper and feathers would blow if there was only a light breeze. Some of us had different ideas - maybe soon we can test them out!