Exploring at the Garden Centre

This morning we went to the garden centre in Great Gaddesden to further our learning on plants and growing. We walked down sensibly in our groups and looked at our challenge sheet. We had to use our iPad to take a photo of: a yellow flower, someone in our group smelling something and something bigger than us. We also had to find as many things as we could beginning with 's'. We had to take photos of them and write them down - we found lots! Some of the 's' things were found were sunflowers, sand, soil, stones, sticks, statues, seeds, strawberries, sage and scarecrows.

We also took some money from our Foundation Fund to buy some things. We bought some bird food so birds can come into our outside area to eat - we'll have to get our binoculars and our birdspotter handbooks ready! We also bought some seeds to plant and some flowers to put in our pots outside. We had to look at how much money we had and work out how much it would cost to buy the things we wanted so we knew if we could afford them or not.

We had a great morning and enjoyed finding out about lots of different things. When we got back to school we were busy turning our role play into a garden centre! Thank you to all the parents who came to help this morning - we really appreciate you taking the time to help us with trips like this.

Growing Frogs!

This morning Holly brought in something exciting for us to look at - some frogspawn! We spent time looking at it and talking about it, including what we think will happen to it. We read a story called 'Growing Frogs' and enjoyed listening to the story CD in our Play and Learn time. We have kept some in the classroom to look at and we put some in the school pond - what do you think will happen to it?

This morning we also had fun exploring ways to make 'frogspawn' pictures. We used paint and bubbles to make some terrific pictures!

Who's been eating our peas?!

Yesterday we planted some peas in our outside area. Today, we went to see them and check if they needed water... and guess what had happened! There was soil all over the ground, some of our peas had been dug up and the signs we made about our peas had been pulled out!

Mylo saw some bird poo on the ground and decided that some birds must have come and dug up our seeds! We talked about what we could do to protect our seeds. Fallon suggested putting a cover over them, but when we talked about it we realised that would stop the sunlight getting onto our peas and they might not grow. Luke suggested we made some signs to tell the birds to leave our seeds alone. We talked about what the signs could say and what they could look like. If we just did a picture of a bird the birds might think we were inviting them to come and eat our seeds, but Luke said it should be in a red circle with a cross through it - great thinking Luke!

Inside, we made signs to tell the birds (or anyone else!) to leave our peas alone. We laminated them so they don't get damaged in the rain and hung them outside.

We also thought it might be a good idea to make a scarecrow, so this afternoon Reception were very busy with Mrs Waites making a scarecrow to scare the birds away. We read a story called The Scarecrow who didn't scare and thought about how we could make a scarecrow. We had to think of ideas, listen to other people's ideas and try and find ways to solve problems, like what to do if we didn't have something we needed. We also had to work together in a group. When we'd finished we put our scarecrow outside to protect our peas!

Fun in the sun!

This afternoon there was a beautiful blue sky and bright sunshine, so we headed out to the penfold with the parachute. We played lots of games that helped develop our teamwork and listening skills - not to mention working our arm muscles! We all had lots of fun and worked together really well. We really enjoyed the cat and mouse game - Emily was a particularly tricky mouse to catch! We also played games with balls and beanbags, and Emily suggested we try and throw the beanbags onto the parachute and make it land on the matching colour. Not only was this a great idea, but she explained her game to the rest of the class really well. Well done Emily!

A special visit!

We started this week learning about babies and how we have grown and changed since we were babies. Then we started looking forward, thinking about how we will change as we grow older. We set some goals for ourselves that we would like to achieve by the summer term and thought about all the things the bigger children in school can do that we'll be able to do when we're a bit bigger! Then we started learning about different jobs. Yesterday we learnt about a lot of jobs and how people can help us through the work they do. We learnt that police officers keep us safe, doctors and nurses look after us if we're poorly, vets take care of animals, postal workers deliver the mail, firefighters put out fires and rescue people - and lots more!

Today we had another special visitor - it was Dexter's mummy again! This time she came in to talk to us about her job. She is an osteopath, which means she looks after people who have hurt their bones or their muscles. She brought in a model of a spine to show us and taught us lots of things about our body and how to take care of it. We learnt that we have 206 bones in our body, the smallest bone is in our ear and the biggest bone is our femur (thigh bone). Things like milk and cheese contain calcium which helps keep our bones strong and healthy, and it's important to get lots of exercise and sit up nice and straight!

We all learnt a lot and really enjoyed looking at the model of the spine. A big thank you (again!) to Dexter's mum for coming to visit us and help us with our learning!

When we were babies..!

This week we are learning about how we grow as people. Yesterday Dexter's mummy brought Dexter's little sister, Lucille, into our class to visit us. She is five months old and we really enjoyed meeting her and learning about all the things she can and can't do. We learnt that she can't walk or crawl, but that the next thing she is going to learn to do is roll over. She also only drinks milk, but soon she can start having proper baby food. She was very good and gave us lots of smiles - we enjoyed her visiting us and some of us had some cuddles with her! Thank you to Dexter's mum and Lucille for visiting us!

Today we were talking about what we were like when we were babies and thinking about how we've changed. We brought in photos of ourselves when we were younger and had to try and work out who was who from just looking at the photo!

When we had worked out who was who we each talked about our photo and some of the differences between us as babies and now. There are a lot of things we can do now that we couldn't when we were babies, and we look different too - we are bigger, we have more teeth and we have more hair!

Beautiful butterflies

This morning we were learning all about butterflies and something that's very special about them - the pattern on their wings is symmetrical! We talked about what this means and looked at some examples to help us understand. Miss Ayres showed us how to paint on half of a piece of paper and then fold it over to make a symmetrical picture! We then tried our own, either doing patterns or a butterfly.

We also had some butterfly templates to decorate, either by colouring or using sequins and buttons. We had to think carefully about where each one would go so the butterfly was symmetrical. Then we added straws for feelers and put them on lolly sticks to make them look like they're flying!

We used the symmetry tool on the iPads to create symmetrical pictures.

We also used the interactive whiteboard and decorated a butterfly, looking carefully at the picture we had to copy to make sure we chose the correct colours.

We also looked at some funny pictures of monsters - only half the monster was there! To see the whole picture we had to use mirrors. When we put the mirror next to half of the monster, we could look in the mirror and see the whole picture.

We also explored size with our butterfly puzzle. To fit the pieces in you have to make sure the smallest one goes in first, and then the next smallest - if you don't put them in in the right order they won't all fit!

In maths we continued to explore symmetry and worked together to put coloured stacking counters on a butterfly picture.