Jambo!

We have been learning so much about Kenya, and this week we have been exploring Kenya's culture and traditions including Kenyan art, music and dance. We also learnt how to say some words in Swahili like Jambo (hello), Kwaheri (goodbye) and Asante (thank you).

Yesterday we played some African drums and copied rhythms as well as making up some of our own. We watched a video of some people in Kenya dancing to drumming music and then made up some movements of our own while our friends played the drums.

Safety Day

Today was 'Safety Day' and we had some special visitors - three firefighters from our local fire station. They talked to us about what to do if there's an emergency and which number we need to call (nearly everyone knew it was 999!) and how it's good to try and learn our address so we could tell someone where to come if there was a fire.

They also showed us all the special uniform and equipment they need to have when they're going into a burning building to protect themselves.

We listened to a smoke alarm (it was very noisy - it has to be loud so it will wake you up in case there's a fire when you're asleep!) and they showed us how they might carry people out of a building.

We had some good questions to ask such as what does their logo mean, how many fires have they put out, how do they rescue people from buildings. We learnt a lot and were given a special story about a firefly who learns the hard way it's not safe to play with matches! We read the story back in class and talked about how to stay safe and not cause a fire - we should never play with matches or a lighter.

Thank you very much for coming to teach us about fire safety!

Finding out about Kenya

Last week we were busy exploring our local area, Great Gaddesden.

This morning we had a mystery box of clues to help us work out which place in the world we are going to be learning about in the next few weeks.

There was a lion, an elephant, a zebra, a hippo and a giraffe in the box, so we thought we might be learning about the zoo. But there was also an orange and a lemon! Maybe we were going to be learning about somewhere those animals live where oranges and lemons grow...

There was a also a map of Africa, a picture which Summer said was a flag, a photos of elephants against a beautiful sunset, people in colourful clothes we didn't recognise, and a landscape picture with trees, mountains and a lake. There was also a photo of children at school. It looked a bit different to our school though, because they had a blackboard, not an interactive whiteboard. "It's a chalkboard," said Luke. As well as these photos there were some words written in English and then in a different language, called Swahili.

The country we are learning about is Kenya, a country in Africa. We looked on the globe to find where we live and see where Kenya is.

We thought of things we would like to find out about Kenya and used the questioning words we had learnt last week to ask questions about Kenya. We wrote our questions on post-it notes and put them up on our board.

Here are some of our questions:

What animals live in Kenya?

What are the schools like?

What are the houses like?

Do they have shops?

How do you get there?

Do they ride bikes?

Is it sunny?

What clothes do they wear?

What do the eat?

This afternoon Reception were learning how we can find information. We can't just wander down to Kenya this afternoon to explore, as Fallon said, "it's a long way away!" So how can we find some information?

We decided we could use books. We looked at some of our new information books about Kenya and learnt about a contents page at the front. One section was called "Shopping." Harry told us that it was on page 18, so we turned to the right page. It told us about shops and markets in Kenya and the things people buy and sell. So we had already found the answer to one of our questions - Do they have shops in Kenya? Yes! And we found the answer in a book.

We also decided we could use computers to find information. We used a search engine and Jack helped to write "What animals live in Kenya?" We looked at some of the images that came up as an answer. We already knew about lions, zebras, giraffes and elephants from looking at our box of items this morning, but we were surprised to see crocodiles there! So we had used the computer to find information.

In Play and Learn time Harry used the atlas and looked at different maps. He found a page all about the grasslands and showed me the picture of the zebras he had found. Well done Harry!

There are lots more things we want to find out about Kenya and we have lots of fun things to do over the coming weeks as we explore this amazing country!

An exciting day!

For the last few weeks we have been looking after caterpillars in our class to support our learning on growth and change. We watched as the little caterpillars grew bigger and bigger and then made a chrysalis. Yesterday one of the butterflies emerged from her chrysalis and today she spread her wings and was ready to fly away! We released her outside and she flew away to explore!

Thank you to Charlie's mum for buying the caterpillars for us to grow!

Exploring our church

This morning we continued our learning of our local area by exploring our church. We walked all the way around the church and looked at lots of different things like the walls, doors and windows. Then we went inside the church and explored lots of things. We came up with questions about things we didn't know about, such as "what is the instrument in the church?" We used the iPads to take lots of photos and used some paper and crayons to do rubbings of the patterns on the church floor.

Exploring our school

This week we are learning all about our local area, Great Gaddesden. We started today by exploring our school. We had some mystery photos to look at and we had to try and work out where in the school the photos had been taken. When we had found it we used the iPads to take a photo showing we'd found the right place. Sometimes we had to look really carefully at what could be seen in the picture to make sure we had the place just right. We also made notes on our new talking clipboards and drew pictures of the things we had seen. As we visited different places in the school we thought about who uses the area, what it is used for and how it might be made better. We also thought of things we'd like to find out about the school, like "What kinds of animals are near school?"