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!