The Troll!

This morning we read a book called The Troll by Julia Donaldson. It's about a troll who gets mixed up with a crew of pirates who are on the hunt for treasure! We talked about the story and how different characters were feeling at certain times. Then we talked about the words used to describe how different characters move, such as 'pattering', 'lolloping' and 'scuttling'. We moved around the classroom just like the characters in the book. We also thought of some words of our own to describe movement - we tried sliding (Maddie's idea) and galloping (Trystan's idea).

In the story the troll sees hoof prints in the sand. We talked about different animal prints and had a special challenge - 8 animal footprints that we had to match to the animal name! The animals were:

dog

duck

badger

fox

heron

otter

squirrel

deer

It was quite tricky but we did really well, especially identifying the deer and duck prints. Congratulations to Maddie and Lexi who were our overall winners - both girls correctly managed to identify five of the eight prints. Well done!

Ship Ahoy!

This morning we've been having a lot of fun exploring our new topic, Pirates! We've been reading pirate books and playing on our new pirate ship in the role play area. We've been learning how to talk like a pirate and we've been role playing steering the ship, lowering the anchor, following the treasure map, looking at the compass, firing the cannons, walking the plank and digging for buried treasure! Arrrrr!! We also used some big boxes outside to make a pirate ship.

Sound investigation

This afternoon we heard the story of Sleeping Beauty and talked about what noises wake us up when we're asleep! We said things like ticking clocks, alarm clocks, thunder, dogs barking, music, birds and people talking.

Then we did an investigation to find out how far away we can go and still hear a noise. The noise we tested was a bell ringing. We went to the bark area and measured out one metre. Then we all stood in a line and Miss Ayres rang the bell. We all heard it, so we recorded it on our piece of paper - 1m and a tick. Then we measured another metre, and another, and kept going until we couldn't hear it anymore! How far away do you think we were before we couldn't hear the tinkling bells anymore?

We could still hear the bells 10m away, but most of us couldn't hear it when we were 11m away. Do you think we could hear a louder noise at 11m? Or further?

The Princess and the Pea

This morning we heard the story of the Princess and the Pea. In the story, the princess could feel the pea in her bed even under lots of mattresses! We investigated which things we could feel a pea under. First we had to predict whether we would be able to feel the pea or not. We talked about how we could test it out and decided to put our hand on it to find out if we could feel the pea. We tried...

Paper

Wood

Fabric

and a cushion

We found out that you can't feel the pea under the cushion or the wood but you can feel it under the paper and the fabric. Although the paper and fabric are soft, you can't always feel the pea through something soft because the cushion was soft. We worked out that you can't feel the pea through things that are too thick.

What other things do you think you could feel a pea through?

How many pieces of paper do you think it would take to not feel the pea anymore?

Class Assembly

This morning we did a class assembly to the rest of the school and some mummies and daddies. We showed the shields, helmets and crowns we made and talked about our work on castles. Then we told everyone about the Gaddesden Ridgeback and the Hemel Horntail dragons. After that we read our own reports about dragons and showed our lovely pictures. Nursery also showed everyone their super dragon pictures and dragon masks. We all read beautifully and were very brave to share our work in front of so many people!

Exclusive - dragon encyclopaedia to be unveiled at special reading!

Dragon experts from the Reception class at Great Gaddesden School have today confirmed that their much anticipated dragon encyclopaedia is now complete. They have also announced plans to share the written reports at a special event celebrating their recent work on Wednesday 21st May at 9am. The public will no doubt be relieved to be presented with information that can help them to identify various dragon breeds in Britain and the wider world, as well as how they can protect themselves from the more dangerous breeds. These experts have worked tirelessly to research these dragons and write these reports and their hard work and superb skills are much appreciated.

Self-portraits

Mirror, mirror on the wall... who do you see when you look in the mirror? This afternoon we have been exploring mirrors and thinking about what we can see when we look in the mirror. We were looking at our faces really carefully and thinking about the position of our eyes, ears, nose and mouth as well as the colours on our face. Then we drew some self-portraits.

Can you work out who these pictures were drawn by?