Week 1

What a strange first week we had! 

We introduced our new topic of 'explorers' by talking about Africa. We talked about the continents of the world and found Africa on a world map. Then we read an information book to find out about the climate and the landscape of Africa. We talked about some of the animals that live there.

Then on Wednesday it snowed! It was odd talking about a very hot place when it was snowing outside. 

As you all know we then had two snow days where it was unsafe to come to school. How did you spend your snow day? Did you build a snowman? Did you go sledging?

Week 2

This week we started to think about our upcoming trip to Yorkshire Wildlife Park. The Seashells had so many questions about the trip. Everyone is so excited about seeing real life animals. We looked at the map of the park to find out some of the answers to the questions such as 'Where are the toilets?' and 'Where will we have lunch?'

We talked about some of the animals that we will hopefully get to see at the park and we watched the video from last year's trip to get a taste of what to expect on the day. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that the weather improves!

Week 3 

Wow what an exciting week we have had!

On Monday and Tuesday we explored new activities in our free play that were linked to wild animals. In the investigation corner we matched the animal prints to the correct animal. In the Maths area we grouped animals and then added the groups together to find the total number. We also learned more about some of the animals that we are going to see on our class trip. First, we talked about GIRAFFES.

We watched a video that taught us lots of amazing facts. Then we used an information book to find out even more. We put the information into a class brainstorm. Did you know that some giraffes grow up to 17 feet tall! That is nearly 3 times as tall as Mr Rigler!

Next we learned about TIGERS. Some of us wrote independent sentences about tigers. See below for some examples.

 A trip to Yorkshire Wildlife Park

We had an amazing day out with the little caterpillars at Yorkshire Wildlife Park. The children were fabulous and they should be very proud of the way they behaved.  Look out for a video coming soon!

World Book Day

On Thursday we celebrated World Book Day. A little later than the official day due which was cancelled due to the snow. Everyone looked amazing in their book character outfits.

We had a special assembly where we had a quiz about famous stories and authors, tried to guess which characters the staff had come dressed as and talked about reading and books which is what World Book Day is all about.

Did you know that World Book day is celebrated in over 100 countries around the world!

We enjoyed playing with activities in the classroom that were all linked to a story book:

• Putting on a witches hat and making potions like Meg from Meg and Mog
• Counting the fruit like Handa from Handa's Surprise
• Filling bowls with porridge oats and feeding the porridge to the right size bear from Goldilocks
• Being a detective and using magnifying glasses to find Wally in the Where's Wally books
• Making an alien in Underpants with the Playdough
• Finding all Harry's dinosaurs that were lost in the sand and counting them into his bucket
• Acting out the stories of Little Red Riding Hood and The Gingerbread Men with finger puppet

 Week 4

This week the seashells have been mad about writing! The trip to YWP has sparked their imaginations and now there is just no stopping them!

The Safari role play corner was looking a little bare so FG and JY set about writing animal fact files to give our guests lots of information about the animals that they might see on their trip. Lots of other children joined in and now the wall is full of fantastic descriptions all written completely independently. See below for some examples.

The children have also been acting out roles as animal rangers, tour guides, safari guests and even the animals themselves! They've also made binoculars, water bottles, a rucksack and tickets to give out to customers. 

Sports Relief 2018

On Friday 23rd March we raised money for Sports Relief. We dressed up in sports kit and enjoyed lots of fun activities including:

• Designing a sports outfit
• Icing biscuits
• Fun dancing 
• Eating ice lollies
• Hula-hooping

Week 5

We have been learning about Easter this week and the start of Spring. We discussed what we do at Easter time with our families. Some of us go to church on Easter Sunday, have special meals with our families, send cards, eat hot cross buns and eat Easter eggs. We about eggs being a symbol of new life, and a way to remember the Easter story.

In class we enjoyed lots of Easter themed activities including:

• Writing with feathers
• Sorting and counting bunnies
• Ordering Easter bunny pictures by size
• Making chicks with playdough
• Fishing for eggs
• Easter basket making
• An Easter egg hunt - we worked in teams to collect as many eggs as we could, then we counted them and worked out the winning group.