Tous Ensemble, En Chemin Avec Jesus
Spring Term 2 - Reach for the Stars
Listen to our 'Reach for the Stars' song!
'Shine...From the Inside Out!'
Watching the Solar Eclipse!
We were fascinated to watch the solar eclipse on 20 March. Although the sky was very cloudy, we watched as the familiar shape of the sun was reduced to a slither of a crescent shape by the moon as it passed in front of the sun, creating the first solar eclipse since 1999! It was very strange when we all suddenly felt colder, the sky went darker and the birds stopped singing for a few memorable minutes that morning. When we came back into school, we researched more by looking at the internet and Oliver's information book that he had brought in from home.
The Solar Eclipse 2015
A Special Delivery in Reception...
10 new arrivals!
We have been singing the 'Spring Chicken' song...
We received a very special delivery this week – 10 hen’s eggs for us to look after! On Tuesday, we excitedly monitored the eggs in their incubator, looking out for any changes as the chicks grew inside.
We were so excited when a tiny hole in one egg developed into a bigger crack and then as we watched, the first baby chick hatched right before our very eyes! As he had yellow feathers, we knew he was a boy so we named him ‘Paddy’ as it was St Patrick’s Day.
We used our ipad to record any overnight hatches and on Wednesday morning, we were delighted to discover that seven of our chicks had hatched during the night and had been captured on video for us to watch in amazement. There were even a few chick ‘selfies’ thrown in for good measure!
The whole school got involved as we all encouraged the final egg to hatch, which it eventually did over lunchtime, carefully filmed by our Year 6 lunchtime helpers.
We have been fascinated to watch the new arrivals in their brooder box ‘fluff up’ and begin to cheep! It was great fun drawing up a shortlist of names for our 4 boy and 6 girl chicks.
We have been so engaged in this wonderful event, our interest has led to a wealth of ‘chick themed’ learning opportunities in the Reception curriculum: reading fiction and non-fiction books, writing ‘chick’ diaries, subtracting within ten, singing songs, engaging in ‘little red hen’ storytelling and role play, making observational drawings and developing the R.E. concept of 'new life' and scientific understanding relating to life cycles.
Day 1 - monitoring the eggs in the incubator...
Day 2 - The chicks have hatched!
Day 3 - A well-earned rest in the brooder box!
Day 4 - Making friends with the chicks!
The Building Work Has Begun...
We are settling into our new temporary learning bases whilst the builders extend our Reception classrooms. We have been busy watching the architects, project manager, contractors and builders working together on this exciting project and are closely monitoring the changes taking place in our school environment every day.
Keeping an eye on the builders!
Back in class, our interest in the building works has stimulated an array of learning opportunities. In Literacy, we have explored signs and labels in the environment: hunting for signs on the building site and around our school, understanding the purpose of environmental signs by reading captions/pictures and mark making in a meaningful context by writing safety signs of our own for our block play builder's yard.
In Maths, we have been 'pattern hunting' around the school, taking photos of any environmental patterns we could find and using mathematical vocabulary to describe them. Having explored our school environment, our thoughts turned to the area where we live. We decided to put our mark making skills to good use to create a giant map. Working collaboratively, we talked about our pictures as we drew. It became clear that we would need to use correct vocabulary to describe the position of each location in order to point our toy vehicles in the right direction as we played on the map once it was finished...
Collaborative Map Making...
