Chicks

Our eggs have arrived. We are watching and waiting to see what will happen!

Spring and Growth

We have come back from the Easter holidays to beautiful weather and have been delighted to spend time in our outdoor classroom.

This term we are exploring Spring and growth.

Early Years use the stories and themes we are reading as the basis of our play in continuous provision. We have enjoyed exploring the Hungry Caterpillar story using the props in our sensory tray.

There was lots of excitement when our real caterpillars arrived.  We have loved watching them grow bigger each day.We've loved dressing up as butterflies outside and wrapping up in a paper roll cocoon. 

We punched holes and threaded ribbon leaf caterpillars to make our fingers strong.

We have also had some frogspawn in class and looked closely to see it change.

We were able to play imaginatively with the frogs in our water tray pond.

We have also been planting beans, lettuces and other seeds ready to plant in our raised beds outside which we have weeded together.

Clay dinos

Today we talked about different types of dinosaurs and why some had sharp teeth, spikes or long necks. We decided to make clay dinos, and add different materials to make teeth, spines and spikes. We hope you like the results!

Dinosaurs!

This week we have been taken over by dinosaurs! We've really enjoyed thinking about what might be in the giant egg we found in a nest in Early Years. We have had lots of ideas from a baby elephant to a blue bird to a gigantic dinosaur!

We have shaped dinosaur eggs, been fossil detectives, made play dough dinosaurs, dug a dinosaur nest in the sandpit, explored some frozen dinosaurs and lots more. Lots of inspiration to talk and pretend together and to write about what we have found.

Ask your child to tell you what they have enjoyed so far this week.

Exploring outdoors

Today has been a beautiful day outdoors in Early Years

We have enjoyed making sandcastles in the sandpit, and finding hidden letters which allow us to make words!

We are pouring and collecting water in our water wall. Which container holds the most?

Our new muddy kitchen has arrived and we are taking orders and feeding each other mud pie!

We have added in two wheel scooters to provide challenge for the children. They are very popular!

Our new tiny willow igloos (wigloos) are great spaces to talk and read together.

We are looking out for signs of spring together. Let us know if you see any when you are out in the park or garden.

Kung Hey Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year

This week we have been learning about Chinese New Year. We found out about the Great Race and how the animals of the Chinese Zodiac decided who would have which year named after them. We have used chopsticks to move pom-poms and written messages to go in our red envelopes.

We especially enjoyed tasting different types of Chinese food, prawn crackers were definitely the favourite!

Mini ecadets

Today is Safer Internet Day.

We read a book called Penguinpig together.

PENGUINPIG is a story about a little girl who reads of an exciting creature known as a penguinpig on the Internet. She loves the penguinpig and decides that she must go and find one.

However, her parents are far too busy to take her and so she decides that she will sneak out and find the adorable penguinpig all on her own. Carefully, she follows the instructions from the website - but instead of finding a penguin pig finds a hungry grizzly bear looking for his lunch!

The little girl learns to "think before you click". We talked about keeping safe and not clicking on links in the apps and websites we use.

We also learnt about Hector the Protector.

If we see anything on the computer which worries us we know to click on Hector and he will cover up the page until we can find a grown up to tell.

You can download Hector to your own computer here.

http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/5_7/hectorsworld/

We are fabulous mini ecadets!