Saturday 28 November 2015

Playing and learning together

OUR MINI ENTERPRISE PROJECT!
Each class in the school, including Little Conkers, was asked to work on a project to raise money at the Christmas Fair this coming Tuesday 1st December.
Knowing how much the children love baking, I decided decorated gingerbread teddies would be the ideal thing for our class to make!


 










The two ingredients the children could not guess by looking at or smelling them were the brown sugar and the ground ginger but they said they liked the smell of them! 
As always the children talked as they worked and asked lots of questions and made lots of great observations.
We talked about how the mixture looked different to the scrambled egg and pancakes we had made previous weeks. We talked about how the dough needed to be just right for rolling and not too sticky!


The next job was decorating these great teddies. Don't they look wonderful! 
These are just a few of them - we've still got lots more to decorate on Monday and Tuesday - we're going to be very busy!

Make sure you come along to the Fair after school on Tuesday to buy some - 
only 50p each!


MORE LEARNING...

 The children's interest in the Beebots was extended this week by adding a pen and paper to encourage the children to find out the lines they could make.
Lots of great problem solving took place, with children trying to work out how to get Beebot to travel to different points. One super discovery was how to draw a circle!



There was more fun using the magnets with children counting how many items the magnets could lift off the table!








Our finger gym challenge this week was pegging as many socks onto the washing line as quickly as possible!
Opportunities for counting and matching as well as fine motor control.





We have been joining with Lower School to practise our Christmas Nativity and the children have been singing their hearts out.
On Friday it was lovely to see this little group of children gather around the music table and join in signing with the songs on the cd, as well as finding the parts of the story that went with each song in the Nativity story picture book.


Saturday 21 November 2015

Working things out

NEW DISCOVERIES

This week has been very much focused on encouraging the children to explore new resources and activities and ask questions and try things out to learn. It has been fascinating watching them and listening to them, and I have loved seeing their excitement at making new discoveries.

MAGNETS





A range of magnets and everyday objects made from different materials were very popular as well as puzzling at times.



When children experienced the force of magnets repelling each other there were great comments such as "Who's doing that!?", "Something strange is happening!"
 "It's something invisible!"

BEEBOT ROBOTS


 These little programmable toys are perfect for helping children learn about instructions, sequencing, directions, distance and much more!



This week we have been talking about electricity and power and the Beebots were ideal for talking about recharging the power into the battery inside, 
as well as switches and buttons.


INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD ACTIVITIES

       

 These Cbeebies "Engineering" games have encouraged the children to put their thinking caps on! Skills such as making choices, anticipating, looking to see if their choices were the correct ones, making changes and persevering to complete the task have been practised this week!

    
ELECTRONIC SOUNDS


Plenty of loud explorations here and some budding composers!

MORE SOUND EXPLORING


The children loved creating sounds, and it was pleasing to see them working out how to change sounds as well as asking questions and making comments about the differences in the sounds.
We also played the instruments as we enthusiastically sang some of our favourite songs!






Sunday 15 November 2015

Lights, colour, explosive action!

FUN WITH FIREWORKS!           
The week got off to a noisy start with watching and listening to recorded fireworks displays! Then we painted and out came the glitter!

It was great hearing the children utter words like "Bang!", "Up! Up!", "Whoosh!" as they made brush strokes to produce stunning pictures! 
                                        



LIGHT AND DARK
We had an enormous dark tent in the classroom and we loved using the torches to explore up high and low, as well as in the very dark corners!





The children's attention was captured and they looked closely as they investigated. The light box was also great for looking at different objects and combining colours.

TIME TO MAKE SOME SOUNDS AND GET MOVING!




We played lots of instruments to find ones that made sounds like fireworks. 
The giant bubble wrap made lots of popping sounds when when knelt or stood on it!


                                                                   

We launched rockets from the giant parachute after a noisy countdown for blasting off!


Next week... we will be finding out more about power - battery and electrical as we go on a walk around our school. We will also be discovering how magnets behave!

Saturday 7 November 2015

Fun with eggs!

FINDING OUT MORE ABOUT EGGS!

Following the children's fascination with eggs the previous week, there were more learning opportunities this week. This young man brought us 12 eggs from his egg farm. He was also very excited to share lots of photos of his farm with all of us. This prompted lots of questions about different machinery, how the eggs were transported and why the eggs were different sizes.


We watched the Cbeebies programme "My pet and me - chickens" and learnt more about eggs for eating and eggs not for eating, which had chicks in them! The children couldn't take their eyes off the film as the little chick was hatching out of its egg - delightful to see the look of wonder on the children's faces. 
Some remembered when we had held chicks at Rand Farm Park in the Summer.

TIME TO EXPLORE A RAW EGG!

                                                                     
In small groups the children felt the egg shell. They all seemed to think it would be easy to break it to open it up!
A couple of children tapped it on the side of the bowl - they were very surprised that it didn't break. Others squeezed the egg or tried to peel it open with their fingers. 
Eventually one child hit the egg very hard on the edge of the bowl and the shell cracked!

There was a great deal of excitement at seeing the egg slide out of the shell! 
The children experienced feeling the raw egg between their fingers. Also they handled the broken egg shell - "it hurt my fingers!" "it's sharp", "it crunched!"

PANCAKE TIME!

 I showed the children my recipe sheet for how to make pancakes and we talked about how the order was important, and how the instructions helped us. We compared making pancakes to making scrambled egg the previous week.



 

So many opportunities to introduce and use vocabulary related to consistency, texture and colour.

The activity provided turn taking and sharing learning also.

PRETEND COOKING

It is so important for children to practise sequencing, and putting things into an order both in their minds and being able to describe the sequence with words.
During the week the children acted out making scrambled egg and pancakes, and it was good to hear them using some of the same vocabulary. It was especially amusing to see them using the cloth so they wouldn't burn their fingers when the food came out of the microwave, and reminding each other to be very careful!




We also  watched "Come outside - eggs!" which encouraged the children to expand their thinking about what else hatches out of eggs. When they saw the ostrich egg and I asked what had laid it, many of them commented that it must be a giant chicken!