Author: Amy Dunnett

In room 4 we went out to the polly tunnel and planted our pea seeds. The boys were very interested to see the seeds and investigate the soil. We will need to remember to water them to make sure they grow! This will give them the experience of looking after plants and if we are lucky their hard work will pay off and we will see the plants growing!

Our flight study has continued exploring a new body study, this time “Up, Up, Up!” about flying in a hot air balloon.  We’ve interacted with this story through story massage, aided language boards and expressive arts and movement activities.  We’ve had parachute play to replicate our own hot air balloon ride too!

Our bucket time sessions have explore vocabulary from the story, we’ve aimed paper planes at targets, sat inside a “hot air balloon” in class, made a “bird” with mouldable soap and feathers and raced around the room on outdoor play equipment (thank you P.E.!).  We’ve also had some fabulously messy sensory play sessions – I’m sure there’ll be more of those!

Through all of these we have built fabulous extended attention and communication skills, transferring skills we developed from our last book study to a new context.

We’ve also had some seasonal fun added in there, with pancake themed activities for Pancake Day (including a pancake toss for bucket time!) and a Mother’s Day theme for bucket time at the moment – fingers crossed our game of “Don’t wake mum!” passes on the correct message for this weekend!

(Most of the resources mentioned above are on our Room 10 Google Classroom for families if you wish to continue this at home.)

In order to experience and understand how different objects move through the air, we have been using lots of different skills. For example, we used fine motor skills for cutting, gross motor skills for flying a kite, our sensory skills for painting insects using sponge stamps, and our attentive skills for watching the paper birds flit about or the kites and their ribbon tails flow in the wind, or the paper helicopters spin down. We had to use our bodies for flying kites to help with the uplift. So, we are learning about creative design, about the science of flight and also about maths because when making paper butterflies, we folded our painted paper in half to notice symmetry. Each of these activities gave the pupils a chance to use communication skills to make choices: about colour, materials, and taking turns to show off what they have made.

Festivals in Room 16

Room 16 have had lots of sensory play to celebrate the Lunar New Year. As well as a visit from the Confucius Institute when we did lots of activities, such as calligraphy and making fish, we sponge-painted dragons and REALLY enjoyed exploring our sensory trays filled with rice, money wallets, special soup spoons and adapted chopsticks. We had great fun as a class playing a Chinese New Year themed game of Snakes and Ladders which we projected on to the whiteboard so everyone could see. Playing a game as a class was very successful – and competitive!

At the end of February, we found out about Mardi Gras parades and made our own masks while we listened to Mardi Gras music. We learned that the three Mardi Gras colours each stood for something:

Green = Faith

Purple = Justice

Gold = Power

Making bread was a delicious, healthy and educational experience for Room 8

If you fancy bringing some ‘Bake Off’ inspiration, read on – we have everything you need to get started. While fairy cakes, flapjacks and meringues have their place, do not forget how easy it is to bake bread. The comforting smell of a freshly baked loaf stays with us for a lifetime, and making bread can be a therapeutic activity for children. Regarding this aspect, we loved the baking bread moment and used cracking the eggs and the flour as a sensory play. Moreover, it was so much fun!

From a nutritional point of view, bread is excellent for children; it is packed full of long-lasting energy, B vitamins and calcium. Bread is also helpful for teaching children about other foods, such as butter, which children need to eat to build muscle and gain nutrients like iron, omega-3s and calcium. Chocolate spread, jam, and honey are tasty but very high in sugar, so they should only be used in small amounts.

If you are not a confident cook, you could be tempted to take the automated option as we did – a bread-making machine. This was a time-saver, but it produced delicious bread. 

Baking gave us lots of fun, even though it was rather messy! However, despite all the mess, we gained many benefits from the baking experience.

The children had many opportunities to develop and use both hands together in a coordinated way.

Pouring ingredients into bowls was an excellent way for them to practise their eye-hand coordination.

Whether they read the recipe themselves (in words or symbols)  and follow our verbal instructions, following a recipe boosted our pupils’ listening and sequencing skills.

Following instructions is a vital school skill, and baking gave our pupils lots of practice.

Letting our pupils bake helped them learn about real-life measuring and number concepts.

Baking gave our pupils a real sense of achievement. We were working on a task that produced a product they enjoyed and shared with others, giving them confidence.

Of course, the last benefit was the result – delicious bread! After all our hard work, we sat down and enjoyed the results.