Category: Primary

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.)

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. 

Bird Feeders

Aa part of our topic ‘Up in the air’ everyone in Room 2 worked together to make some simple bird feeders out of Cheerios.

We then hung them outside on the small trees in our class area and have been enjoying looking out the window at them trying to spot some birds.

Sadly we haven’t seen many birds but hopefully more will come to visit us.

A messy child is a happy child. 

We learn so much through making a mess in room 4! We have been making play dough and the children love being a part of the process and investigating all of the different ingredients needed. We learn lots of maths skills such as measuring and counting. 

We have also had lots of fun making marks during messy play with foam and food colouring. Being able to make marks helps us to develop our early literacy skills. 

We also decorated some biscuits just before Valentine’s day for some messy fun! During this activity we were learning to share resources and space with our peers. 

In Room 5 we have been taking part in science experiments for our ‘Up in the air’ topic. We used a switch-adapted hair dryer to blow ping pong balls covered in paint across paper. The results look amazing! Then we tried to keep balloons in the air using the hair dryer. Lots of fun!

Since returning to school after the new year, we have been exploring our new theme of flight with the story “Space Song Rocket Ride”.  (We’ve shown such fabulous engagement that we’re going to extend this story for another week!)

We’ve listened to the story being read, supported with story massage, and used aided language boards to develop our communication around the story.  Some of us have been learning to focus our visual attention in the direction of the symbols, others tapping them on the sheet, and some of us saying the words shown!

We’ve role-played a rocket launch, with our seats moving as we prepare for blast off!  We’ve then explored music and movement recreating the main movement from the story – spinning!

We’ve explored our early listening skills with related songs, exploring reacting to familiar sounds and showing recognition of rhythm and in some cases understanding some of the words – blast off!!

We’ve had space themed bucket times too.  For stage one we’ve had foam rockets, popping aliens and a flying ball zooming into space over our heads!  Stage two we had three little men in a flying saucer with balloons, and the balloons flew off as each little man decided to fly away!  Stage three however was a clear favourite – zoom, zoom, zoom, with a rocket ride on a wheelie chair!

(Resources for many of these activities can be found on our class Google Classroom for anyone wanting to try ideas out at home too!)

Where will our flight topic take us next?

Exploring our topic of “Up in the air” 

We have been exploring our topic of “Up in the air” in room 4. We are looking at what animals are in the air. We have been using our mark making skills and our fine motor skills to create some wonderful artwork. 

To make butterfly pictures we used our mark making skills to spread paint and then folded over to make a symmetrical design.

We made a honeycomb design by spreading paint on some bubble wrap and then printing this on to our printed honeycomb design in relation to bees.  

We made bees too! We wrapped yellow and black yarn around a bee shape to do this. 

The seagulls were very happy that we made some bird feeders. We used seeds and lard mixed together and stuck them to a pine cone. 

As part of our sensory story “Up, up, up” we have been using a prop of an umbrella that has twinkly lights to turn on when a switch is pressed. We have been enjoying exploring this.