We all had a lovely Christmas holidays but we were all happy to be back together again today despite the rain and cold weather! However, this cold weather inspired us to be scientists and find out what would happen to water when left in a cold space. Our first task was to think of 3 different cold places that we could keep our glass of water.

Once we had decided on our 3 cold spaces, we had to fill up the glasses with the same amount of water in so it was fair. We then went and put them in the fridge, in the freezer and outside our classroom. We then wrote down our predictions on what would happen to the water inside the freezer. Now it was time to wait...

We then began to think of what winter looks like in the world. We watched a video and had a look at the landscape and wildlife in Antarctica. We then compared some pictures of winter in England and Antarctica. We looked at the similarities and differences as well as discussing the type of clothes we might need to wear.

We then wrote down as a class some words that we thought of when looking at the pictures, attempting to hear the inititial sounds and use our fred fingers to help sound them out and write them down.

We later discussed that the season we are in now is Winter and that Winter doesn't just mean snow. We wrapped up warm and went on a winter walk to see the other seasonal changes that Winter bring to our environment. We noticed the cold wind, ice freezing in the water tray and that there are no leaves on the trees. We decided to practise our geography skills on our way around the outside of school referring to our map and pin pointing our location.

A few days later we checked on our science experiment...

We discovered that the water in the fridge just stayed very cold and this is why it is a good place to put your drinks in hot weather. The water outside was also very cold but there was no change in the matter and then the water in the freezer had turned to ice! We compared the results and talked about what we could see.

On Friday morning, Mr Cockcroft came to tell us he thought he had seen something colourful by the trees outside. We put our coats and and went out to have a look. When we got there we found some coloured eggs in a nest. Who did did the eggs belong to?! We were so excited we came up with quite a few ideas!

We then went back to class and recorded our thoughts in our writing books.

On Monday morning, our classroom was trashed! Someone had been in. The table and chairs were upside down, there were big footprints, scratch marks, leaves and even some poo! Yuck! We examined the clues in front of us and decided that the footprints must belong to a dinosaur because they were huge! It must have been a dinosaur looking for her eggs. Poor Mummy dinosaur. We decided to write her a note to let her know that her eggs were safe.

The dinosaur eggs were all tucked safely inside a nest so we were inspired to make our own edible nests using shredded wheat and chocolate. YUMMY!

We have been learning about different types of dinosaurs and this got us wondering, which type of dinosaur had been into our classroom?

We looked at the different types of footprints which matched up to the different dinosaurs and came to the conclusion that the eggs belonged to a Triceratops. We then looked at the features of a Triceratops. We talked about it having a tail, horns and protection around its neck.

We then practiced our sentence writing and wrote a sentence to describe the dinosaur. 

We looked at some dinosaur sketches by an artist and then wrote about the features that we could see.

On Monday a book and an envelope arrived! Inside the envelope there was a paintbrush and a note. It said it was a special magic paintbrush! This was very exciting BUT the magic only works at night... We decided to read the book and inside this book, whatever the paintbrush painted, it came alive. Maybe this would happen to our picture?! At the end of the day we painted over one of the sketches we had been looking at, would this really work? 

It really did work, we had a recording of the T-rex coming alive in our classroom we couldn't believe it.

We look loving at pictures of dinosaurs so much that we decided we would become artists and have ago at sketching our own. We learn what sketching was and then used the pencils to sketch out an outline before shading in the inside. They were very good!

We then wanted to develop our art skills even further and wanted to have a go at painting pictures of dinosaurs. We learnt how to colour mix and use our brush carefully.

After we had painted them, we used our writing skills to write about what colours we had made and used.

This weekend Chinese New Year will be celebrated so we have also been learning about what this means and where China is. We were very lucky to have some parents come in and talk to us about how they celebrate this in their family. They also brought in photos, clothing and decorations that will be used in their home to show us.

On Monday we learnt about the great race and why different animals are celebrated in different years. We learnt that this year it is the year of the rabbit and most of us were born in the year of the dog or the year of the rooster. When it is our year, that will be our lucky year.

We also watched videos of the dance celebrations with the lions and dragons and were excited to try and create our own out of junk box modelling. 

We then wrote kind messages to our friends and put them inside red pockets for them to open.

On Monday, we had a message from Penny at the museum. She wanted our help to create an interactive dinosaur display at the museum! We decided to investigate the best way to join paper together so that each part would move. We looked at using split pins, staples, glue, paper clips and tape. 

We discovered that the best way to join the paper together was to use split pins because each part could still move. However, we all really enjoyed using the stapler and wanted to find a purpose for using this on our dinosaur creations. We then set to work on creating our very own moving dinosaur models. They were all so individual, they looked brilliant!

We then wrote about our dinosaur creations and evaluated our work. Here are some of our thoughts. 

Penny was so impressed with our dinosaur models, the museum has never been so busy with people queuing to see the new display. Penny then wanted us to know that the baby dinosaurs have now hatched and the dinosaurs are loving their new enclosure. She now needed our help to write some sentences to use on the signs of the enclosures.