Spring 2
A parcel had been delivered.
Inside was this book...
It was from Superworm! He needs our help, he lives in our garden area but he’s found that it’s becoming too wet and muddy and he doesn’t have enough plants. He wants to find a better place to live. Our challenge this week is to find out all about worms and other insects/creatures that might live in our garden.
Pancake Day!
The children loved reading Mr Wolf's Pancakes. We decided that we would work together to make and then taste the best pancakes! We were much kinder than Mr Wolfs neighbours as we worked together to measure out and mix up the ingredients.
Once they were cooked, we had a choice of toppings to choose from. The children selected their own topping and added it to their pancake independently.
The pancakes were delicious and enjoyed by everyone... YUM YUM! They were so good we all wanted more.
The children were excited by the thought of meeting Superworm and drew him some pictures of him, writing a simple sentence to let them know that they had drawn a picture of him and not any of his worm friends.
We then learnt about some worm facts. The most common worm is called an Earthworm and it has no eyes or ears. They like to live in wet soil and eat dead and rotten plants. We also looked at pictures of worms and used talk partners to describe them. We then wrote some of our findings and opinions down.
We love art in Birch class and wanted to share this with Superworm. So, we found a flower that we thought he would like and had a go at some observational drawings. We looked carefully at the colours and the types of shapes and lines that we could see and we had a go at selecting our own materials to have a go with. The oil pastels were a favourite!
After reading Superworm, we learnt about some of his characteristics! We wrote down some of these and wanted to use the oil pastels again to create a picture of him like we could see on the front cover of his book.
This morning we found out that Superworm had left school and flown all the way to Africa in the beak of a bird. He had sent us an email and pictures to let us know where he was staying. He was in a place called Kenya living on a farm. We watched a video of what daily life looked like there for the family who he was staying with. We compared it to how we live day to day in England. We used google maps to see how where England and Kenya were on a map! It then calculated that for us to travel there in a car it would take us 157 hours... WOW!
Superworm had also asked us to let his friends back in England know where he had gone! We wrote a message to leave for them.
We are starting to wonder how Superworm is. Does he like it in Kenya or did he prefer it in England?
We looked at images and videos of farms in England and Kenya and tried to decide where Superworm would have the best home and friends. We have learnt what crops are and decided to relay this knowledge to others by writing it down.
Superworm is still enjoying Kenya in lovely garden i belonging to a little girl called Handa. The little girls family grows lots of different fruit which Superworm has never even heard of. So, Superworm decided to send us a variety of fruit from Handa's garden to try. We learnt the names of each and enjoying tasting a selection of it. We decided on our favourite fruit and used our writing to let Superworm know!
We then looked at some Tinga Tinga art which is popular in Africa and had a go at creating our own.
We enjoyed tasting the fruit so much that we wanted to share the delicious fruit with others. We designed and labelled an idea of combining the different fruits into one snack of a fruit kebab. We were very excited to make them!
We received a letter from Superworm explaining that although he thought our garden was too wet his skin is becoming very dry in Africa. Is it because Africa is too hot and dry for him? We looked at some facts about worms using the internet and found out that worms like their soil to be moist and perfect for their living conditions. We then looked at a wormery and what it needs to house worms. We loved the idea that this could be perfect for Superworm and set out designing and making our very own. We took pictures to show him!
We read the story Oliver’s Garden. Is the garden a good place for Superworm? Lots of us thought that this could be the perfect place for him! Next we looked at some of the plants that grow in Oliver’s garden and learnt that some plants give us food we can eat. We then used our art skills to create observational drawings of the plants from Oliver garden.
There was lots of vegetables growing in Oliver's Grandpa's Garden and one of the things that Oliver liked 'very very very much' was pea soup. We then decided to test out the flavour of some different soups. We tasted mushroom, tomato and vegetable soup. We then had a vote to see which one was the most popular. With 11 votes, tomato soup was the winner!
We then did some writing inspired by our soup tasting experience. We thought about the taste and textures we liked the most.
This week we have been working scientifically to sort, organise and categorise different objects. To do this, they have looked closely at the sweets to identify the similarities and difference and create their own categories. These were continually evolving as we looked at multiple ways in which things could be sorted.
This morning we looked at The Easter Story. We learnt that Christians believe this story about Jesus happened many years ago. This celebration happens in Spring with is also the season which celebrates new life alongside lambing season and new flowers blooming after Winter. The children asked lots of goof questions including Why is Jesus not a baby now? We were drawing upon of knowledge of The Christmas Story and talked about how Jesus had grown up and that this story was quite a few years after The Christmas Story.
This then led on to us discussing how we celebrate Easter with our families.