Today's visitor was Rocket the Tortoise. The children just loved having him in our classroom and their attention was fully captured for the whole day. One remark right at the beginning of the morning to a friend was 'He's alive!' thinking that it was just pretend.
Today's activities were all focused around Rocket... that is once we had watched a short video from Oscar telling us about Rocket and then meeting him, followed by lots of great questions.
We began by finding out lots of different interesting facts about tortoises (hopefully the children can remember one or two) and then went on to do observational drawings of Rocket. The children all labelled their drawings and the Year ones wrote lovely descriptions about Rocket. We watched a short clip on one of the largest tortoises in the world, which the children loved (lots of WOWs!). We showed the difference in size between Rocket and his large friend by making their shells using wool.
Oscar told us that Rocket was 15 years old. So the children all made their own towers for their age and compared it to Rocket's. As you will see, I even had my own tower!
The children then decided that they would like to measure Rocket using the cubes. We first made our own predictions... Olive was spot on with 8 cubes long!
In the afternoon the children make their own tortoises using cake cases and card...and some children even made their own homes for their tortoises.
We finished the day with the fable of 'The Hare and the Tortoise'. One of the children called out 'Rocket won!' at the end of the story. Well done Rocket.
The whole class were amazing with our visitor. Kind and gentle at all times and very inquisitive.
I think Rocket is probably having a well deserved sleep now!
Thank you Oscar and mummy for letting us have Rocket in our classroom today x
We are all so excited about welcoming you back into school on Monday! Until then make sure you have a super rest of the week.
Below are some photographs from our last Google classroom call where the class were challenged to make their own edible animal, inspired by the story 'Giraffes can't dance'. They were all brilliant and looked delicious!
Last week was National Storytelling week. The children listened to and acted out the story of 'The Three Little Pigs'. Some even made their own characters to help with their retelling.
Mrs Norwood then read the children an alternative tale for the story, 'The True Story of the Three Little Pigs' by Jon Scieszka. The children were then set the task of trying to help the wolf by making his dear old granny something delicious for her birthday. This is what some of the class made...and they certainly look super delicious!
On Monday we made our own 'Story Boxes' for our favourite stories!
Have a look at the powerpoint below to see what we made.
Look at all of the fun that Oak class got up to in the snow! See who you can spot in the photographs.
Fun in the snow!
Monday 25th January
Remembrance Day and Diwali
We had a busy time last week celebrating Remembrance Day and Diwali.
On Remembrance Day the children watched a lovely animation during the two minute silence and we then prayed with Yann via the BenBinFro Remembrance service online. To see the animation visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04p4zsl/poppies
We each made a poppy to take home and we also made one poppy each to go on our class wreath.
On Friday we learnt about Diwali. We made diya lamps from clay and we coloured in Rangooli patterns and learnt about the story of Diwali, the Festival of Lights. The children enjoyed learning about Lord Hanuman the monkey King. We all wanted to have more fireworks to celebrate!
Over the last few weeks we have been looking at the artist Keith Haring. As well as creating our own drawings in the style of Keith Haring...we’ve also been creating our own 3D models with playdough and creating life size drawings in our outdoor area.
This week we are exploring our sense of smell
We made some bread in Mrs Norwood's bread maker. The smell was "delicious", "scrummy yum yum" and "even better than mummy's bread!" The children all enjoyed it either plain of with some strawberry jam. As you can see by the last picture, there was nothing left to take home!