This week our focus has been on preparing for Christmas! We began rehearsing our songs and speaking roles for our upcoming Nativity show and started to create Christmas cards and other festive art creations.
During one of our Snack Times a couple of the children were curious about apple seeds and this sparked a great discussion about apple seeds and where they come from. This conversation led to a series of teachable moments and we were very proud of the children for embracing the learning that they initiated themselves. We went on to explore this topic further and managed to collect several apple pips over the week which we then planted in our Outdoor Learning Environment. It was lovely to observe the children carefully planting the seeds and and discussing information they had recalled from our conversation about how apple seeds grow and what different stages they would be able to see as they start to grown outside. They also worked brilliantly as a team to fill up the pots with soil and water them. We can’t wait to see if we get any apple trees growing!
We extended this topic during our Science lesson where the children placed pulses in bags lined with damp cotton wool. We displayed these on the classroom windows and will observe the changes that occur over the upcoming days. The children were encouraged to make predictions about the changes that may occur inside the bags and many of them drew stalks, leaves, roots and flowers in anticipation of what will happen next.
On our Outdoor Learning Day we had a lot of fun building campfires and discussing the fire safety rules when in the forest. The children collected sticks and as we were picking them off the ground we noticed that some were firmly stuck and couldn't be moved. We realised that these weren't sticks but infact were roots! The children became ‘root detectives’ and tried to find which tree the roots belonged to and how long they carried on for. We discussed the role of roots and how plants and specifically trees use roots to communicate, ground themselves and help each other. The children found it fascinating and loved exploring all of the roots they could find!
This week we were lucky enough to have Miss Josefina join us on the common. The children had fun learning about vocabulary related to changing seasons, natural objects they found, and animals they can spot outdoors at this time of the year. Nano, Miss Josefina’s mascot, brought along his friend Mr Squirrel and we fed it lots of seeds and pinecones!