This week the Fledglings have been learning about the life cycle of an apple tree. We used our topic book, The Apple Tree’s Life Cycle by Mary R Dunn to introduce the topic and to help us find out more! In the book, we discovered how apple trees grow from tiny seeds into a tree.
We extended our understanding about the life cycle of an apple tree by learning about the Harvest celebrations and what happens to plants and trees during the changing seasons. The children were encouraged to notice and study the different stages of the tree’s life cycle depicted in our topic book. This included the process of the seed turning into a tree and subsequently producing apples.
During Art, the children enjoyed exploring still life painting of fruit and vegetables and created vibrant collages of apple trees, using a range of textured paper.
During Science we explored apples and learnt to name the different parts of the fruit, including the skin, flesh, pips and the stem. We concluded the activity by labelling a picture of an apple by writing labels and sticking matching pictures onto our activity sheets!
In our Outdoor Learning Environment the children loved taking part in our planting activities. Some of the Fledglings had fun learning how to use a microscope to explore a range of natural materials. They were particularly excited to use the microscope to discover and observe some of the small animals they had found!
On Friday, the children played team building games using a traffic light system to encourage the children to follow instructions. This was then extended by Coach Pedro during our Sports session.
The highlight of our week was a visit from Reverend Jim Sutton from Balham Baptist Church in celebration of the Harvest Festival. We sang a range of songs related to the Harvest celebration and the children listened beautifully to Jim. We discussed the importance of sharing and being grateful and Jim explained how small acts of kindness can make others happy and ‘explode’ into bigger things.
To celebrate this, we popped party poppers and the children shared their celebrations with him. The children shared with Jim some of the ways they celebrate at home including stories about birthdays, cake and other family members being happy.