This week we welcomed the children back after Half Term. They were very excited because they came in, dressed up in their Halloween costumes! We had a classroom full of scary witches, dinosaurs, princesses and many other lovely characters.
This week our topic was, We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger. The book is an adaptation of the popular book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and it encourages the children to explore and learn the names and colours of different trees through the changing seasons.
Inspired by our topic book we went on our very own leaf hunt and the children had a wonderful time collecting leaves and discussing the differences in their shape and colour. During our walk the children did brilliantly in remembering all of our safety rules and practised moving around within our designated ‘safety zone’. They also paid attention to the sounds they heard in the environment, trying to identify the different sounds including the sounds of cars, birds and the wind.
When we returned to the classroom we used the leaves and sticks we collected for an Art activity where the children had the opportunity to create their own trees! They began by using blue watercolour paint to paint the background. They used sticks to create the tree trunks, finally finishing by decorating their trees with the leaves. The children created various wonderful trees using their creativity and imagination with some children choosing to create amazing stormy backgrounds for the trees!
Throughout the week the children continued to explore leaves, colours and the seasons. In our Science activity we conducted a chromatography experiment to explore and observe the process of colour changing. The children drew different coloured lines on coffee filter paper with felt tip pens before placing their papers into small cups of water. We also experimented with using our fine motor skills to use pipettes to carefully drop small drops of water onto the coffee filters. The children used their brilliant observation skills to discuss the different ways the colours reacted to the water and what changes to the colours they could see.
As part of our Science activity we discussed the meaning of Science and what we thought an experiment was. Some children said that Science meant “creating potions” while other children discussed that Scientists included people who were pilots, engineers, doctors and teachers. We concluded that Science is linked to everything around us and we do experiments to understand how things work. It was wonderful to see how children reflected on these questions and extended their knowledge and understanding of the world.
On Wednesday the children chose to dress up in costumes again! In response to how much they loved dressing up we decided to have a spontaneous party with lots of music and dancing which we carried on in our Outdoor Learning Environment where the children enjoyed dancing with scarves.
