Snails

 

We have been busy exploring patterns on snail shells and got to work at making our own spiral patterns using a variety of resources. Here we are using beads to create spirals.

We used salt dough to create spiral shapes and made our own snails. We will cook them and paint them when they have gone hard.

We used paper strips to wind around our fingers to create curly spiral snail shapes.

We used different materials to create and explore spiral patterns.

We loved using the empty sauce bottles to squirt water spiral shapes.

We used pastels to draw snail pictures and we labelled the different parts of a snails body. 

We explored the patterns on top of our stepping stones and found one had a spiral pattern. We used crayons yo create rubbings of these different patterns.

We looked at the picture of 'The Snail' by Henry Matisse and we then used paper to re-create our own versions. 

We have loved watching the snails and we have built them our own snail trails for them to travel over, under, through, etc.

 Poppy brought in a dead butterfly for show and tell and we were fascinated by it. 

And then we made apple crumble!! 

Child - led planning means we follow the child interests and so can be found doing all kinds of wonderful things that have no relationship to what we might be thinking about in class but that the children really want to do.

Mmmmm..... We loved sharing the crumble at the end of the day. Delicious!,

Today our first butterfly emerged. How exciting. We can't wait to see what we might find tomorrow!

And our tadpoles now have legs! It's so exciting in Class R!!!

Butterfly visitors

Today we were lucky to have Gabriella's Mummy and Grandad visit us. They came to tell us all about butterflies, moths and caterpillars. 

We found out about some different types of butterflies and moths.

Here we are looking at some moth chrysalis's. 

We looked at some photos of the lovely butterflies we are in the process of hatching in class. They are painted lady butterflies. Gabby's Grandad thinks it will happen in a couple of days time!! 

Gabby's Grandad has given us some orange tip butterfly eggs so that we can watch them hatch into caterpillars and then build their chrysalis before finally emerging as butterflies. We are very excited about this.

Here we are looking at the tiny orange eggs. We can hardly see them.

We are excited about the moth chrysalis's we have been given by Gabby's Grandad. We will keep you posted on all caterpillar/moth and butterfly action!!

Thanks again to our lovely visitors. Having real life experiences make things so much more meaningful for the children. Do let me know if we have any other Minibeast experts!!

Curly the lamb

We had a very special treat in class today. Not only did we have Grace's Daddy come to say hello, but he also brought along a lovely little lamb called 'Curly'. Grace and her family are having to hand rear this little 10 day old ram and today we helped to give Curly his afternoon feed. 

Thanks for coming Curly. We enjoyed meeting you!

Spiders

We have enjoyed hunting for and finding out about spiders. 

We found out that all spiders have 8 legs and that if they loose one, they will grow another one back! We also found out that spiders can have 2, 4, 6, 8 or even 12 eyes. Most spiders have 8!

We listened to the story of The very busy spider and this then led us into acting out the story in various different ways. Here Lewin and Grace are spinning the web just like the very busy spider did. 

It's hard work spinning a web. 

We used glue and glitter to create our own spider webs and tried to follow the pattern the spider would make when spinning her web.

We have been finding all different mini beasts outside and then using our role play area to investigate and find out more about them using the magnifying glasses and information books there.

What budding scientists we have...

There were some frightening mini beasts that we came across and so we have to use all the resources we could to build safe carriers for them to stay in.

And telescopes for looking into space with!

And when we are not busy scientists, we are busy cooking all manner of treats in the mud kitchen..

Thank you children for our lovely morning coffee -actually they served Mrs Harrison wine!!

And here we are working together using the stepping stones pretending to be frogs... 

And how creative are we to make our own Indiana Jones costumes?! We then asked our film maker Eleanor to video our story. due to be released sometime soon......

Minibeast hunters

We helped to plant new plants around the new bee and butterfly garden.

Good team work. Working together gets the job done!

More super team work!

We hope the new plants attract lots of bees and butterflies so that we can watch them.

We hunted for mini beasts around our school grounds and some of us decided to paint what we had found. Can you guess what mini beasts we spotted?

We found out that spiders have 8 legs. We made some of our own with the octogans. 

Some of us made posters or information sheets to show different mini beasts around us.

Our new mud kitchen is great fun!

We are open daily and are currently serving a menu of mud pies and cakes with added chocolate sticks and chocolate drops(stones). Yum!

Our child-led planning is fantastic. Caron made a recipe for chocolate slab. She then made a shopping list for Mrs Hough! 

She and Frances made the recipe and then Caron took it home to sell at the local cake sale.