Happy Halloween!

 

 We had a blast dressing up for our Halloween Discovery session. (The teacher in the cow onesie is not me, but one of the other amazing teachers in J-Block.)

I always try to plan activities that encourage the children to practise a variety of skills and attitudes we use at school. Cutting, gluing, folding, drawing, writing, copying, sharing, turn-taking, persevering, taking risks, and helping others are some of what I observed during today's Discovery session. Discovery allows the children to discover about school, about our topic for the week, and what they themselves are able achieve.

Have a look at some of the activities we explored today:

 

 We blew up balloons and drew jack-o-lantern faces on them. I bought 90 orange balloons to ensure we had enough!

 We made paper-towel mummies, spider thaumatropes, folding bat cards, skull masks, icky insect wristbands, and tissue ghosts.

One of my favourite activities was using a permanent marker to draw jack-o-lantern faces on oranges. Which we got to eat for lunch, yummy.

We played Toca Boca Monster Kitchen on the ipads. This is a free app where you have to choose food for the monsters, cook it, and then feed it to them. Sometimes they don't like it and will spit it out all over the screen.  (That's the best part!)

Watch Me Spin

With Halloween around the corner we created these paper plate spiders to decorate our classroom. They have folded paper legs, all that folding was good fine motor practise and helps strengthen the children's fingers. And finger strength is just what we need for all of the amazing writing we have been doing lately.

We have also been reading this spider poem.

Mini Beasts and Creepy Crawlies

There were bugs galore in J-Block this morning, we were busy discovering about some of the amazing small creatures that inhabit our world.

One of my favourite activities was using a torch to discover the glow in the dark creatures hiding in a dark box in Room 2. 

We also had a great time carefully inspecting snails and other insects with our magnifying glasses.

Today was a very special Discovery session, we have had lots of new Mountaineers start visiting us at school, with more to come next week. Lots of fantastic children will be starting at Totara Park School next year, I can't wait! 

And.....

As it is Halloween next week, you can dress up for our Discovery session on the 30th of October. 

Now, I'm off to find my costume!

Boats That Float

We have been learning about different types of boats and how to make our own boats as part of our 'Invention' inquiry unit. 

 Plasticine boats, after lots of experimenting we found that a shallow bowl shape or a canoe shape floated the best. We had to be make sure that there were no holes in the hull for water to leak through.

 

Origami paper boats. We used these instructions to fold our boats.

 A BrainBox boat, with a battery operated motor and a propeller.

Once we discovered about how to make different types of boats and what types of things can float and sink we designed and made our own boats.

Making Pizza

Our classroom turned into a pizza shop yesterday.

This term we have been learning how to make, read, and write fractions so we were sure to cut our pizza into halves and quarters to enjoy for lunch.

Yum!!!

We also cut our paper plate pizza into halves....

and quarters.

And we enjoyed watching the experts twirl pizza dough. Check out this amazing pizza dough spinning clip:

Fairytales

Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Three Little Pigs are some of the fairytales we explored today for Discovery.

Can you spot which activity supports which fairytale?

 Material collage for Cinderella's ballgown and magic-wand making.

 Fairy biscuits with 100's and 1000's.

 Three Little Pigs and their houses.

 Porridge tasting, just like Goldilocks!

 Two sleeping beauties in Sleeping Beauty's bed.

And the big bad wolf!


Today was our last Discovery session for this term, next term we have lots more exciting Discovery activities planned, including Halloween, Mickey Mouse's Birthday and Christmas.
We will also have lots of new Mountaineers (our pre-school visitors) joining us. I am looking forward to seeing their happy faces during their school visits.

Happy Paper Plate Hens

Our paper plate hens are out of their hen house and brightening up our wall. 

This week we have been learning how to segment and blend 'en' words, like hen, Ben, then, and den. I have been really pleased to see the children's progress listening to, reading, and writing CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words. And even better, they have been using the knowledge they learned during our phonics sessions during their reading and writing lessons. 

Lately we have been concentrating on changing the onset sound to make a new word (the onset is the first sound of a word before the vowel - /c/ in cat). For example, I will ask "What will the word be if you change the /h/ in hen to /m/?" The children have been able to say the sounds slowly to themselves and say then the new word. Research has shown that activities like this that support children's phonological awareness will help their reading, writing, and spelling.

Have a look at some of the other phonic art and craft activities we have enjoyed recently:

/a/ as in 'at' - Peg Bats

/i/ as in 'ig' - Egg Carton Pig Snouts

/o/ as in 'og' - Origami Dalmatian Dogs