Living and learning: I know what consent is.
This week, the children have been talking about body image. We began by discussing what body image is. They came up with this definition:
Body image is our idea of how our body looks and how we think it looks to others. This can include our feelings and thoughts about our height, weight, shape, skin colour, appearance or attractiveness.
We discussed how our body image is influenced by a range of different things such as TV, social media, celebrities and many more. The children recognised that it is important to consider the positive aspects about yourself and when you pay someone a compliment it should be about their personality or something they’re good at, not about appearance. We should ‘fill each others buckets’ with positivity.
The children wrote on each others buckets with their compliments. There were some very happy faces by the end of the lesson.
Science: Pollination
Pollination
We learned all about the importance of bees today in our lesson on pollination.
When the bee digs into the next flower the pollen on her body rubs off onto the stigma of the new flower. This is called pollination. When the pollen lands on the stigma it travels down the style towards the ovary. Once the pollen reaches the ovary it hopes to find an ovule to attach to.
The children loved this video on the importance of looking after our vital pollinators – the message is clear!
We looked more closely at the reproduction in plants and the parts of a flower which help make new seeds. The children loved the cross over between science and art.
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Living and learning : consent
This week, we have been particularly talking about consent (permission) in our Living and Learning lessons. We talk about consent all the time though, for example, when we’re taking photos or video.
We also talked about different scenarios and how we can respond appropriately.
Geography topic : comparing the UK and Kenya
This half-term, we are geographers. As part of our Explorers topic, we’re comparing a place in the United Kingdom with a place in another country. We are comparing Kenya to the United Kingdom and Nairobi to London. We are focussing on the physical and human geography of these two places and noting the similarities between the two capital cities. Ask your child to tell you all about Nairobi.
As well as visiting Kenya, we have been learning about the seven continents, five oceans and about how the equator splits the earth into two hemispheres.
We have really enjoyed learning the continents and oceans by listening to and singing along to these great songs:
How can you help?
Google Earth is a brilliant tool to help develop children’s understanding of space, place, scale and interdependence. Zoom right in on your home and then zoom out to reveal the area of Leeds that you live in. Zoom further out to see what city you live. Zoom further for the county. A little further and you might start to spot some national parks. Further still and you can see the country that we live in. Keep zooming and you’ll see the continent we live in (though this isn’t labelled).
Quizzing your children about some locational knowledge will help them to remember important information.
- Which continent do we live in?
- Which country do we live in?
- In which hemisphere is our country located?
- Which county do we live in?
- Which city do we live in?
- Which part of Leeds do we live in?
- Which four countries make up the United Kingdom?
Living and Learning: Reading Champions
Year 5/6 C have taken part in a demorcratic decision to nominate one person from our class to be a Reading Champion.
After a lengthy discussion about what makes a suitable Reading Champion, we agreed that it was someone who was passionate about reading. We were looking for someone to be a leader – a role model, and inspiration.
After two very close rounds of voting, we decided that Lenny was our clear winner.
Lenny’s enthusiastic nature and pure joy when discussing all books is a joy to see.
Animal rangers – visit to Nursery
On Tuesday 24 May, the animal rangers will be visiting Nursery. They will be bringing along a wide range of animal species that will include a bearded dragon, rabbits, white tree frogs and many more.
This will be a great opportunity to learn interesting facts about different animals and their habitat. There will also be the opportunity to hold or touch some of the animals. Please alert your class teacher if your child has any allergies which may prevent them being around or touching any of the animals.
We are asking for a voluntary contribution per child towards the cost of the visit. This can be paid on the app. Please refer to your email for more details.
Unfortunately, on this occasion, we’re unable to invite those children that do not usually attend Nursery on Tuesday.
On the Farm
It has been a fun filled farm themed week!
We have continued our learning on our topic Life on Earth by exploring animals that may live and work on a farm.
We began our week by reading Farmyard Hullabaloo
In Literacy, we worked together to read a page from the story. We used our tricky word knowledge and phonics skills to decode the words.
We wrote our own sentences about different animals.
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In maths, we have been exploring 10 frames. We have built on our previous knowledge to make number bonds of 10.
Can your child tell you what number bond is been represented below?
In the classroom, we have continued to watch the development of our caterpillars.
Two of them are in the cocoon at the top. Oliver
The caterpillars are in a cocoon. Lucille
The caterpillars are in a cocoon ready to be a butterfly. Raife
In art, we have used clay to create minibeasts.
Check out our other fun learning inside and outside the classroom.
Home -Link
Write a list of animals that often live on farms. Do you know what their babies are called?
What the Ladybird Heard
We’ve enjoyed reading ‘What the Ladybird Heard‘ this week. It’s written by one of our favourite authors, Julia Donaldson. In the story corner, children enjoyed playing with the story props to re-tell the story and they were especially interested in the map that the burglars used to try and steal the fine prize cow.
Children made their own maps and took them outside to locate the prize/treasure that they’d hidden.
In group time, we played I Spy using the animals from the story. We had to listen very carefully to the sound. Some children noticed that some animals started with the same sound, such as ‘h’ for horse and hog. We’re working really hard to help children identify the initial sound in words at the moment. Have a go at playing I Spy at home this week to help reinforce this learning at home.
Here are a few other activities from this week:
- Exploring the texture of moon dough in the sensory area. It was very crumbly but you could also mould it in to mini sandcastles.
- Subitising spots on a ladybird
- Counting out the correct number of legs for our paper plate ladybirds
- Matching the number of spots on the ladybird to the numeral
We were also very excited to find a chrysalis on Tuesday morning! We have one caterpillar left and it’s getting bigger and bigger.
Finally, thank you to everyone that attended our drop-in session on Monday to look at your child’s Learning Journal. It was great to see parents and carers back in Nursery after such a long time of restrictions due to Covid-19. Our final drop-in session is on Wednesday 18 May from 4.15pm until 5pm, please call in if you can to have a look at what your child has been learning in Nursery this year.
Don’t forget – ‘Walk to school’ week!
Walk to School Week 16-20 May 2022
Next week is Walk to School Week (or scoot or ride).
We hope you’ll all try to take part in this, even if you can’t walk from home. The Buffers Pub and St Phillip’s Church have agreed for us to use their car parks so everyone has the opportunity to walk part of the way.
Remember to bring your raffle tickets each day you walk to put in your class boxes to be in with a chance of winning a prize!
Let’s get active!
Precious, pretty plants in pots
We’ve had many WOW! moments this week with our science topic, Plants.
We’ve watched our wonderful cress seeds germinate in just a few days, while testing which conditions are best for growth. Amazingly, some of the cress seeds have germinated without water – but after careful discussion we came to the conclusion that there must have been some moisture in the soil already allowing them to germinate. We’ve been nurturing with much care.
Now outside the classroom, we have repotted our broad beans now that they have started to grow. We carefully planted our delicate beans into the larger pots as we’ve learned that they space for the root to spread out. These we germinated without soil, just simply tissue paper and water. Hopefully soon, we’ll see a bit more growth in the soil over the next couple of weeks.
Inside the classroom, we have set up another observation experiment which is testing how water travels up the stems of flowering plants. The white flowers are in coloured water (food dye) to show how water is transported up the stem (like a straw). At the time of this photo, nothing had changed… look out for our results. The children made some accurate predictions about what they think the flowers might look like tomorrow.
