Hello everyone,
Firstly, we'd like to apologise for our technical error last week when our photo's didn't load properly and this week again! but we'll put up extra photos on for Monday! Keep an eye out for the extra photo tab!
Back in Apple Class, there has been lots of activity as usual. We've had such a brilliant week where all children have been so excited and engaged with our final topic of this half term 'mighty minibeasts.' Our learning at the beginning of the week focused upon the fabulous story 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Clarke. This led our learning and underpinned the central concept of the butterfly life cycle! Through the story we learnt that an adult butterfly lays eggs on leaves, then a caterpillar hatches out of the egg and then eats... lots and lots, before making a cocoon! We then learnt that the butterfly nibbles its way out of the cocoon before becoming a butterfly. (I've highlighted our key vocab for this week.)
We also tried our very best to remember the story and what the caterpillar ate and on which day he ate it. t’s such a good skill to re-tell a story, it helps with comprehension, develops ambitious vocabulary and builds confidence! You could encourage your child to re-tell a family favourite over the weekend – maybe you could even make some puppets to help.
We had Guy that bug man in on Friday and wow we had so much fun touching and holding many different minibeasts and reptiles! Can your child remember any that we saw today? To help them jog their memories we saw a millipede with 200 legs! A tarantula, a dead leaf cockroach, blue beetles, a skink, a huge stick insect and again huge giant snails!
We also talked about insects and what makes an insect an insect! We now know that an insect has 6 legs!
Our learning activities included repeating patterns - hungry caterpillar style! Using two or three different coloured paints to create patterns, making minibeasts in the sand and using loose parts to do so (shells, pine cones, stones, gems etc,) making minibeasts from playdoh, creating our own magical butterflies. Outside we had our minibeast investigation lab, which involved small world play and our scientific skills to try and locate the different insects in our garden and we've also been counting! We've been counting in so many different ways this week. We've had to count the correct number of legs on to each spider, and we've had to count the correct number of ladybirds on the different leaves!
Such great learning and fun had by all!
Through this topic its led to lots of opportunities to be in our outdoor environment. We've been on minibeasts hunts, made insects from natural resources and even managed to paint outside!
The children really have had such a fun and happy week especially with the sun shining for a couple of days.
Next week we continue to explore minibeasts and insects and dip into the Queen's Jubilee celebrations on Friday. We'll talk to the children about who the Queen is and the reason behind all of the celebrations during the holiday!
Have a great weekend!
Miss W and Mrs G