Blog 19 - 15th March

Hello everyone, a rather long blog this week.. my apologies! 
 

There has been lots of exciting activity as usual in Apple Class this week. We have most certainly embraced British Science Week, where we invited 3 guests into our classroom! We really have had such a brilliant week, where all children have been so excited and engaged with our topic 'mighty minibeasts.' 

 

On Monday we had a visit from Craig, from the Alnwick Gardens. Craig is a beekeeper and looks after all of the amazing honey bees down there! We got to see him dress up in his beekeeping outfit and he told us many facts about honey bees and also read us a fantastic story called "Bumblebear" I've attached a link below for you to have a listen at home, if you wish to do so. 

 

Our learning continued and our story of the week focused upon the fabulous '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 chrysalis! We then learnt that the butterfly nibbles its way out of the chrysalis before becoming a butterfly. 

 

If you ask your child they should now be able to tell you the 4 stages that butterflies go through before they are fully grown! See if they can use our vocabulary: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult butterfly to explain this to you. We also used words such as.. hatch and change to help us describe and explain the process. 
 

We also tried our very best to remember the story and what the caterpillar ate and on which day he ate it. It’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 are lucky enough to watch the butterfly life cycle in action through our own class caterpillars! We have food this most exciting as we have already started to change! They are eating lots and getting bigger. 
 
 
Throughout the week we also recapped our learning from last week as we talked about insects and what makes an insect an insect! We did remember that an insect has 6 legs! 
 
 
Our learning activities included symmetrical butterflies using paints, crating our own butterfly lifecycle using pasta and of course, re telling our core text The Very Hungry Caterpillar using finger puppets that we made.
 
 
On Friday, to end our week, we had 2 visitors in! Firstly, in the morning we had Guy, from "Bugs 'n' stuff!" He brought in a whole range of extraordinary bugs, from giant millipedes, super large crickets, emerald cockroaches and even a tarantula, snake and skink! Can your child remember any of their names? In the photos I've uploaded one of each creature, to jog their memories!
 
 
Lastly, we finished off the week with a visit from Lucie, who came in for British Science week and read us a story all about engineers. We discussed and leant that there are many types of different engineers! 
We had a go at being electrical engineers by standing in a circle to complete a circuit to make a light work! Thank you Lucie. 
 
 
Have a great weekend everyone, 
 
Mrs Farrar 
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Watching our caterpillars grow!
Craig the Beekeeper! 
We made our own butterfly life cycles 
Guy from Bugs and Stuff!
Lucie, the Engineer