We started our literacy lesson by reading the story Superworm by Julia Donaldson, which is a real favourite with many of the children. We focused on speech bubbles this week and the children were really great at thinking of things the characters might say throughout the story. They then wrote their own speech bubble for the characters Wizard Lizard or Superworm.

The children have been particularly focusing on bees this week and learning lots about their life cycle and the different roles bees have within the hive. The children have watched a time-lapse clip showing the development of a bee from an egg, to larvae to pupa and, finally, to a fully formed bee. We have looked closely at the parts of a bee's body and drawn diagrams, taking care to include all the correct parts. The children then labelled these using the new vocabulary they had learnt, such as thorax and abdomen. The children have been comparing the minibeasts and noticing they often have different numbers of legs, different-shaped bodies - some have wings and some have hard shells. 

In maths, the children have learned how to use tally marks to find out Nursery's and Transition's favourite minibeast. Remembering to use only one tally line for each response and to cross through the gate when they get to 5, the children loved asking the other children for their responses. Venturing into other classes armed with clipboards is always fun and the younger children really enjoyed having visitors! Form 1 found out that the most popular minibeast overall was a butterfly. Later, the children turned the information that they had gathered into bar graphs in their maths books, which they all did brilliantly.

To help the children further understand the life cycle of a bee, we made large group collages of the four stages. The children used tissue paper, felt, and paint to create their pictures and worked together to make sure they used the correct colour for each part.

It was a lot of fun going on a minibeast hunt on Friday and the children kept a record of the minibeasts they found and the environment in which they found them. The children soon discovered that minibeasts like to live under logs, bark, on leaves and that worms especially liked living in the compost area. After reading Yucky Worms by Vivian French, the children were able to identify the head and tail of the worms and loved holding them and watching them wiggle in their hands.

Outside, the children enjoyed pretending to be worker bees and collecting nectar (yellow water) from the water tray and transporting it back to the hive. In our large metal bowl we made cells just like a hive has, using plastic cups. The children filled their jugs full of water and then worked as a team to fill the cups until the hive was bursting with honey!

It certainly has been a minibeast fun-filled week!