The children really enjoyed the exciting story of Super Worm, by Julia Donaldson, and we started our literacy lesson by reading the story together.  We focused on speech bubbles this week and the children had fun taking it in turns pretending to be the characters Super Worm or Wizard Lizard and answering questions in the hot seat. The children then wrote their own speech bubble for the characters and had lots of ideas about the sorts of things they might say.

The children have watched lots of clips all about minibeasts this week and we have been sharing information books together to learn more about the fascinating insects that live in our gardens. We have been looking closely at minibeasts, drawing them and adding our own labels for each of their body parts. The children have been comparing the minibeasts and noticing they have different numbers of legs, different shaped bodies, some have wings and some do not, some have hard shells and others have soft slimy bodies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In maths, the children have learned how to use tally marks to find out Transition and Robins classes' 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 was a butterfly and we then turned the information that they gathered into bar graphs in our maths books.

As the children have been considering the habitats of minibeasts, we decided it would be a good idea to make our own bug hotel. After discussing the sort of environment the creatures would like, the children worked in pairs to fill their plant pot with bark, grass, twigs, dried leaves and moss. We stacked them carefully in a cardboard box and then packed the gaps between the plant pots with logs and other plant materials. The children excitedly placed the bug hotel outside Form 1 and wrote some labels and signs. Let's hope we have some visitors soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a lot of fun going on a minibeast hunt on Thursday and the children again 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.

Form 1 were lucky enough to be given some delicious rhubarb this week, so we had fun making a rhubarb crumble. The children washed and chopped the rhubarb and we discussed that the part of the plant we are eating is the stem. Following the recipe carefully, the children weighed out the butter, flour and sugar, taking it in turns to make the crumble topping. We all tried some and thought it was yummy!

It certainly has been a minibeast fun-filled week!