We started the week by reading a beautiful book called The Bog Baby by Jeanne Wills and Gwen Millward. The story is about two little girls who find a tiny magical creature in a woodland pond and bring it home as a pet. The children in From 1 all knew that the creature would get unwell if it was taken out of its habitat and that we must always leave minibeasts where we find them.

The children then imagined that if they had discovered a magical pond and found their own bog baby, what it would look like. We then created fact files about our own bog babies, writing about where we found them, their favourite food, their favourite flowers and what kind of noises they might make. The children added an illustration to their fact file and had fun imagining what they might look like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In maths, the children have been exploring making equal groups and then finding the total of these groups using repeated addition. This is a good introduction to the concept of multiplication and great practice for adding and counting on. We also explored counting in 2s, 5s and 10s to find the total and used our large 100 square to spot the patterns.

Everyone has been very creative this week and have made their own little bog babies using clay. The children thought about the features they would like to add such as wings, ears, whiskers, arms and legs. We discussed how to pinch and manipulate the clay and the tools we could use. The children then made a pond habitat for their bog baby using a paper bowl, painting and adding pond weed using tissue paper, real pebbles and twigs. 

The weather was perfect to take a walk and explore the school pond to learn more about pond life minibeasts. We spotted huge water boatmen, water snails, tiny beetles and a few creatures we couldn’t identify! The pond is thriving at the moment and the children were fascinated by how the water boatman could glide across the water without breaking the surface. The children had great fun pond dipping and were all excited to see what they had caught. We discussed how important it was to place the creatures back into the pond once we had finished.

We have also been busy preparing for our assembly next week. The children worked in groups to find out some facts about their chosen minibeasts and have even added some jokes to tell at the end. We will be practising this more at school and the children have also taken their words home to help them memorise their part.

The children have also been working hard in music, preparing for our Pre-Prep coffee morning.