Ben builds a butterfly garden 12.5.14

This week we have been looking at the story 'Ben builds a butterfly garden.' Our caterpillars have made their cacoon so hopefully next week we will see the change into butterflies. We have been digging in the plant pots planting flowers for the butterflies to feed off when they appear. Children were fascinated by how the butterflies sucked up the nectar so we made our own butterfly snack. 

We have also been decorating butterflies in different ways. We used pastels to see the effect when we smudge the colour and see both colours mixing. This was also good for copying patterns as the children looked in books first to see a butterfly they wanted to copy. Children were drawing shapes and repeating patterns. 

We also made butterfly sun catchers. The children used their cutting skills to cut out a butterfly shape before snipping holes in each corner of the wings. They then decorated the holes with a variety of coloured tissue paper so that when placed on the window, the sun made different coloured light beam into the class. 

This week, the children in free play have been pretending to be butterflies, flying around the playground, so we made butterfly hats to support their play using card, pipe cleaners and googly eyes. The children loved making them and used them in their play well. 

Percy the park keeper 28.04.14

This week the children have been very busy learning about Percy the park keeper. We have been measuring and weighing carrots, concentrating on language such as heavier, lighter, longer and shorter. Outside the children went on a bug hunt to see which mini beasts they could find and what there homes looked like. Once they had looked at the mini beasts homes we created our own in the outside hut. 

Inside we decorated and prepared the role play area to look like Percy's park with plant pots, seeds, tools and a picnic. The children especially enjoyed painting Percy. 

We put our cooking skills to the test in the week by making hedgehog bread which looked fantastic. Children used fine motor skills by practicing kneading, cutting and mixing. They loved stretching and cutting the dough to look like a hedgehog and they even tasted yummy. 

Finally using our literacy skills we retold the story of Percy the park keeper by drawing pictures and sounding out simple words such as fox. We concentrated on how we hold our pencil and to use our letters and sound knowledge to help us segment words.