Monday morning and there were lots of furry visitors to the reception class.
The children welcomed their teddy bears into school on Monday as we embarked on a day of ‘bear centred’ activity. The teddy bears were measured with strips of border tape to find out which one was the tallest and who had the smallest. Tamer’s teddy was half a centimetre taller than Josie’s, with Kareena’s borrowed bear being the shortest.
Measuring the waists, chests and heads of our teddy led to the discovery that the three measurements taken using the ‘links’ were in most cases the same.
The written descriptions of our bears and the wax pastel drawings gave the children the opportunity to study their bear in a bit more detail and record their work.
The ‘Big Schools’ Birdwatch’ was an important part of Monday as we capitalised on fine weather and took the children out in groups with the hide, binoculars and cameras to capture evidence of the birdlife in our school grounds. There were some foolhardy birds around and we actually saw the three birds from out story last week feeding on the bird cake feeders. The most birds we saw together were 2 blackbirds, 3 starlings, 10 wood pigeons, 2 sparrows, 2 blue tits, 2 magpies, a common gull, 2 robins, a chaffinch, and 2 great tits. Our results have been sent to the RSPB and we have fulfilled our second challenge in the Wildlife Awards.
The wax pastels were out again later in the week as the children tried to get a furry texture and the facial features in the correct place as they made moving bears for a ‘bears in winter’ picture to replace the snowmen which had been up since Christmas. The use of paper fasteners allowed the children to make their bears look truly acrobatic.
A few children chose to make a finger puppet with the felt, cutting a paper pattern for the body and arms, ears and a snout from the felt. Cutting the felt was a challenge and congratulations to Ben who did everything by himself.
We all enjoyed the story of ‘The Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen. We watched the story and his suggestions for the actions on http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/library/books/weregoingonabearhunt.htm.
On Friday we used our hall time to act out the story. We set up the journey to find the bear using the PE equipment and acted out the story trying to remember the words and the actions so that we could all join in.
Friday afternoon saw the children finding out about Chinese New year. We found out that it was the year of the horse. Some of the children made a mask of a horse; other made the lucky red envelopes. We learnt about the celebrations by watching the ‘clips’ on Espresso.
Next week we move on to learning about ‘old toys’. Parents, please see what you can find from your childhood. Your old toys, books or games or photographs of you playing with your toys when you were a child would be greatly appreciated. All toys that are ‘really’ old will be treated with great respect and kept at a safe distance from the children and handled under close adult supervision.