Foundation Stage and Eco Club have been busy cleaning, litter picking, weeding and planting this week in the F2 garden!
Maintaining the school grounds is hard work and is a never ending job! So it helps when there’s team work involved!
The children have loved exploring the plants already growing in the garden, particularly smelling the mint! And have some big plans and ideas for the future!
Here’s a few snaps of us getting our hands dirty this week…
What a wonderful morning F2 have had outside in our garden this morning!
Summer is nearly upon us as the weather has been glorious and the sunshine is beaming! We have noticed other signs of Summer as the flowers start to fully bloom and the trees become greener… we have loved observing and talking about the changes occurring in our F2 garden!
Today in the gentle wind it started to snow blossom as the pink petals floated and fell from the tree, we loved collecting the petals and counting how many we could spot!
We drew some amazing blossom trees using chalk exploring the colour pink and the different shades!
F2 have loved reading the story ‘Tad’ by Benji Davies!!!
This story has inspired us to explore the lifecycle of a Frog, discussing how Tad starts his journey and where he ends up!
We have learnt lots of new key vocabulary, such as ‘frog spawn’ ‘tadpole’ ‘froglet’ and ‘frog’… and discussed how the life cycle continues and goes round and round.
Mrs Buss brought in some pretend frog spawn- chia seeds- we added water and mixed the gloopy mixture together to resemble real life frog spawn!
The children had a great time feeling and describing the spawn- describing it as “gooey’ “wet” “thick” and “gloopy”!
We had a great time mark making and drawing our own life cycles and could confidently talk about the process and change from frog spawn to frog!
Spring has definitely arrived in F2 today!
With the sunshine arriving we all headed outside to crack on with some Spring cleaning! Lots of washing, cleaning, digging and pruning of the flowers!
We have been very busy bees tidying our wonderful outdoor area and looking for signs that Spring has arrived and the season has changed!
We have enjoyed learning all about Spring…a time of growth and colour… and enjoying some ‘Spring time’ Easter treats… hot cross buns, after learning the song Hot Cross Buns!!!
A few snaps of the last few weeks of Eco Club! Each week these lovely bunch turn up after school to discuss all things eco and discuss and think of ways on how we can become a more eco-friendly school in the future…
They recently presented and launched their recycle bottle cap scheme to the full school in assembly, explaining the scheme and how we can re-use plastic bottle caps to trade in for ‘earth tokens‘ to buy recycled school equipment. The eco-warriors designed and presented their own power-point to school and have since been monitoring and promoting the collection of bottle caps through school!
Alongside this the eco warriors collect paper waste daily from around school and make sure this is recycled properly with the help of Mr Wileman. Each Friday they present the ‘Treasure Tree’ to the phase that has done the best at recycling and managing paper waste!
This week we also had a very busy eco club covering the school grounds and checking for litter. We found lots of waste and litter that had not been put in bins so we have made it a priority to keep an eye on this and make sure we litter pick weekly!
We had a little bit of fun afterwards, raiding the recycling bins and making some wonderful creations from recyclable materials!
F2 started off the day with ‘Wellness Wednesday’ drinking pink milk and having a chat with biscuits! We counted the scoops of magic as the milk turned a yummy strawberry pink and tasted delicious!
When we looked outside we saw that the weather had suddenly changed and it had begun to SNOW! Mrs. Read and Mrs. Buss were very excited! As well as all of the children!!! We quickly stopped all of our activities and got wrapped up ready to explore the snow!
We had so much fun whirling and twirling in the snowflakes and couldn’t help but sing along with the boom box to some snowy tunes, ‘Let it go’ a firm favourite!
We loved exploring the snow and talking about the weather. The temperature has definitely got colder the last few weeks and we have been able to see that in our Foundation garden. Lots of us enjoyed going on a ‘ice hunt’ and looking for ice in the garden and mud kitchen. We explored how it felt, what happened when we held it tightly and how the ice had frozen leaves on the floor!
This exploration led to lots of chat and discussion when we went back inside to warm up. We talked about what ice was and explored using a bucket of ice we had collected. We realised as it started to drip that ice was just frozen water and that when it melted it turned back into water! The children loved looking at huge pieces of ice, icebergs, on the computer and in some of our books in the classroom!
Another “best day” according to Archie, what could be better than biscuits, pink milk and snow!!!!
This week the Eco-warriors got busy in Eco club devising a plan of action to launch their new re-cycle scheme in school collecting bottle caps!
The warriors have been busy creating a power-point in their own time that they are going to share with the whole school in an upcoming assembly- explaining to all pupils and staff about how they plan to collect plastic bottle caps in the hope of earning some ‘earth tokens‘ to trade in for some recycled school equipment. The eco-warriors presented their power-point to one another in tonight’s club, getting creative afterwards in making posters and slogans to post up around school. Tonight’s club allowed for lots of ideas, conversations and debates! The warriors have shown great independence and ownership over all these schemes and tasks and have managed to keep up their last scheme of collecting paper waste, emptying paper bins daily and awarding the ‘Treasure Tree’ every Friday in Golden assembly!
Well done guys, get saving them bottle caps!
This week our eco-warriors and school counsellors were lucky to take part in an ‘Eco Workshop’ were our friend Rob from the ‘School Cycle Scheme’ came and chatted to us about the good and bad benefits of plastic. We talked about the properties of plastic, what makes it a strong and reliable resource and ways we can reuse it. We looked at other materials and this led to lots of discussions about materials and their properties and the impact these materials can have on the planet. Our eco-warriors were shocked to realise just how much plastic waste Hull has alone and how that even after 500 years of possible decomposing, it never fully disappears! Rob showed us some of the ways his ‘Recycle Scheme’ is starting to change this in Hull and how our eco-warriors can be apart of this journey. Our children were very inspired by this discussion and have started the ‘Treasure Tree’ award this week in an attempt to get our school classes using their paper bins productively. We are about to start our plastic bottle cap recycling journey too, and will hopefully raise some earth tokens in order to buy some recycled equipment for our school!
These last few weeks in topic the children have been exploring the changing in the weather and the change in the seasons…
As the months have creeped from September to October the children have noticed the weather begin to change and the trees around them begin to adapt, preparing for the colder months!
The children in F2 have been curious about the leaves changing colour and falling to the ground, this has led to lots of leaf hunts and explorations and investigations of the colours we can see!
This week we have made some fantastic Autumn tree pictures using our fingers to paint! Outside we created our very own ‘BIG ART ATTACK‘ using sticks and fallen leaves!
We also got very creative mixing our own colours using powder paints and exploring what happens when we mix yellow with red!
Lots of fun keeping these little fingers busy and minds curious about the world all around them…
A lovely (wet!) afternoon getting our fingers messy and muddy!
The children had great fun in the mud kitchen this afternoon and enjoyed making “pizza bases!” They sculpted the perfect circle shapes with their hands and added different toppings! Some of the children have even started mentioning the big C word, and were very busy mixing and baking a delightful Christmas cake!!!
A wonderful example of fabulous imaginative play and teamwork!
