In the week leading up to the holidays we have read a simple version the Easter story and talked about why we have Easter. We made Easter cards for our families and also treated ourselves with some food preparation. We made our own Easter nests and all agreed that food tastes much nicer when we have made it ourselves!

We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who collected petals for our special activity. We were thrilled with the response and it has been such a popular area. It was so interesting to watch the children carefully selecting their petals and the equipment they wanted to use. You can see the high levels of concentration on their faces as they experimented. We will definitely repeat this activity, but we will let you know in advance so that you can start collecting again!

The whole of Foundation Stage took part in our 'eco brick' project. We had to collect non-recyclable materials like cling film, plastic packaging, straws and 2 litre plastic bottles. We had to clean and dry the bottles ready to fill them with the plastic. The plastic had to be packed in tightly so that the bottle was really solid. We chose to make our eco bricks into a chair. This was a long project for us and the children were so proud when it was completed!

Both classes have now finally been on this trip, Mrs Banks class had to be postponed due to gale force winds but luckily this week the weather was much kinder to us! On the visit we discovered lots of information about different trees and how they grow. This was linked to the seasons of the year and the children gained a sense of the time it takes to grow a tree. The saplings that Mrs Branigan showed us were 2 years old and were a similar height to the beanstalks that we planted 4 weeks ago!

We collected natural objects that we found in the woods and identified what they were, then  thought about how they felt - rough, smooth, soft, hard, cold etc.

We did a Gruffalo hunt in the woods and found what the children thought was a Gruffalo scratch on a tree trunk.

Mrs Branigan gave everyone a 'pebble person' and the children made a special den for it to 'live' in. The children were so particular about the dens, even making beds and pillows in some of them!

 As part of our investigations we gave the children a selection of large blocks of ice. Each block had a small object frozen inside. First of all we wrapped the ice block in tinfoil and passed it around so that the children could describe how it felt without knowing what it actually was. We collected lots of adjectives used by the children such as cold, hard, freezing, crunchy, heavy. Then the children unwrapped it and explored how to get the objects out from the centre of it. This really fired up their imaginations, especially regarding DIY tools! We tried all kinds of things then one of the children had the bright idea of using some warm water to melt the ice. This activity provoked a lot of discussion and trying things out, testing whether their ideas worked.

You may have noticed that we have a 'minibeast hotel' on our FS playground. This was very kindly made by a parent at school a few years ago. We have to fill the space inside with different things to encourage the minibeasts to move in. We inspected what was already inside then added extra comforts and natural materials to tempt them. The children wanted to fill it with twigs, bark and dried leaves that would make it cosy for our guests. Another idea we had was to create a rockpile to see if that attracted any creatures.

One of our priorities was 'tender loving care' and respecting any minibeasts that we may find.

Every child remembered it was non-uniform today to raise money for comic relief. Thank you everyone! We had some 'red nose' activities and did some 'fun' drawings. It was a lovely end to our week.

Our friend John, who we think is a 'bird expert' came to visit us in school. We already knew the names of lots of birds so he went into more detail and told us so much information. the adults were also engrossed in the talk.
We looked at the width of the wings of an albatross. Just look at our photos!
Also when a recent survey was carried out about how many birds use certain bird boxes it was found that 63 wrens were in one bird box together. John had a bird box with a representation of the wrens and we were able to firstly estimate, then count them. It was fascinating!

Our children looked amazing! They could all tell us who they had come dressed as and many brought books to show us their character illustrated in stories. During the day we shared stories with each other and also had some very special visitors. The Year 4 children came to our classroom and read with us, we felt very important! Thank you to all the parents who were able come and read with us at story-time, the response was fabulous.