Spring 2 and Summer 1
Aaaarrgghh Spider!
"I don't like spiders! Why do they have to live in houses? I think they should all live happily in the garden... preferably in someone ELSE's garden! Why can't spiders get the message?... No one LIKES them!" Lydia Monks.
All spider wants is to belong to a family. The trouble is, she scares everybody!
Poor Spider! How will she ever get people to like her?
We have been talking about what we know about minibeasts and what we would like to know. Hopefully by the end of this topic we will be able to answer some of the questions.
Our Minibeast hunt
We’re searching for some minibeasts,
There must be some or one at least!
We’ve seen their pictures in books,
Now I wonder where we shall look...?
Let’s look on a leaf...
Remember to look underneath.
We might find a caterpillar having its lunch,
There it is going munch, munch, munch!
Let’s look under a log pile...
It looks like its been there a long while.
We might find some woodlice in the wood all holey,
They’ve rolled into a ball, rolley, polley, rolley!
The teachers acting out the story...
Miss Henshall narrated the story. Miss Oakley was the spider, Miss Cochrane was the Mum, Mr Roberts was the Dad, Miss Boyle was the little girl and Mrs Clutton was the dog. Some of the children were the spider’s friends. Then we acted out Little Miss Muffet!
We had lots of fun (and the children did too!!)
|Today 24/03 we made a habitat for one of our minibeasts. First we discussed where we found the minibeasts on our minibeast hunt. Were they all found in the same place? Do different minibeasts prefer different environments? A habitat is somewhere where living things live. Minibeasts need air, food and water to survive. Minibeasts are usually found outside in places that are warm and damp. We said this could be between leaves, in soil, inside rotting logs and on the sides of trees. Tomorrow we are going to write about the habitats we have made.
Kevin Price, a children's author, came to visit...
Today 22/04, Kevin Price came to visit us. His book, Crazy Creepy Crawlies, fitted in well with our bug topic. We enjoyed his stories and played some rhyming games. Some of us even bought one of his books and had it signed by Kevin too!
"Meeting a real life author can increase children's interest in books, help them understand how books are produced and boost the confidence of any inspiring writers."
A visit from the 'Bee lady'
Today 23/04, the 'Bee lady' came to visit year 1. In preparation for this the children wrote some fantastic questions to ask her. We had lots of fun going on a bee hunt, looking at flowers and playing a pollinating game. The children also got the chance to ask their questions, we found out lots of interesting facts!
Take a look at our new friends!
Introducing...
Chaos, Carl, Kate, Kevin and Colin!
1EB's caterpillars! Over the next few weeks we are going to watch the caterpillars as they change into butterflies. We have been learning all about the life cycle of butterflies and know lots of interesting facts about them too.
Have a look at the pictures below of when we first met our wiggly little friends...
5 hours of caterpillar action in 2 minutes
It's been a week now and we look as if we are almost ready to make our chrysalides.
We're now hanging from the top of our tub and we have made our chrysalides. The children really enjoyed watching this, it was amazing to watch (look at the video below). We drew a picture of them and wrote about what was happening using adjectives.
Chaos making his chrysalis
Our first attempt at our caterpillar song
The caterpillars in the yard
The chrysalides have hatched!
Overnight two of our butterflies had hatched out of their chrysalides. The next morning we were very lucky as another two hatched as the children were watching! It was as if the butterflies were waiting for us! Have a look at the video below, it is a time lapse so obviously it doesn't happen that quickly!
Watch very carefully... blink and you'll miss it!
Let it go!
When the butterflies had dried their wings it was time to let them go. We sang our lovely caterpillar songs to encourage the butterflies to come out of the net and we watched some of them fly away. Some of them had grown very attached to us so we put them in Linaker's own 'Bug House Hotel'.