Summer 2 What a Wonderful World!

At the beginning of our final topic, we discovered some dinosaur eggs in the outdoor environment.  A T-Rex was caught on camera both inside and outside of the Clever Kittens classroom – what a commotion it caused! Complex stories were told about how Mr Pashley had not been seen since the arrival of the T-Rex and her eggs, but do not fret, Mr Pashley was found eventually.

Children could hardly contain their excitement when they had a visit from ‘Jam’ a 4 metre dinosaur, designed to get children thinking scientifically and familiarise them with a range of vocabulary such as, ‘extinct’, ‘prehistoric’, ‘carnivore’, and ‘herbivore’. The children had a memorable experience, which ignited their imaginations. What a spectacular day it was!

We used a poem in Talk for Writing entitled, “I’m a T-Rex” from the Poetry Basket for our first text for Summer.

We celebrated World Oceans Day and read the story “Little Turtle Turns the Tide”.  We used Vocabulary Cat to learn the meaning of the words ‘ocean’ and ‘pollution’. We learnt about what happens to sea creatures if we put rubbish in the sea or leave it on the beach. We set the water tray-up as an ocean scene with various rubbish and talked about what needed to come out of the water to make the ocean clean and safe. Clever Kittens know what to say to grown-ups at the seaside – “Put rubbish in the bin”.

Our final Talk for Writing text was ‘Rosie’s Walk’, to help us to describe a familiar route. We developed our knowledge of positional language e.g. ‘in front of’, ‘behind’, ‘across’, ‘over’ in our mathematical learning.  We then created an obstacle course to train hard for Sports Day and children were able to match their developing physical skills to decide whether to crawl, walk or run across a plank, depending on its length and width. At the beginning of our challenge, some children were a little hesitant and nervous crossing the planks and by Sports Day, they had used their skills of resilience and perseverance to confidently walk and run across the wooden planks, jump from steps and navigate other obstacles.  We congratulated the fastest boy and girl on the obstacle course as the winners. At the end of our Sports Day, we had the opportunity to enjoy ice-lollies, yummy!

On a warm and sunny day, we enjoyed a wonderful day with parents, children and staff at our Picnic in the Park.  We had lunch together; children enjoyed climbing on the playground park equipment and played games with the balls and parachute.  At the end of our time together, we sat on the grass to read the story ‘Shark in the Park”, and, to our relief, there was no shark in the park - or was there? 

Throughout this year, there has been the daily teaching of fun Phonic activities and Maths. This has prepared the Clever Kittens with the skills and knowledge they need ready for their transition into Reception. We have had some great learning experiences and it has been an amazing year.

Summer 1 

Our topic for Summer One has been ‘Sunshine and Sunflowers’. Ten tiny caterpillars arrived after half term and we watched them grow and grow, eat and eat and become big and fat. The caterpillars made a cocoon around themselves and we had to wait for two weeks, before one of them nibbled its way through the cocoon and out popped a butterfly. When the butterflies emerged from the cocoon, we fed them with sugary water and flowers. We then left them for a couple of days to dry their wings and released them outside. This experience has helped us in our ‘Talk for Writing’ to sequence the life cycle of a butterfly. We discovered how butterflies and some other insects have symmetrical patterns. Now we know what ‘symmetrical’ means. If you are not sure what symmetrical means, then ask a Clever Kitten. We created our own repeating patterns, using Duplo, cotton reels, sticks and pebbles.

We have had some amazing home learning around our topic. In school, children made minibeast homes using 3D shapes to create them and talked about their mathematical names and properties. We used magnifying glasses to go on a minibeast hunt and explored their habitats.

Clever Kittens celebrated Earth Day and read the story “It’s only one” by Tracey Corderoy. We talked about how we could care for our local environment and help make our school a joyful place for all. We should always put rubbish in a bin, even if we have to wait a while to find one. We used the litter pickers on our school field to collect rubbish.

This half term we became Sunflower Experts. We talked about the Sunflower Lifecycle and searched information on the internet and in books, and discovered that sunflowers can grow in many different colours. They can be blue, red, white, purple and pink. We wanted to each plant our own sunflower and so we have to solve two problems 1) Did we have enough plant pots for everyone and 2) Did we have enough sunflower seeds. Children gave some good ideas how we could find out this information. We planted the sunflowers and taking care of them in classroom. Soon we will put them in our mini-greenhouse. We are going to monitor how the sunflowers are growing by taking photographs. We have also been learning about the famous Artist, Vincent Van-Vogh who inspired us to paint sunflowers. These magnificent paintings are on display.

What a creepy crawly half term both at school and at home!