On the Beach - Summer Term 2

In the On the Beach project, the children will learn about animals that live in rock pools and on the seashore. They will explore days out at the beach and compare their experiences with beach holidays in the past. They will learn about the animals that live in the sea and find out about worldwide seas and oceans. They will explore the importance of looking after the environment to keep living things safe. They will learn about staying safe at the beach and find out about people who help us.

Our big question this term is: Who lives at the seaside?

Week 6

Since finishing our 'On the Beach' topic, this week we have focused on our transition into Class One. We learned about the room our new class will be in, the adults that we will be with and the routines of the school day. We have our own transition booklet to share with adults at home about the next part of our school journey and we created a special front cover for our booklet. We then read the story 'One Year with Kipper' which helped us understand changes over the year and we reflected on our where our year started and what happened during the year to the end. We made a photo board to reflect on our year at school (September - July). We finalised our transition into Class One learning by discussing friendships. We discussed the friends we had made over the year, people who have joined our class and spoke about the new friendships we may make as we move into Class One. We then created portraits of each other, focusing on specific details to create a class portrait collage. 

Week 5

We started our learning this week by exploring how to stay safe at sea. We looked at some picture cards and discussed how the objects and people in the pictures can help to keep people safe when they are at sea. We discovered the job of coastguards and we were able to create and ask any questions we had. We thought about:
- how a lighthouse may help sailors
- how coastguards and RNLI keep people safe at sea
- what we may need to wear to keep safe on the water

- why people may have to send up a flare

Innovate: we created our own On the Beach journals to share our learning and create an information pack.

Express: we completed fun quizzes in teams in the classroom to apply our learning about the our On the Beach project. We then were able to use our knowledge to answer our Big Question: who lives at the seaside?

Week 4

Our topic this week started by learning all about seas and oceans. We identified how to find these on a globe or map, understanding that the blue parts are water and green/coloured parts are land showing the countries and continents. We then listened to the ocean and continent song, singing along to learn them. We then explored the seas more, using the maps and globes again. We looked at a variety of photographs and decided whether we think the photo showed a warm or icy sea, using our existing knowledge to explain our reasoning. On Wednesday we explored 'Sea Investigations'. We identified that sailors are people who go out into sea on boats, wearing clothes that keep them warm and dry. We understood why this is the case and investigated which fabric is the best to make sailors clothes from. 

Week 3

Develop: We have been exploring a science element in our topic this week. We have been able to answer 'Who eats who?'. We retrieved our learning from last term about carnivores and herbivores and were introduced to a new word, omnivore. We then looked at the different animals who live at the beach and what foods they eat, discussing which group they are in. We created food chains to show this. 

We looked a picture cards of seabirds and explored the features of the birds such as their beaks, feathers, necks, wings and legs. We compared the features by looking at what is similar and what is different. We then understood the purpose of some features and created observational drawings of the birds, focusing on the features they have. We did the same activity looking at fish, learning the vocabulary: scales, fin, gills, eyes, tail and mouth. 

Thursday 15th June 

We had a very exciting parcel arrive for our circle time this week... our very own caterpillars to look after! Once we had a close look at the tiny caterpillars using the magnifying glasses, we read the booklet about how to care for them properly! We then looked at the different stages in the life cycle of a butterfly and will be keeping a close watch over them in our classroom over the next coming weeks! 

Week 2

This week in topic we have been learning about who lives at the seaside. We started by exploring the different animals and plants that live in the rock pools. The children then drew a picture of their own rock pool and the animals that lived in them. We then started to explore different shells and where they came from. The children used our shells spotting sheet to try and decide what animal our shells were from.

Week 1

We have had a brilliant first week of Term 6 and have enjoyed starting our new 'On the beach' topic. We started by being introduced to our new big question 'Who lives at the seaside?'. We then discussed that we need to know what the beach is like to answer this question so we explored what the beach is like and what we can do at the beach, or what we might see. We discussed safety rules of the seaside and then we enjoyed our memorable experience - Gipsey Bridge Beach! We were able to paddle in the 'sea' and play in the sand, build sandcastles, making moats and identify some animals we may come across too. We then explored similarities between aspects of our lives and life in the past using pictures of our own. We looked at the differences between previous holidays and holidays in the past. We read a story called 'Clem and Crab' and we were able to talk about how litter can affect the animals that live on the beaches and we considered ways in which we could help and what we should do to help the animals.