Ready Steady Grow - Spring Term 2

In the Ready Steady Grow project the children will take part in practical activities to explore where food comes from. They will learn what seeds and plants need to grow and grow a variety of plants. They will explore what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, including eating fruit and vegetables. They will find out about life on a farm and about baby animals.

Our big question this term is: Where does our food come from?

Week 5

This week we began by talking about Spring! The children remembered learning about seasons earlier in the year and were excited to celebrate some of the festivals that show on our calendar this season. After looking at Spring pictures we enjoyed a hunt around our school field to spot buds, shoots and spring flowers. The next day we listened to 'Spring' from the 'Four Seasons' by Vivaldi. The children talked about how the music made them feel and what it reminded them of. As we listened we drew patterns and shapes.

In Guided reading this week we read a beautiful story called "The Bog Baby". The children were able to spot some of the signs of spring we had discussed and learnt the importance of letting wild animals live in their natural habitats. 

We also had 14 beautiful chicks hatch in our classroom over the week! The children have shown such curiosity, care and kindness throughout and we are very greatful to one of our families who shared this wonderful experience with us. 

Week 4

This week we have been learning about animals and their babies. The children enjoyed playing a game of pairs and then wrote letters to Miss Moffat to ask if we could buy some new animal toys.  We also candled our eggs, learnt how to spot if a chick was growing inside and prepared our incubator ready for the chicks hatching next week. 

In guided reading we watched a video called "are eggs alive?". We learnt new vocabulary to talk about the chicks hatching and are very excited to see our own chicks "pip" and "zip" soon. As our process challenge the children created their own TV and news reports on the hatching chicks. Some of the children had never seen the news before so we watched New Round on CBBC for some presenting tips!  We have also loved watching our plants grow. We have taken all of our plants outside into our mud kitchen.

World Book Day- Thursday 7th March

We have celebrated World Book Day today by dressing up as our favourite characters! We have also been taking part in lots of fun reading activities, including making our own bookmarks, designing book covers & all afternoon took part in a 'Drop everything & read' book bingo game! We have had a super day celebrating all things books! 

We also took part in a exciting West End Theatre for Schools Workshop on Friday to continue our celebration of World Book Day. The book we focused on was: Dinosaurs and all that rubbish! We worked as a team to retell the story through dancing! The children all had great fun! 

Week 3

This week we have been looking at the story of 'The Little Red Hen'. In guided reading we enjoyed using different voices to retell the story and loved learning about the processes that take place in order to make bread.  As a class we then made our own bread, tasted it and shared our opinions. We also talked about how farming in the story might be different from farming today. We learnt about the tools that were used in the past and compared them to modern machinery. 

Week 2

This week we have been learning about growing. In Guided Reading we read the book Jack and the Beanstalk. We practised sequencing the events and retelling the story.  In topic we learnt what plants need to grow. Mrs Kelly kindly came in to help us plant lots of different seeds including cress, beetroot, and lettuce. We started our own science experiment to see whether beans grow with or without sun, soil, or water and we also started the Sunflower challenge in preparation for World Down Syndrome Day on 21st March. 

In play the children set up their own garden centre and cheese factory. We have had lots of fun planting seeds, milking our role play cow, and are very excited to have an incubator and eggs in our classroom!

Week 1 

This week we have launched our new topic "Ready, Steady, Grow!". Our topic question this term is "Where does our food come from?". We started by sharing everything that we know about farms. We created a big spider diagram with our ideas. The children helped to create a farm shop role play in the classroom, enjoyed playing with the farm small world and began creating a farm yard and barn outside. We have also learnt which foods come from plants or animals, explored fruits and vegetables with our senses and begun to talk about healthy eating.  We are very proud of the vocabulary, curiosity and risk taking that our children showed this afternoon, trying new things and being so enthusiastic and engaged with our new project!