Preschool Ships News of the Week

Ahoy!

For this week's adventure we kept our feet on land as we geared up to take part in this years RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch.

We discovered that our gardens are full of amazing birds. From acrobatic blue tits and charismatic robins to noisy magpies and cheeky gulls – birds are our most visible wild friends and no matter where you are, birds and their unique behaviours make for fascinating viewing.

To help us discover more about garden birds we have enjoyed many tasks this week. We created our own binoculars, made yummy bird food to hang on the trees in our garden, collected natural materials and built a birds nest, painted a picture of a garden bird and enjoyed a 'bird watching' themed memory game.

For our literacy task, we researched about a garden bird. First, we took time to sit and observe birds in the garden and identify them. Then, we chose which bird to research. Using books and the internet we found out lots of interesting facts, answering questions such as , 'What do they like to eat?' 'Do they have a certain noise, song or call?'. Finally, we presented our findings. We enjoyed a song about a magpie, a poster about a Robin and a video presentation about a Robin. We certainly found out lots of interesting facts. Great job!

To develop our fine and gross motor skills, we have enjoyed using utensils and recyclable materials to make marks.

Within our mathematics, we have explored shapes, focusing on circles and triangles. We discovered that a circle has one curved side and a triangle has three sides and three corners. With this knowledge, on Monday, we sorted shapes into a group or circles and a group of triangles. On Tuesday, we enjoyed looking at shapes in pictures then, made our own pictures using circles and triangles. On Wednesday, we went on a shape hunt to spot circles and triangles. To end our week we were set a challenge, to see how many different arrangements we could create using only 4 triangles.

As part of our understanding the world development, we enjoyed our final session on sinking and floating. In this lesson, we built a boat that floats. Then, we predicted what would happen if we added cargo to our boat. We are definitely sinking and floating experts now!

After a busy week of learning, today we took to part in our garden birdwatch. We spent an hour counting the birds in our garden and logged what we saw.

We have had a wonderful week on land but I am looking forward to setting sail on a new adventure next week.

Have a super weekend everyone
Captain Tara