This week we have been learning about starfish.

Here are some facts:

• Starfish have little tube feet and they can walk.
• They have no blood.
• Starfish have arms.  They usually have  5 arms but they can have up to 40.
• They can grow back an arm that they have lost.
• They sook in water and put it back out again.
• Starfish have eyes at the end of their arms.
• They have a mouth underneath their bodies.
• The Crown of Thorns starfish can eat coral so beware it can destroy a whole colony of coral.  It is venomous.
• We learned that starfish are not fish. WOW!

This week we have been learning about coral reefs and how important they are to life in the oceans.

Did you know?

25% of all the creatures that live in the sea live in coral reefs.  Coral can be hard or soft and it is made from the skeletons of tiny sea creatures.  Lots of fish live and hide in the coral reefs.  Coral like warm, clean, shallow water to live in. Coral also needs light.  Some coral names describe  how they look like the brain, the mushroom and the lettuce coral.  Can you imagine what they look like?

We have a wii in our classroom and we can go diving under the sea.  The first fish we saw on the coral reef was a Blue Tang.  Blue Tangs are a kind of fish that live on coral reefs.  They are blue and yellow and they look very bright to us but on the reef they are camouflaged.  We made blue tangs in class this week out of foam and we gave them googly eyes.  We are adding them to our under the sea display.

Clown fish live on coral reefs. They live in sea anemone which have stinging tentacles.  They don’t sting the clown fish.

We are making a coral reef book.

 

We have been getting started learning about Oceans for our ‘Under the Sea’ topic.  We have put up a shark and some fish because we are turning our class into an under the sea kingdom.  This was something we all agreed we wanted to do when we discussed our topic before Christmas.

Did you know?     There are 5 oceans in the world.  We know they are called Pacific, Indian, Atlantic, Arctic and the southern.  The Pacific is the largest.  Coral reefs are found in the Pacific and the Indian because they are warmer.  Next week we are going to make a coral reef in our classroom.  We are going to put a submarine in our book corner.  Mrs Petrie has been very clever working out a way to do it.

For the last two weeks we have been very busy.  We have had a dress rehersal and two performance of Busy Busy Bethlehem.  We have also had our Christmas parties which were great fun.  We have been busy making Christmas cards and angels and Christmas patterns.  Everyone has enjoyed practising for the church on Friday and we have visited the church already to their Festival of Trees.

Today we had a very relaxing time.  We made hot chocolate and we drank it with marshmallows and cream and a biscuit. Yum!

Merry Christmas everyone!

On Thursday the p3s got dressed up in their costumes for the nativity.  Emma is the star in our nativity.  Miss Marfleet made her costume.  It is beautiful.

We were talking about the Christmas story and we learned that christians believe  angels are messengers.  In our nativity they came to the stable where baby Jesus was born.  We made pictures of angels.

On Thursday we found out that our next topic for after Christmas is Under the Sea.  Mrs Petrie wanted to find out what we would like to learn about this topic so she brought in 5 paper bags filled with different things about Under the Sea.  We got into 5 groups and we all had a turn of each bag.  The bags were:

1. Objects – this had shells, fish, snorkels, masks, fishing nets, an octopus and lots of other items.

2. Games and Toys – this had playmobil toys, jigsaws, playmat with pictures, fuzzy felt and cards.

3.  Non-fiction books – lots of books about fish, divers, science experiments with water, water information books and facts about the sea.

4. Fiction books – this had stories about fish and sea creatures.

5. Photos, pictures and words – lots of pictures of sea creatures and shells.

Here are some pictures of us investigating each bag.

Here are some of the things Mrs Petrie heard us saying:

‘What is coral’? asked Azeem

‘I would like to find out about stone fish, they look weird’  said Mia

‘I’ve got a shark, I like sharks’ said Scott.

‘I am a captain, they steer ships. How do they steer ships?’ said Roy

‘I found a picture of a sea snake. What is a sea snake?’ asked Emma

‘I would like to know about crabs’ said Jamie-Leigh

‘Adult sharks and how sharks live’ said Nathan

Hannah said ‘Seahorses look interesting’.

‘Can we drink sea water? asked Kaiden

Imogen said ‘I like Commotion in the Ocean’.

‘I like stories about fish’ said Edward

Aimey said ‘ you can get sea dragons’.

‘Whales are big’ said Isla

Lucy said ‘We could have a Captain in our class’.

‘I want to learn about the fish at the bottom of the sea’, said Carson

Rhys asked ‘What do whales eat?’

‘I want to find out about water’, said Sinead

‘This is like Nemo’, said Amber

‘Can fish see?’ said Lily

‘How do fishermen catch fish?, asked Calum

We said lots of things and this has helped us to find out what we would like to learn about.  Another idea we had was to turn our class into under the sea and find big boxes to turn into boats and submarines for us to play in.

We are looking forward to this new topic.

The soldiers in the First World War fought in trenches.  They were  long dug out holes where the soldiers would hide from the bombs and bullets being fired at them.  The trenches were wet and muddy and full of rats.  Some soldiers got ill and some got trenchfoot which was terrible and sore.  An officer would blow a whistle and they would all have to go over the top and try to capture a German trench.  Lots of soldiers were killed.  We made a trench in our classroom.

Did you know that a pigeon can be a hero?

We found out about a pigeon called Cher Ami who saved soldiers in the trenches during the First World War.   He was a homing pigeon and he carried a message back to base to tell the soldiers there that some soldiers were trapped in the trenches by the Germans.  Cher Ami which means Dear Friend in french flew through bombs exploding and bullets firing and was even attacked by a hawk, to get back with the message.

We made trenches in our classroom.  Each trench had a problem which the soldiers in the trench had to try and solve.  We all decided that the problem could be solved by sending a pigeon back to base with a message.  Rhys and Imogen were in the base  catching the pigeons and reading the messages and sending the help they needed.  We had great fun but we also learned what it must have been like with no other way of sending a message.

We used our writing skills to write messages and we attached them to our pigeons we made.  You can now see them flying across our classroom trying to get home to deliver the messages.

We wrote stories about Cher Ami and we used exclamation marks in our title.  Fly Cher Ami! Fly!

 For Children in Need this year we dressed up as superheroes.  Isla chose to dress up as Cher Ami.  This was a great idea as we think Cher Ami was a great hero.

Doesn’t she look fantastic!

On Friday 31st October we came to school dressed up for Halloween.  We were dressed in lots of scary costumes and we liked our witches, superheroes, soldiers and vampires.  We sang scary songs with the lights off!

We have been learning about the birds in our garden.  In our gardens we can see: blackbirds, robins, blue tits, starlings, seagulls, crows, magpies.  In the winter there is no food for the birds so we decided to make them some bird cake.

We put seeds, cereal, fruit, oats and lard into a bowl and mixed it up.  Then we put it into yogurt pots and left it to go hard.  Then we took it home.  kaiden put it on his garage roof, Emma put it on her Gran’s feeding station, Roy put his on top of his gang hut and Amber put hers on her shed.  We hope the birds will come and eat our bird cake.

We are very excited because Miss Marfleet has brought us in a cuckoo clock and Mr McLaren managed to get it going.  It cuckoos once on half past and cuckoos the number of hours at o’clock.  We are counting the number of cuckoos and usng it to help us tell the time.

Mrs Cowan we think the largest bird in the world is an ostrich.