Category Archives: Messy play

cooperative learning, Messy play, Science

P1- My Brain – The Boss of my body

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As part of our learning about the body, we focussed on finding out more about our brains!

We learned that it is rough, wrinkled and looks all squashed because it has to fit into our skull and the skull has the job of providing protection to our brain. If our brain was flat it would be around the size of a whole ironing board and can you imagine the size our head would need to be to hold it!

We worked together to create some plasticine brain models and spoke about the things our brain helps us control and do! We also experimented to design our own protective models to shield and keep our eggs safe to help us to explore and understand the importance of wearing a helmet when riding our bikes or scooters. Look at some of this exciting learning below.

Messy play, Numeracy, Play to learn

P1- Subtraction Tasks

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We have continued to focus on our subtraction skills this week and had fun learning and playing with these ‘subtraction smash’ playdough and ‘stamp and subtract’ activities in small groups. We are gaining confidence using a range of strategies including our fingers, Manipulatives, drawing our thinking, counting back and number lines to take away successfully. Our next steps are to look at the link between adding and subtraction and to try to solve word problems.

Expressive arts, fine motor skills, Messy play, Play to learn, Science

P1- Super sense of touch

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We are learning about our senses and focussed on touch earlier this week in a number of fun play to learn tasks including a mystery object game, an independent ‘textures to touch’ picture which our teacher asked us to explain later and got the opportunity to play in a range of different messy mediums such as spaghetti, icey water, lentils, gloop and mixed playdough! It was a busy learning time but lots of fun too!

Messy play, Science, teamwork

Learning about Water 💦

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In science we have been learning all about water. We learned that planet earth is mostly made of water and that water goes around and around all of the time… it is very important for us and everything else on Earth! We spoke about how we use water and how it can change from a liquid, like the water we drink to a solid and even a gas. We experimented with water and how to change it by the processes of freezing, melting and boiling. We especially enjoyed working in small groups to see if we could melt big chunks of ice and find the secret surprises hidden inside. We used a range of things such as salt and sand and also sticks, stones and magnifying glasses to look closely at the ice. Here we are taking part in this fun experiment…

Next we want to try to make dirty water clean again!

Expressive arts, fine motor skills, health and wellbeing, Messy play, Reading

P1- Adding colour to the world

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As part of our learning about colour, we read the book ‘The Colour Thief’ about an alien who is so miserable living on his planet where everything is grey, so flies to earth to steal all of the vibrant colours to take home with him.

We created this lovely colourful display using colour mixing techniques with paints, oil pastels to create our favourite colour balloons and some collage work to represent planet earth. We loved sharing why we love our favourite colour so much with everyone. Here are some examples…

”I love green like the grass, plants and dinosaurs”

”I love red like strawberries, hearts and fire engines”

”I love blue like the sky, the ocean and sharks”

”I love pink like cotton candy and milkshakes”

Expressive arts, Literacy, Messy play, Play to learn

P1- Monsters Love Colour

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We combined literacy (rhyme) and art to explore colour mixing using the story Monsters Love Colours. We discovered that from the 3 primary colours we could make many more colours including orange, green and purple.

❤️+💛=🧡

💙+💛=💚

❤️+💙=💜

We also discovered that mixing black and white together makes grey. The more white we added made the grey colour created get lighter and lighter! But more black made it darker in shade.

Messy fun, cooperation and lots of learning!

Literacy, Messy play, Outdoor learning, Play to learn

P1 – learning to rhyme and write

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We have been working hard on our understanding of rhyme. We know that words that rhyme sound the same at the end and we hear them lots in stories, nursery rhymes and in songs. We listened to rhyming stories, did some rhyming word matching jobs and worked with partners to spot the odd word out- the one that didn’t rhyme! Our funny rhyming hats helped us to stand up and explain to the others why we made our choice using the words and pictures to help.

We have also been trying hard to write our sounds and names in lots of different ways and our new favourite was water painting these outside. We had to be fast before the sun dried them up and made our hard work disappear!