Mrs Arbuckle was cleaning out the “duck pond” and put in new, clean water. Some children came along and tried to float their Lego planes. “Can we make boats to sail ? “ they asked. Why not? STEM learning at it it’s best! We decided that we would need card, paper, straws, sellotape and scissors….and a lot of patience!
The children were encouraged to design their own boats. No instructions were given. We then looked at each of the designs and some people decided their design had to be modified or “ a big wave would sink it!” So we tried again. Next we added the sails and decorated our boats. Then it was time to test our boats. Success all round!
We had the Duster Monster in class and now we have the Scribble Bots. We have to experiment with the circuits to get them to move and draw. Curious children makes for great learning.
It’s another day in 1.3 learning through play. Some people built towers and measured each other. Some people did maths with the ducks. Some people sang “5 little ducks”. Some people were creative with the play doh and some people drew pictures with wonderful stories. Mrs Arbuckle read a story , which led to a discussion about astronauts that she hadn’t even dreamed about this morning! Mrs Arbuckle doesn’t ask them to do these things…. it all happens naturally. 😁
When we review our day, Mrs Arbuckle is often told “we haven’t done any work today!” This makes her smile. Play makes us learn so much, but we don’t realise it’s work! Balancing nuts and bolts? That will be maths. Building a den? That will be STEM. Looking at our plants with magnifying glasses? That will be science. Touching the meteors and the moon rocks? That will be STEM. Reading stories? That will be literacy…… and so it goes….😁👍
We were extremely fortunate to have genuine moon rocks from the actual moon in school today. What a thrill. They came all the way from NASA. We also had meteors that came from Mars. Our lovely P7 Lab Technicians came in to tell us all about them. They told us lots of information. We watched the moon landing too and discovered why the astronauts had to “bounce” around. They were also quite clumsy because of their big spacesuits.
We planted runner beans and sunflowers two weeks ago and now they have really started to grow. We have discovered that that not all seeds and beans grow as they might have not enough/too much water. Before the shoots grow up, the roots grow down to keep the plant stable. We will take them home soon as they are getting too big for class.
We learn something new every day in 1.3. The children often use their imaginations and do things that Mrs Arbuckle had never even thought about! Great learning!
We were learning all about parts of flowers. We looked at pictures of flowers and we looked at real flowers. They were amazing. We could see the pollen inside them and we knew that the bees love pollen. We learned about petals, the stem, the roots and the leaves. We then made our flowers with all the different parts. They look good.
We are looking at growing seeds and parts of flowers in science now. Today, we started by looking at Percy The Park Keeper and all the work he has to do to look after the park. We will be looking after our school Eco Garden and planting in class. We now have Percy’s hut in class. We can pretend to be Percy and cook in his little hut; take notes and use the binoculars to look for birds in the playground.
Just another blogs.glowscotland.org.uk – East Renfrewshire site
