This week there was a lot of huffing and puffing in P1b and it wasn’t from the boys and girls!!  It was the big bad wolf (AKA Mrs Lloyd with a hairdryer) trying to blow down the houses that the children had planned and then built in their technology groups!  Each group worked together and displayed great group skills – sharing resources, listening to each other and working together.  Some of the houses withstood the force but the big bad wolf did manage to blow down a couple!  The children really enjoyed this experience and made good predictions about which houses would stay standing and which ones would get blown down.  Afterwards they thought about what they would do better next time to improve the strength of their builds.  Good work P1b! 

It was lovely to see all the children back after the Christmas holidays.  P1b were very keen to share all of their holiday news and have been working very hard already this week.  They have impressed me with brilliant sounding out in their writing work, greating adding when playing games in maths and have been trying hard to form their letters correctly in our new lined handwriting jotters.  The boys and girls had great fun in the structured play area where they worked round a variety of different activities including jigsaw building, listening to stories on the new listening centre, building models with the construction materials and role-playing in the ‘toy shop’.  What a busy first few days back!

This week, P1a worked hard to finish their technology projects.  Their target was to plan, design and then build a house for one of the three little pigs which would withstand the big bad wolf (aka Mrs Lloyd with a hairdryer) huffing and puffing to blow it down.  After predicting which houses would stay standing and which would fall we tested them out and noted down the results.  The big bad wolf was getting more and more annoyed as she only managed to blow down one house!  Lots of good teamwork and problem solving skills have developed over the course of the project and the children should be proud of their work throughout the whole process.  Here are some pictures which show the finished houses and us testing them out!

First of all, thank you very much to all the parents who have been raiding their blue bins and collecting their junk items in order to help us with our technology project.  We have collected an impressive amount and this has enabled the children to experiment with lots of different sizes and shapes when planning and designing their houses.  The building of the houses for daddy pig is now well under way and the children are developing their team work skills in order to construct their houses which they hope will be strong enough to withstand the big bad wolf (aka Mrs Lloyd with a hairdryer!).  Here are some photos which let you see the children hard at work.