We have been making 2D and 3D shapes outdoors today. You can see cubes, prisms, pyramids, trapeziums, rhombuses and kites! Miss Solomon was really impressed by the problem solving and teamwork today!
After we were done we got to play in the woodlands. Tom, Jamie, Ethan, Joshua and Richelle and Isla liked cooking in the mud kitchen, Owen and Ethan made some bigger 3D shapes and moved furniture inside and Imogen has made trap to protect her den.
Mr Dwane was very kind and generous to make us a nice mud kitchen to play in which we called ‘The Bananas Made from Bananas’. We play like it’s a real kitchen and we make loads of food for our friends and teachers. Imogen likes the little shelves that have tubs in them and she uses bark as pretend steak, mud for gravy and little sticks as chips. We made a fruit salad out of leaves. We like playing in it because it’s really fun and we are practicing for when we are older. Don’t really eat the stuff we make or you’ll be sick.
In our woodlands we made stick skeletons out of different materials that you can find in the woodlands. First we danced to the Awesome Sauce video ‘bones’. We remembered all the bones and felt them on our own bodies to help us. We put labels on the bones afterwards to show what we knew about the different bones!
When we were looking for signs of spring we were paying close attention to birds building nests and were on the lookout for frog spawn. Richelle brought some of her tadpoles into the class for us to look after. We have watched our baby tadpoles Alex, Sophie and Paulita, turn into frogs. We had to feed them boiled spinach, but we learned they stop eating while they are absorbing their tails into their bodies. We used spring water to top up their bowl because it has no chemicals and keeps their home nice and clean(ish). We had to tip the tub at an angle to let the tadpoles walk out when they got their front legs and stop them from drowning because they stop using gills and start breathing air.
Watching them get back legs and front legs was really interesting and exciting. We felt sad when we had to let them go but they had to live the rest of their life in the wild and have babies of their own!
You can help frogs by making a nice habitat in your garden – you could even use a bucket filled with rainwater and some plants!
Check out the videos we made about it using our DoInk app and stop motion!
We used found materials to make some art up in our woodlands!
We went into the woodlands and we collected one special item each to draw with charcoals. We went to the fire pit to collect natural charcoal and used charcoal from our art supplies. The natural charcoal was harder to break and made a browny colour. We had to observe our special item really carefully and draw exactly what we saw. We blended the charcoals to show shadows and make our drawings look 3D.
Last month we entered the Tesco Art Competition to try to win an artist workshop and have our work exhibited at the National Gallery. The group theme we chose was ‘Tree’ so we were inspired by our woodlands to create a big, brilliant collage using dyes, oil pastels and pen. We drew ourselves and hid around the picture in our favourite places to play. We love our woodlands and want to show it off!
Fingers crossed we will win!
We learned about why it is important to use seasonal and local produce this week in topic and loved learning about how we can find food in the wild. Using local and seasonal produce can reduce carbon emissions from food storage and transport from different countries and a lot of the time it is fresher and tastier to eat! This week we investigated food air miles and checked how far our food really travels before it is on our dinner plate.
Recently we found that we had few flowered leeks in our woodlands! At first we thought they were snowdrops, then wild garlic and finally we found out that they were ‘Few Flowered Leeks’. We knew they were okay to eat because we crushed it in our hands and smelt the garlicy/oniony smell. You need to be careful not to pick lily of the valley by mistake which is poisonous! We found mushrooms too but we learned foraging mushrooms is too risky if you are not an expert. You have to be careful foraging in the wild and make sure you do not eat anything deadly or poisonous. Ethan suggests using the internet to find our more information and not to try mushrooms unless you are Bear Grylls or similar.
You can’t get more seasonal or local than this!
We used our foraged wild leeks to make ‘Leeky Bread’. Here is the recipe.
First get a stick of salted butter and a big bunch of washed and dried wild leek leaves.
Then blend them together in a good food processor.
Get a french bread stick and cut slices halfway down (don’t cut all the way through the bread).
Then put a spoonful of the garlic butter in the slits you made in the bread,
Bake in the oven until brown.
ENJOY!
P5S have been pond dipping between the stream near our school and the Eliburn Park to find out how clean the water is. Straight away we noticed that the water was full of rubbish and pollution like trolleys, crisp packets, bottles, cans and a frisbee. We felt sad for the animals who live there and we thought about what all that litter meant for the environment. We could see lots of algae, oil on the top of the water and lots of foam we thought might be detergent.
We investigated how the waterways become polluted by water run off from housing estates and the streets in an experiment later in the week.
We went to different parts of the water and we used a kick test to get a sample. We kicked the water and scooped all of the cloudy water into our bucket. We tried to see what creatures were living at the bottom in the mud. We also scooped from the top, middle and bottom of the water to see what was living in the different parts of the water.
We took the samples back to class and we compared them to each other to see what was inside. We found freshwater shrimp, mosquito larvae, flatworm, pond skater, freshwater boatmen, leeches and minnow fish. We also saw swan mussels. From collecting all of the samples and using our special sheet that told us what we needed to see to show the water was healthy we could prove that the water was fairly clean.
Next term we are diving into our conservation topic. We have been exploring and observing the signs of spring in our woodlands and surrounding areas so we will be participating in the Woodland Trust Nature’s Survey to record things we see around us. Phenology is the study of the times of recurring natural events like the flowering of snowdrops, leaves appearing on trees and hearing certain birds. Through adding data to Nature’s Survey we will help scientists gather data on how climate change is affecting nature.
Although our woodlands are small we can help make a difference!
If you would like to get involved at home here is the link and you can see the Phenology guide PDF here!
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