Celebrate... Good Times... C'Mon!!!

Hazelnuts are all pleased to be back at school after what seemed like a very quick half-term break! A bit unsure of what topic we would be learning about, I didn't need to wait long until ideas came spilling from the Hazelnuts play...

It would "appear" that Mr Wrinkles is celebrating his birthday at the end of this week! Which just so happens to coincide with Hazelnuts achieving their Teamwork Marble Jar treat, my desire to look at weight in maths and some clever ideas from the children's play! It is funny how these things work out...

So, this week has been Code Secret. Mr Wrinkles has been sent to Cherry Class to take part in lots of jobs whilst the Hazelnuts and I cleverly scheme a surprise party for him. We have had lots of ideas from all our own different birthday/ party / celebration experiences. Stay tuned for the final results which will be happening this Friday!!

In Maths we have been learning about weight. We have looked at balance scales and talked about how when it is 'balanced' the buckets are level/ the same/ equal and the arrow points to the line on the scales. We have talked about and looked at how 'heavy' items make the bucket go down whilst 'light' items make the bucket go up. We have related this to our fabulous 'measures' song with the heavy elephant and light butterfly.

One of the best ways to learn about weight is through cooking! We have used a simple recipe from an Early Years guru called Anna Ephgrave. Click here: http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/eresources/9780415659734/Appendix_A.pdf

So in groups of 6 (so each person can work in a pair weighing each of the ingredients as part of a team), we have learnt to make a basic cake. I have supported the children and together we have read the recipe, talked about how to mix the ingredients and how to spoon in the mixture. We have had to use maths language including 'heavy', 'heavier', 'light', 'lighter', 'balanced'. We have also independently taken our baking tray as a team to Claire the cook, who has kindly been baking them in the main school kitchen.

The Hazelnuts will be making these cakes AGAIN next week, but independently! Oh yes, they will have the scales, ingredients and recipe and can attempt it all themselves! We hope to be as good as the Cherry class who have been independently baking for some time now!

Here are some photos of the groups who have taken part in this week's maths activity so far!

Spooning flour, making sure it is "equal" to the egg.

Using a knife to cut the butter. Adding enough butter so that it is "equal" to the egg and the scales are balanced.

Teamwork! Holding the bowl for our friend whilst they mix the ingredients!

Just the right amount! It is balanced!

Working together to make sure our cakes have enough butter!

 

Spooning in the mix.

On Friday, we hope to bake Mr Wrinkles his own birthday cake!

Pancake Day

Hazel class had lots of fun making pancakes on Tuesday. We worked in our house teams with Sycamore and Cherry classes to make the batter and then later eat the pancakes. We really enjoyed being able to work in our house teams. And the pancakes were yummy too...

More details including photos can be found on Cherry class' blog page:

http://ehclassr.blogspot.co.uk/

Hazelnuts and spreading the love of Dave Grohl

As you may be aware, I am a HUGE Foo Fighters fan! The Hazelnuts have asked me who the man on my laptop background is and we have had many chats about Dave Grohl after many inquisitive questions! After all he is on my wall, on my laptop and he features in Mr Wrinkles' adventure journal as he and I went to see the Foos in September at the Milton Keynes Bowl. I also now own two Dave Grohl pillows at home, and a mug and pin badge at school!
This is a little video we watched one day, to learn about rockstars and to shed more light onto Miss G's true love! We talked about how rockstars write songs and have to read their work back to themselves. We also learnt that sometimes they are silly and knock their drumkits over too! We also found out that Dave Grohl is a Daddy and reads stories and sings songs at his daughters' schools.

We all found the video very funny, especially when he and Animal have a 'drum off'.

You never know... we may even learn a song before the year is out! After all, we have learnt some awesome dance tunes in Funky Fingers...

Gong Hey Fat Choy! (Happy New Year)

As Mr Wrinkles had introduced us to the festival of Chinese New Year, we thought it would be a great idea to learn about it! And it began this week on Monday 8th February.

We read the story and learnt about ordinal numbers; numbers that tell us the order things happened. We found out that the Jade Emperor had an idea about measuring time and said that he would name it after the animal who won a race. To stop the animals fighting he called for a race across the river. That trickster (or wise as some would argue) rat won and came "first". We then learnt about other ordinal numbers such as "second, "third", "fourth" etc to "twelfth" in relation to which animals came next in the race.

On Wednesday we had a special Chinese New Year morning with Cherries and Pippins. We all went into the hall and even Mr Wrinkles came in his finest Chinese silks (fresh from his adventures!).

In the morning we were able to take part in different activities to help us learn about Chinese New Year...

With Mrs Harrison we made special vegetable spring rolls!

We used real children's chopsticks to pick up noodles and add them to our plates!

We programmed the Beebot to travel across our Chinese New Year mat.

With Miss Grant and Mrs Hough, we made Chinese instruments called a Bolang Gu (or pellet drum).

Do you love our Chinese writing?!

 We looked at Chinese stories and non-fiction books. We have a special pen that can read special books to us in English or Mandarin. We loved listening to The Wheels on the Bus in Mandarin.

 

We counted pennies (Yen) into money envelopes which people hand out at Chinese New Year! Do you love our counting?


And this is just a few of the many activities we had running simultaneously! Mrs Sait and Mrs Pilsbury-Gaunt had so many to choose from and join in that I think they were spoilt for choice!

Later that morning we got to try some Chinese food. We all tried something; some of us tried prawn crackers (and even with some sweet and sour sauce) and many of us tried a little of everything! There were prawn crackers, sweet and sour chicken, egg fried rice, egg noodles and rice noodles with Chinese stir fry vegetables... and of course our lovely spring rolls! Yum Yum!

Well done Cherries and Hazelnuts on a fabulous day of festivities. Stay tuned for more Chinese New Year fun... it lasts for 15 days!

A truely egg-citing egg-stravaganza!

5 very late nights, two trips to Hobbycraft and two giant Decopatched eggs later...
Hazelnuts make an egg-citing discovery!

Early one Tuesday morning, one little Hazelnut discovered a multi-coloured mosaic egg in the roleplay igloo. It had been wrapped in a blue blanket and nestled in the corner...What could it be?!

Suddenly, emergency procedures were activated. Tidy-up time occurred early. The register was quickly taken  All whilst a giant egg sat grandly on a cushion from the Book Nook.

We speculated what it could be. One person thought that it couldn't be an egg because ..."It was curved." So we went to Claire the Cook and borrowed a chicken's egg! Sure enough, this too was curved, so proved our earlier theory wrong!

We handled the chicken's egg and using our senses, we talked about our findings (which Miss G hurriedly tried to write down on a mind map). We found out that chicken eggs are curved, can have writing on and feel cold when they come out of the fridge (besides other important findings!)

So then we cracked it open...

We then talked about the "raw egg" as a clever Hazelnut pointed out! We thought about eggs and their shells and what we would need to do to keep it safe! We all knew that a nest was needed, so some children spent all morning collecting twigs and using their Funky Fingers to weave them to create a nest.

Our egg's nest (with some adult support later that day to bind/shape the twigs).

After later watching Come Outside with Auntie Mable and Pippin, we thought more about what to do! We knew we needed to keep our egg warm and safe. One clever Hazelnut suggested a pretend fox to "scare away others foxes". This led to a discussion about decoy (fake) animals to scare away predators. We also knew that we needed signs to warn people- in case the cleaners tried to tidy up our egg!

Soon enough the children were sketching foxes and writing warning signs! We thought about how the egg may feel lonely, so we read it stories and sang it songs...

We all drew what we thought was in the egg and then Mr Wrinkles disappeared! Good old Mr Wrinkles took it upon himself to go and investigate our most popular choice; dragons! He left us a note so we didn't worry and then kept in contact via email! Yes, Mr Wrinkles the elephant even has a gmail account.

He sent us photographs of each of his destinations; volcanoes, castles and knights...

After many egg-citing stories and several sleeps... it hatched! A dragon was born... Mr Wrinkles emailed back that day and had found himself in China and in the midst of Chinese New Year celebrations!

In the end we found out that the dragon WE found was actually a puppet left by a dragon Mummy called Drizzela. She knew Sparky was missing her and so came to get him. As we had done such a grand job of looking after the egg she had left us a puppet (and later a burnt note of thanks)!

What an eggciting adventure!

I hope to collate our work and some photos into a book- stay tuned!