24th May 2024

Starfish
 

At beach school today our story was the pop-up book, ‘Peekaboo Under the Sea’.  In the story lots of sea animals are playing hide and seek and Stripy Fish is trying to find them all .  In the story some of the animals were ‘Spotty Seahorse’, Diving Dolphin and  Ollie Octopus.  We thought of words to describe us that started with the same sound as our names.  Some of them were quite funny!  We then discussed other sea animals and thought of places under the sea where they could hide.  We wrote some sentences and drew some pictures of our animals hiding.

Mrs Cotton drew a big fish in the sand and we filled it with kelp seaweed to make the stripes.  There was lots of seaweed on the beach today so it didn’t take us very long.

For maths today the Reception children drew number lines and did adding and subtracting along a number line and then identified odd numbers on their number lines.  The Nursery children used the large Numicon filling them with sandcastles and saying the numbers of the Numicon, counting the holes and putting them in order and working out which one was missing when they were in a number line.

We then played a game of hopscotch and played hide and seek with the parachute.   We finished off our morning with some parachute games.

Seals 
 

In beach school this week, we embarked on a fascinating journey to the quarry to enhance our map skills and classify various rocks found within the quarry. With unwavering determination, we utilised our navigational abilities to manoeuvre around the quarry, unravelling the mysteries of distinct rocks nestled within each unique corner. As the day progressed, our young learners delved into the realm of creativity by fashioning farm animals from repurposed materials. Their dedication and diligence shone through as they meticulously crafted their chosen creatures, poised to showcase them at the upcoming Glendale show post half term.

Puffins
For our last beach school before half term we started off with thinking about the life of St Bede in Worship by the Waves before practising our quarter and half terms clockwise and anticlockwise.  We are getting a bit better at turning the right direction!  Then we did some yoga for PE.  We have definitely improved in our knowledge of the positions and the quality of the positions.  We learnt a few new ones, and then thought about what yoga is good for.  We talked about how it is great for improving our agility, balance and coordination.
 
After snack we did some science work recapping habitats that we had investigated and why those habitats were particularly good for the creatures we had seen.  We then talked about the food chain, and made our own food chains to explore the terms predator, prey, producer and consumer.  We talked about the importance of the sun's energy at the bottom end of the chain.  Whilst we were working we saw a bird of prey hovering over the dunes.  We talked about how they are apex predators.
 
In history this half term we have been learning about the history of flight.  We have made kites at home and the plan was to fly them on the beach today.  It was the calmest weather it has been for ages!  We talked about the history of kites and how they were first found in China about 3000 years ago.  We talked about some of the uses of kites over the centuries, from painting people on them to try and trick an enemy that men were flying down to attack them, to investigating lightning and helping to measure distance.  We talked about some of the uses of kites today.  We also talked about the importance of lift and how the difference in the airflow between the top and bottom sides of the kite are how it is able to fly.  We then decided to give our kites a go, even though there was very little wind.  We all managed to get them to fly a little bit, especially when we were running along with them.  Afterwards we talked about how well we got on, and what did not work so well.  We decided to bring the big kite back down to the beach after half term on a slightly windier day!