Tigers@taddy

We have thoroughly enjoyed fitness week! Our community walk was a fantastic success, and it's been wonderful to track the changes in the way children have been journeying to school as they try to incorporate more exercise. On Wednesday, Miss Furness held a fitness session, incorporating lots of different skills that the children loved exploring. They ran, skipped and practised both their throwing and their ball skills.

On Wednesday, the children used the iPads and laptops to explore our world using Google Earth. We talked about, and explored, our local area, discovered where it is within the United Kingdom and then how that fits into our wider world. The children absolutely loved exploring the world, seeing how colours changed with different climates and trying to find Father Christmas. We looked up our own houses and some children followed their regular routes along the roads and found places that are familiar to them. 

 We have been getting to know the trees growing in our woodlands, this afternoon. The infants were given tree identification charts to work out what trees the leaves they found belong to. After that, each group was given a specific leaf. They identified it and came up with a story to tell to the rest of the group to help them remember what it is, incorporating it’s special features.   I particularly liked the ‘Mountain Oak’. 

 This week, Tigers have had a great time LAUNCHING our Autumn topic: Getting Around. They have been creative, inventive and practical in creating their own modes of transport and discovering the best ways of getting them to move effectively.  First, we made our own rockets (and launch pads), carefully following instructions. Once these were ready, we took them outside to launch them. We used film canisters, water and effervescent tablets, and the children learnt about the chemical reaction taking place. They learnt that the ‘pop’ that launched our rockets was due to carbon dioxide building up inside the canister until it bursts out. We experimented with different amounts of water and tablets, discussing the effectiveness of each launch until we decided that just a little bit of water provided the best rocket launch. We had a lot of fun, even if our rockets didn’t quite make it all the way to space.  Next, we designed and built our own balloon-powered cars. Again, we did lots of experim

 Today, Tigers worked on cultivating a new garden area for us to look after. It was very overgrown and the children worked so hard to clear it. We hope for this to become an area that the children take pride in and can choose what they would like to grow there. We would welcome the input of anybody in our school community who would like to support us with this (I am not renowned for my gardening expertise...) Mrs C What it looked like at the start What it looked like at the end

What a fantastic first day in Tigers class. The children have been absolutely wonderful and I am so excited for the year ahead. This afternoon, we read ‘Not a Stick’ by Antoinette Portis. The children loved the imagination portrayed in the book and we spent the afternoon in the woods, finding our own sticks and using our imaginations. The children had wands, sceptres, stirrers, magic marshmallow trees, broomsticks, horses, swords and many more wonderful things. Some children opened shops where they concocted fantastic recipes with their stick stirrers, some built a bridge to get them safely across a hole, others built houses and a group turned their stick into a drill so they could install a fence post.