It was 1BN’s turn to plant out the sunflowers today. Look at the table, Adam’s is the tallest!

We’ve been busy planting and watering, especially in this hot weather

This week we measured our sunflowers using rulers. We recorded the results and collated the class measurements on our outdoor blackboard. We checked each others results and decided who’s had grown the most!

To try and stop the slugs eating the sunflowers we have planted the sunflowers within large tin cans. Fingers crossed it works!

Now it’s time to plant and water

This week was a beautiful sunny week so we had lots of watering to do! We finished sowing the lettuce with 1C and thank you to Jonathan for providing us with some radish seeds.

Next week we will plant out our sunflowers. They are growing well and we have been watering them of course in this very hot weather.

This week we were busy planting different types of lettuce into a vegetable grow bag. Each group selected a type of lettuce to plant. Rocket, red salad leaves, salad bowl mixed, romaine ballon ….. They all look tasty!

Hopefully in a few weeks we can use the leaves to make a tasty sandwich.

We had plenty to observe in our outdoor area with many changes occuring over Easter.

The tadpoles are growing! And our sunflowers!

This week we looked for textures and patterns in our outdoor area. Once we started to notice them, we found them everywhere! It was good to recap our learning about types of materials from earlier in the year eg metal, wood, natural and man made.

We made a record of the patterns and textures by taking rubbings.

First we needed to learn how to take a rubbing. Make sure the wax crayon is on its side and hold the paper steady!

Off we went around school with our buckets of paper and crayons.

We came back to our outdoor table and chose a rubbing to display on our board!

Over the last 2 weeks we have made newspaper pots and sown sunflower seeds. These will be planted in our year 1 flower bed. We hope the birds will enjoy the seeds in autumn and the pollinators will visit in summer.

Making the pot involved concentration, good rolling skills and some strength, , but the end result created lots of ‘Wows!”

Then we filled the pot with compost using our fingers to carefully push the compost in.

Now it’s time to close a variety of sunflower. Did you know that there are over 70 different types of sunflower?

The children needed to give the group a reason for choosing that variety. Olivia loved Sun King ” Because it’s scruffy!” Kai wanted Sunburst ” Because it’s got a variety of colours and it’s good for pollinators” Ayat wanted Claret ” Because it’s red and it’s like fire”

Let’s get planting!

This week we are preparing the pots and planting them ready for taking them home for Mother’s Day.

Our first job is to make a hole in the bottom of the paper cup so water can drain out

Next we filled the cups with compost using a scoop

Then we planted sunflower seed. We held the seed in our hand and thought about the amazing process of germination. Now it’s time to water!

Inside we spent time writing a very special message to our Mothers or Special person in our lives. They are beautiful to read. Here are a few examples! Kai has 1 side English, 1 side Japanese!

This week we made pancakes outside for Shrove Tuesday and the start of Lent.

We followed the recipe and checked off our ingredients

First we measured out 1 cup of flour

Then we poured 1 cup of milk into the bowl

Then we cracked an egg!

Now it’s time to whisk the batter

Then we took in turns to pour the batter into the frying pan

Now it’s time to sprinkle on sugar, squeeze on lemon and enjoy our pancake!

This week we looked at our pots that we planted in Autumn. We are excited to see the daffodils starting to flower and the tulips showing signs of growth.

I showed the children a pot of snowdrops and we looked closely inside the flower. The pollen is bright yellow and the green patterns so intricate.

This week we started to make a gift to take home for Mother’s Day in a few weeks time. Our first activity was to decorate the paper pot. Some groups printed with leaves that we collected from weeds around school. Other groups used pastels.

Finally we added some cut twigs around the pot to give a rustic, natural feel!

Soon we will be planting something inside!

Thank you to Rory who brought in some beech husks from a walk in the park. I loved receiving a little envelope with a nature present inside! All the beech nuts were gone, so maybe a squirrel is saving them for a feast on a cold day…

This week we carried on our bird hunt. It was cloudy and cold and we didn’t see any red kites this week! We decided they prefer flying on a sunny day.

Because it was so cold this week we made some bird feeders from pine cones. The berries and nuts are in short supply now so they need some help from forest school.

We smeared the scales of the pinecone with high energy lard and then sprinkled on bird seed.

We hung them on the silver birch trees around the hive.