Week 2 has been a great one!
We started off the week with a brilliant trip to the Botanic Gardens where Pamela, the Head Gardner, and her team helped us to learn all about apple pressing. The children were very interested in the whole process and the highlight definitely seemed to be drinking the apple juice that was produced. We tried to bring as many home grown apples as we could; thanks to everyone who was able to contribute. Swanson’s also helped out with a big donation of apples to help boost our supplies for the three classes and additional apples were donated by a couple who have an apple orchard and helped us on the day. We also owe a huge thanks to the parent helpers who came along as these trips aren’t possible without support. Thanks too for your patience when the bus was a little on the late side at the start!
In addition to the apple pressing we also learnt a bit about planting and growing our own food. We will continue to grow our salad leaves in school.
The children have been continuing to work hard on their recount writing and this week were working on responding to feedback on their first drafts and making improvements on their ongoing writing or second drafts. I was really impressed with how well the children took on board the suggestions for improvement.
In maths we’ve been exploring different ways of seeing how numbers are composed/structured by doing ‘dot talks’ and also learning about the relationship between a new piece of equipment we will use (Dienes Equipment) to help us understand more about our number system.
In P.E. we started learning about the skills involved in basketball. Practising shooting goals seemed to be the highlight of the lesson!
Finally, as part of our outdoor learning, we got to try out the teepee that we’ve put up in the small playground. We also learnt about using knots and lashings to join things together. This will be useful as we continue with out outdoor learning this term.
The Botanic Gardens had a Halloween trail up which is great fun but with all the other fun things we were doing, we didn’t have time to follow it. I’m not sure when they are taking it down but it’s great fun and a great way to see the whole set-up at the botanics. If you are down that way over the weekend, I’d recommend seeing if it’s still there and having a go. It would be a great family trip.