News from Prep

In Spelling, over the last few weeks, we have concentrated on 'ch' and 'sh' words. We made chocolate cups with marshmallows and added a stick so that we could stir it into hot milk to make delicious hot chocolate.

We also made milkshakes with chocolate or strawberry syrup to remind us of the 'sh' sound.

Continuing our Fairytale theme for Narrative writing, we looked at Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Miss Wasson made fabulous props so that we could re-enact the story. 

We also made porridge- a big bowl for Papa Bear, a middle sized bowl for Mama Bear and a little bowl for Baby Bear. The children ate it all up.  

The children also wrote some fabulous predictions of what they thought Goldilocks did once she ran away from the three bears. 

Last week we were looking at The Three Little Pigs. We built our own houses made from sticks found in the garden, and assorted art materials from around the classroom. Our goal was to build a house strong enough to withstand the big bad wolf’s huffing and puffing.

Last week also we wrote letters to the Big Bad Wolf, but not before we heard his side of the story. We used our knowledge from the story of The Three Little Pigs to create letters that were fun and explored different perspectives.

In Maths, Miss Wasson has been exploring Volume and Capacity. We discussed the difference between the two terms.  Volume is the amount of space an object takes up. Capacity is how much it can hold. 

We made structures out of blocks and then counted how many blocks we used. We put these in order from the largest to the smallest volume.

We also filled different sized containers with unifix blocks and compared the space. We made a prediction first about what the volume would be e.g. How many blocks it would hold?

Miss Wasson set up a measurement learning experience table in the classroom for students to explore, predict and discover new ways of measuring length, volume, capacity and mass. On this table you can find all sorts of materials such as measuring cups and jugs, counting teddies, balance scale, books, pencils, coloured water.

 This table is used to enable and extend our thinking and allows us to practice self directed learning. 

As we continued the exploration of volume we read the story, ‘Mr Archimedes’ Bath’ by Pamela Allen. We asked the following questions:

Have you ever had a bath and noticed what happened to the water? 

Why did the water rise every time Mr Archimedes and his friends got in? 

We did an experiment.  We half filled a container with water then added different sized rocks to represent the different animals and put them in one by one. We marked the water level with tape to see how much space each rock took up. We then added all the rocks together to see if the water spilled over the side of the container just like Mr Archimedes.

On our journey exploring measurement, we looked at mass and how to measure using a hefting strategy. We continued our thinking of mass and used objects around the room to weigh using counting teddies, but not before we had a guess of how many we would need though! 

In Inquiry, we have been labelling body parts of animals. We considered why animals have different features to people and came to the conclusion that it was because we live in different environments. 

We labelled the different features of animals. These included some features that most animals have (eyes, legs) and some features that are unique to certain animals (trunk, antennas).

The children then designed an imaginary animal that had the body parts from at least 3 different animals. They had to consider what they wanted their animal to do before they selected which body parts they would include on their animal.

We also made a shark out of a paper plate and shapes.

We watched the following video and used this as prompt to ask lots of questions.

Interesting facts about Sharks | Educational Video for Kids.

We watched a YouTube video about echidnas and created our own echidna using matchsticks to represent the spikes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqe4qVCb4W4

In Religion,  we set up our Advent Wreath on the prayer table. Advent is the time before Christmas. It begins on Sunday 28th November. It is a time of preparation for Christmas.

Kind Regards

Mrs Margaret Maher

Prep Classroom Teacher