Butterfly

Welcome to Butterfly Class!

Class Teacher: Miss Armond
Learning Support Assistant: Mrs Perry 

Sports Day

We had a fantastic Sports day! The children enjoyed completing lots of different races and using lots of new skills. They worked well together as a team and encouraged one another to run faster! It was a lovely morning and I hope the parents and grandparents that came all had a great time too!

Gordon Brown Centre

We had a fantastic trip to the Gordon Brown Centre and luckily the weather stayed dry! We enjoyed taking our teddy bears with us on our outing and enjoyed doing lots of outdoor activities. When we arrived we leant all about what PAWS means and what bears need to survive. We then built our own teddy bears some shelters and added their favourite snacks (pinecones)! 

In the afternoon we used our senses to explore the world around us. We used our sense of smell to create nice smelling cocktails using a variety of different flowers, herbs and leaves. Then we listened carefully to the noises that we could hear around us and used some special mirrors to help us look at the top of trees. Finally we blindfolded one of our friends and then guided them to an item which they had to use their sense of touch to guess what it was. 

Before we went home we had a special visit to some of the animals at the centre. We got to see some goats, donkeys and rabbits. It was a lovely day  and we had lots of tired children on the coach home! 

We had a fantastic week celebrating book week! We did lots of exciting activities including a treasure hunt, saw a play about fairytales, a scavenger hunt in the library and we dressed up as our favourite book characters.

In PPA this week we built lots of dens. We worked well together to create our dens. Have a look at some of our creations. 

This term we have learnt lots about water and the different creatures that live in the sea. We have enjoyed using sea creatures to make up stories and had some very creative ideas. Following the children's interests we then enjoyed using pirates to create stories. We then wrote down these stories and shared them with our friends. 

As part of our water topic we enjoyed conducting a science experiment. We predicted which items we thought would float and which ones would sink. We then tested out our theories and talked about why items had sunk or floated. 

We have read lots of stories about Mr. Grinling the lighthouse keeper this term.
As part of our maths learning we talked about the size of different lighthouses and compared the heights of them using the language tallest and smallest. We then estimated how many cubes we would need to measure the height of the lighthouses and then used the cubes to find out if we correct.

Easter! 

We had a great last week of term celebrating Easter. On Thursday Year 6 from Velmead Junior School joined us to help us create easter baskets which we then used to go on an Easter egg hunt. On the Friday we came in our fabulous Easter bonnets and went on a parade around the school ground to show them to our parents. We hope you all have a lovely Easter holiday and look forward to welcoming you back to begin our exciting Summer term when we will start our new topic Water, Water Everywhere! 

Fins, Feathers and Fur!

We had a very busy term learning all about different types of animals in particular farm animals. We had a special visit from Millers Ark Farm which we were all very excited about. We got to meet and learn about lots of different farm animals including donkeys, piglets, geese, sheep, goats and even two lambs. It was also great to welcome the Dads, Granddads and Uncles into Butterfly class to help us make animals using lots of junk materials.

We have had a very busy half term learning about magic! After our visit from Professor Potty we learnt some of our own magic tricks and had fun roleplaying in the magicians house. We then begun reading different magical stories including Meg and Mog and Room on the Broom. The children enjoyed recreating Meg and Mog illustrations and learning about rhyme. During our last week we created some 'magic' artwork inspired by the artist Jackson Pollock. We enjoyed exploring new painting techniques such as dripping, splatting and pouring. Sorry for any messy uniform! 

As well as our magical learning we also learnt about Chinese New Year and Valentines Day. Lenny the learning lion invited someone into school to teach us about Chinese Culture. We had a fantastic time learning three different dances and playing instruments. 

We have started our Spring Term with a new topic called 'Abracadabra' and we are very excited to learn some magic!

Lenny the learning lion organised a special visitor to come in and see us called Professor Potty. He is a magician with a very funny assistant called 'Dexter the dog.'  We all enjoyed watching Professor Potty perform lots of exciting magic tricks, even though Dexter the dog was being rather naughty!

We all had a great Christmas Party, full of dancing and games. We even had a special visit from Father Christmas. 

Bonfire Night

In celebration of Bonfire night the children had a lovely day on Friday the 4th of November completing lots of activities based around fireworks night. We used lots of different materials to create fireworks including paint, chalk, pencils and computers. Every child completed one or more of these activities and they have been put up on their 'WOW' display in class as myself and Mrs. Evans were really impressed with the children's creations. 

Week beginning 31st October

This week we started our new Topic called 'After the Storm'. During this topic we will be reading lots of different Percy the Park Keeper stories and completing activities based around this theme. This week we read about Percy's first adventure and then the children had to sort out pictures of Percy's friends according to their size, label a picture of Percy and his friends using their sounds and complete Lenny's Challenge. 

This week Lenny wanted the children to investigate whether a wheelbarrow filled with animals would be able to float in water or whether it would be too heavy and therefore sink. The children really enjoyed exploring this challenge and were able to describe their experiment by making predictions and explaining whether their boat was sinking or floating. 

During this term we have learnt lots of nursery rhymes and enjoyed singing them to one another. We even learnt some from different cultures. 

Some of the activities we did during this topic include: 

- sequencing different rhymes using pictures and words 

- writing some key sounds and words to label nursery rhymes 

- practising our pencil control by colouring different characters from nursery rhymes 

- putting Humpty Dumpty back together again using plasters 

- becoming doctors to help Miss Polly's Dolly 

Our favourite activity was when Lenny the learning lion set us a challenge to help his friend Lumpty Dumpty. Lenny wanted to find a way to keep his friend safe if he fell off a wall, as he didn’t want him to break like Humpty Dumpty. Each child was given their own egg that they had to protect using a selection of materials. We talked about the different materials we could use and which ones would be best to protect the egg if it fell. We then tested what we had made by pushing the eggs off a wall to see whether Lumpty Dumpty was suitably protected. Some eggs survived and others broke but we all enjoyed this experiment!