Broomhill Infant School

Remembrance Day and Dear Zoo

November 12, 2022

This week, children in Seedlings class have been very busy! We have been learning about and exploring animal habitats both in the classroom-matching animals to their habitat types, and in the garden-looking for spiders and spiderwebs, ladybirds, wood lice, birds, and more. We have enjoyed extending this through our play with small world animals in the tuff tray, at the table, and junk modelling homes for various animals.

We were introduced to our story for the term, “Dear Zoo” with a mysterious set of packages which arrived in the classroom with various messages on them such as “contents may be jumpy”, “Warning- very tall!”, etc. Children enjoyed predicting what could be inside and opening the packages to discover what was actually in each one. Then, we made our own fierce pancakes by turning a pancake into a lion. Children followed verbal instructions to create their lions, counted to make their faces, built fine motor skills by pinching and squeezing icing, and enjoyed eating it all up.

We have been learning about Remembrance Day this week, learning that we remember soldiers who gave their lives on Remembrance Day with poppies. We made potato print poppies and poppy cookies as part of our learning.

Our word of the week this week was “tall”. We have been exploring height by comparing the height of objects and children in class. We enjoyed measuring ourselves with strings and making a balloon display with the strings. Some children extended this to measure themselves with big blocks outside.

In addition this week children have been exploring visual tracking with gutters and balls, making and popping bubbles, collecting rain dripping from the roof, and jumping in big puddles. We have been engineers, building trains, police stations, and cars out of blocks, tracks, and loose parts. We have been artists, painting and collaging. And we have been mathematicians, comparing size and capacity of animals, ourselves, and natural objects.