What a lovely week we have had in Year One! The weather has been wonderful and we are enjoying our new topic 'How does your garden grow?' As well as looking at things that grow in our garden, this week we have been finding out about butterflies. We were lucky enough to have a lady called Megan come into school to talk to us all about caterpillars, butterflies and moths. We went on a butterfly walk but unfortunately we didn't see any. To try and attract more butterflies to our garden Megan gave us some plants which the butterflies particularly like! We will be planting these into the ground next week! Did you know there are 59 species of Butterflies in Britain, and 2500 species of Moths!
We worked hard to create these beautiful clay tiles too. Inspired by the butterflies, we rolled out and pressed a clay tile and then stuck different seeds and beans into the clay to create a butterfly. It was a bit tricky as some of the seeds were so tiny, but with a lot of patience everybody made a super butterfly design! In English this week we have been using the iPads and QR codes to find out information about butterflies. We used this information to make notes and then created some lovely butterfly fact books. During our play and learning time, we independently designed a front cover on card with some markers and then painted them symmetrically.
You will have noticed how well our vegetable patch is coming along! The onions on the left hand side seem to be growing taller and taller each day! This week we have also been finding out about evergreen trees and deciduous trees. We have looked at the similarities and differences and have made these lovely posters to remind us of the difference.
If you have been wondering why we have lots of plastic bags hanging up in the window then take a look at this picture! We wondered what plants looked like below the ground so we set up an experiment to help us picture it! we planted some seeds in a clear bag and used staples to keep them in place. We put in a piece of kitchen roll to help soak up the water which we poured in the bottom. It's only taken 12 days for these seeds to grow this much! It's been a great experiment to see how the roots of the plant form!
Today we had some slightly more unusual visitors into Year One; a tawny owl called Bramble, an eagle owl called Bisto and a barn owl called Whisper! We enjoyed listening to Jason talk about the owls and watching them get used to our classroom. We impressed him with our knowledge about owls from when we wrote our fact books before Easter! Here are some of the facts we learnt today...
- Barn Owls aren't waterproof! They are the only bird on the planet that is not waterproof which is why they have to live inside a barn!
- Barn Owls have 22,000 feathers. The only bird to have more feathers than them is the Swan who has, on average, 26216 feathers!
- If you hear an owl call 'twit-twoo' then you are actually hearing a conversation between 2 owls, one calling 'twit' and the other 'twoo'!
- Owls only have 4 toes!
- Owls have fantastic hearing! They can hear heartbeats of small animals up to 30 feet away! They also have asymmetrical ears, which means one is a lot higher than the other. They also have one ear bigger than the other which helps them to locate the different sounds!
- It is a bit of a myth that all owls hunt at night, because actually only around 30 species of owls do! You can tell when an owl hunts by looking at their eyes. Owls with dark eyes hunt in the night, owls with orange eyes hunt at sunset and sunrise, and owls with yellow eyes hunt during the day.
We were all allowed to give whisper a little stroke on the head at the end - she was so soft!
I have certainly learnt a lot this week...have a nice weekend everybody!
