dilluns, 30 de gener del 2017

Planetarium trip

This week we have welcomed another new friend into our class. On Carla first day, she joined us on our school trip to the Planetarium. It was great to see how quickly she developed relationships with the children and teachers during the day and she was very happy to join us again the next day. It is lovely to have Carla in the class as she has settled into the routines fantastically and is already confident to speak to me in English.
This week we have continued our space topic and the children are still very motivated to explore the space activities and learn new space vocabulary.  This week the EYFS children (Sergi, , Kai, Luke and Ona) have been working hard to make our space role play area look even more fantastic. They have made some very scary and super colourful alien masks to use when travelling on our space rocket. I was impressed to see how concentrated Kai was when making a mask and it is great to see how much he is improving with his cutting skills. The children also enjoyed exploring our box modelling rabble.  They made lots of new rockets and even two space stations to put in the role play area. Ona was particularly creative when adding a little water to coloured crepe paper. After lots of shaking she managed to create a very colourful liquid inside her bottle space rocket. The children have also enjoyed colouring in space vocabulary word cards to display in our space area. I was particularly impressed with Sergi’s enthusiasm to learn the new words as he repeatedly asked me what each word said and was keen to say the words himself.

The KS1 children (Arlet, Joana, Thais, Marcel, Noa, Jordi and Carla) have also been working hard on space themed work. During their writing time this week the children have continued to do work for the magazine. They all wrote a fantastic sentence to explain their space painting,  They also enjoyed drawing pictures of all the farm animals we have in the farm. Joana and Thais were very concentrated when drawing the animals and they were keen to write the names of the animals correctly. Once the children had completed the magazine,  they continued to work on learning space vocabulary in their writing session. They explored the different planets in the solar system and chose their favourite planet. They drew their chosen planet; focusing on the colour and size of the planet. The children then thought of words they could use to describe the planet, for example,  the colour, size, temperature and special properties of the planet.  The children then wrote labels to describe their planet. Jo was very proud of Marcel and Arlet as they were very concentrated and focused when writing their labels and they thought of some very good describing words. In maths this week,  the children have completed space themed maths activities.  At the beginning of the week the children consolidated their recognition of numbers 0-20, by completing a moon shaped dot to dot. The children particularly focused on recognising, naming and ordering the teen numbers ad this is something they previously found difficult.  Jo was very happy with Noa,  as she wrote her numbers beautifully and the correct way around.  She is really improving her presentation!  The children then focused on the then of addition, whereby they needed to solve the addition number problems to be able navigate a path from the Earth to the moon. Jo wad particularly impressed with Jordi’ s enthusiasm when completing the activity as he was keen to complete many addition problems and didn’t just focus on finding the quickest route to the moon.
The Ks2 children (Arnau, Tatiana, Sofia,  Blanc,  Judit and Sara ) have also continued to work on the magazine this week. Sofia did a fantastic job writing about the artist who came to visit our class the previous week and she included lots of information about the different drawings which he brought to show us.  Sara  also did a fantastic job writing information about out new class reward system, whereby all of the children need to gain ten happy faces throughout the week to e allowed to have a treat on the Friday morning. Sara explained very clearly about the muffins we made and the games we played as part of our treat morning, the previous Friday. As t magazine, is now finished,  it was the KS2 children’s job to put all of the different parts of the magazine together.  Blanca did a great job of cutting out and matching the drawings,  names and explanations about all of the animals we have on the farm. Judit also did a great job matching the pictures,  names and explanatory speech bubbles, which each of the children had written. She cut everything out and stuck everything on the ‘All About us’ section of the magazine.  It looks fantastic!  In maths this week we have been working on multiplication.  We started the week by revising all of the times tables from 2-12. I was really impressed with Tatiana concentration and determination when writing down the times tables. She did a great job and was able to write almost all of the times tables without any help.  We then moved on to multiplying 1, 2 and 3 digit numbers.  All of the children did a great job if multiplying 2 and 2 digit numbers and they were all keen to complete extension challenges.  Gabrielle was very happy with how quickly and confidently Arnau was able to multiply 1 and 2 digit numbers. He ha worked really hard on his multiplications this week.
This week we were lucky enough to take a class trip to the Planetarium in Barcelona. The children were extremely excited and the museum provided the perfect opportunity for the children to consolidate their previously learnt space knowledge and find it even more information, which we can continue to develop next week in our final week of the space topic.  The 3d space theatre was absolutely incredible and I repeatedly heard the children saying ‘wow!’ as they reached out to touch the 3D planets, months,  sun and stars. The theatre provided lots of information about our solar system and it provoked the children to ask lots more questions when returning to school. There were so many amazing and hands on science exhibitions for the children to explore and they were keen to find out how and why the machines moved or performed tasks. It was so lovely to see how excited the children were and I was so happy to be with Luke as he excitedly grabbed my hand and pulled me over to see each science exhibition. He was so enthusiastic! It was an extremely educational trip and the children loved learning about many different scientific concepts.
The children behaved very well this week; completing their work and following instructions very well.  All of the children managed to get their ten happy faces this week and their treat was to bake some sweet pizzas.  We then went to the park to do our gym lesson. They had a great time running, jumping,  skipping,  hopping and crawling through the obstacle course we created on the park.  To end our treat morning the children enjoyed having a little picnic at the park, eating the pizzas which they had baked.  

We have had a great and extremely busy week. I look forward to next week; our last week learning about space!