Over the last few weeks, we have been learning about a variety of minibeasts through stories, songs and role play.
The children enjoyed learning about The Very Hungry Caterpillar story by Eric Carle and acting out the different stages of the life cycle of a butterfly.
In the light of the moon, there was an egg on a leaf...
Out of the egg came a tiny and a very hungry caterpillar. It started to look for some food...
After eating a lot, it got bigger and bigger and made a cocoon:
Later, it became a beautiful butterfly!
The children have also enjoyed watching our own class caterpillars grow!
Inspired by all these activities, they have made their own life cycles and had a go at writing and describing them.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar story was followed by The Very Busy Spider story, also by Eric Carle. There was once again some acting as the children thought about how the animals felt when the spider was ignoring them and spinning his web. We also discussed how the spider felt when the animals kept interrupting his work!
Bumblebees also learned about the life cycle of a spider and brought it to life...from the daddy spider spinning his web:
To the mummy spider laying the eggs and making a sack to cover them...
And, finally, the spiderlings emerging!
The children have been learning to take responsibility for watering the beanstalk we planted last term and then transferred to a vegetable patch.
In maths, they learned how to solve problems and talk about which leaves had more, fewer or the same number of insects as well as finding the total and recording it. They also learned how to estimate by looking at a group of objects without counting at first, which was a strange concept!
Our role play turned into the minibeast café and the children had fun ordering and cooking a range of very strange dishes such as spider spaghetti or ladybird juice!
Outside, the children loved going on a minibeast hunt and keeping a tally of all the bugs they found!
Bumblebees have also began to practice for their sports day in their different teams...
