Exploring boats and dogs!

Reception's Teddy Boat Challenge!

This week, Reception have been busy designing and building tinfoil boats to carry their very important teddy bear passengers!

The children experimented with different boat shapes and sizes, carefully testing their ideas to create boats that were strong enough to hold the teddies without sinking. They discovered that the shape of the boat was just as important as its strength and worked together to improve their designs.

Once the boats were ready, the children put them to the test in the water. Using straws, they blew their boats across the surface, creating their very own teddy boat races! The challenge was to see whether their boats could travel across the water while keeping their teddy passengers safe and dry.

The activity encouraged the children to think like engineers, solving problems, making improvements, and exploring how different designs affect floating and movement. Most importantly, they had lots of fun learning through investigation and play!

Well done, Reception, for your fantastic teamwork and creative thinking!

Exploring Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy

This week, Reception have begun exploring our new class story, Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy. We have thoroughly enjoyed joining in with the retelling of the story and listening out for the wonderful rhyming words throughout the book.

To start our learning, we thought about what dogs need to stay happy, healthy and safe if they were living in an animal shelter. The children shared lots of thoughtful ideas and created a list of essentials to help care for the dogs.

Next, we used puppets of the different dogs from the story to re-enact the events. The children loved bringing the characters to life and confidently retelling the story in their own words. We also spent time exploring the character of Scarface Claw, the toughest tomcat in town! The children were fantastic at expressing themselves as Scarface Claw and were able to describe his characteristics, explaining why he might seem fierce and intimidating.

To finish our learning, we thought about the ending of the story when Hairy Maclary is safely tucked up in bed after his adventure. The children imagined what Hairy Maclary might be thinking and wrote speech bubbles from his point of view. We were especially impressed with their use of exclamation marks to show excitement and emotion in their writing!

Well done, Reception, for your enthusiasm, creativity and excellent storytelling this week. We are looking forward to finding out what happens in our next story adventure!