In this Summer term we are embarking on our whole school summer project—”United by Sport”, which is all about the summer Olympic Games. We will be learning about the host country and city: France and Paris, and also the Olympic sport Swimming. Our core text is "Ready Steady Mo!" By Mo Farah.

To further develop our knowledge and vocabulary about swimming we read a lovely story called “Splash” about a Paralympic swimmer, Claire Cashmore. We also talked about our own experiences of swimming and water. We then discussed words we might use when swimming in water such as splashing, jumping, diving. We performed actions to the describing words to help us remember them. We drew and painted ourselves swimming using willow charcoal and then poster paint.  Then we created  a water scene using wax crayons and water colour paints in different shades of blue. 

Look at us! We look like Olympic swimmers!

This week as part of our topic learning we have talked more about the Olympic games and how this year they are being held in Paris in France. We talked about where France is in the world and looked more closely at the city of Paris. We looked at the french flag and famous Paris landmarks. We created them using different media and materials in our indoor and outdoor classroom.

This week as part of our topic learning we became scientists! We decided to carry out an experiment to see what happens when something is dropped into water; what happens to the water when an Olympic swimmer, for instance, dives into the pool? We made some great predictions and then took a selection of objects outside to investigate. We dropped objects into the water tray and observed the results. We observed the ripple effect of the water. We talked about how the objects push the water away, making a ripple from where it landed and discussed how when the objects drops to the bottom of the tray the water near the top rushes back to fill the space it left behind. We then added food colouring to the water to observe the shapes and lines that the food colouring and the water created as they mixed together. 

We came back inside our classroom and took off our scientist coats, picked up our paintbrushes and became artists! We looked at the wonderful photos we had taken of the water during our experiment and created some beautiful art work. We also looked at the art work of Paul Darby for some inspiration too!

We had a lovely afternoon celebrating Eid in Class. We enjoyed playing party games and had a special party snack too!

Eid Mubarak Everyone!

This week as part of our topic learning we became scientists again! We decided to carry out an experiment to try and create a ‘wave’ in a bottle. We put some water into a large jar and then added some blue food colouring to it. We watched the results as it swirled and mixed together. We then added some oil into the jar and again observed what happened—it was really interesting to watch! Then we tipped the jar up and down in our hands to see if we could create a ‘wave’!

After being very successful scientists again we wanted to create some art work of what we had observed—we just love being artists! The children wanted to create some of the favourite things they had seen during the ’wave’ experiment.  Some children loved seeing all the bubbles as the oil was added to the water and wanted to create these in their art work. Other children enjoyed seeing the food colouring drip and swirl into the water so we created this using pipettes in powder paints. The children enjoyed dripping the paint onto the paper to create a 'splash' pattern. Some children chose to paint and then spray their paintings with water to observe the results. 

This week as part of our topic learning we looked more closely at Olympic swimming pools. We looked at and discussed the size and shape of the pool and what patterns were on the swimming pool floor. We compared this to swimming pools that we had visited with our friends and family. In our classroom provision some children chose to create the mosaic pattern at the bottom of the pool by cutting up lots of blue paper to create a collage. Other children chose resources in the construction area to create their own swimming pools. Children exploring the outdoor classroom chose to use the large construction resources from our shed of curiosity to create a giant Olympic pool. They then enjoyed role-playing in their creation!

As the weather is so warm this week, we thought we would take the opportunity to experience water outdoors and really get wet! We all brought in our swimwear and a towel. We set of lots of exciting activities to experience water! We set up a ‘splash zone’ where we created puddles to splash in and also filled the paddling pool so that we could make some giant splashes and we got sprayed with the hosepipe too! We participated in team games including a water relay race and water balloon and water cannon chasing games! We splashed in the ‘river’ at our forest school and experimented with the boats, ducks and guttering. We created lots of swimming poses and moves and after watching lots of videos of synchronised swimming we tried out our own moves! What lovely memories we made!