Thursday, 25 February 2016

Star Constellations, Craters, Our Solar System and a Bit of Face Painting

The kiddies spent a while looking for the treasure I told them was hiding in the room.

They finally found the chocolate stars I'd hidden in the foil moon rocks. There was much squealing.

We started our astronomy work with the basics of our solar system.









This poster shows a million dots! We used it to gain some sort of perspective of the distances, quantities and sizes of space facts.


Space worksheets and hands on activities.










Making a planet with bubbles.



Flour with a covering of turmeric to represent a planet.

Understanding how craters are formed by meteorites,



We used this smashing book to learn about the 88 star constellations which cover our sky.



Making constellations in the understairs Secret Spy Lab, using a torch and card.



Using the idea of star constellations to learn about grid references.




Sunday, 21 February 2016

Astronomy!

Our new unit starts tomorrow. After a frantic past few days, I had a chilled out afternoon cutting out planets and florescent stars for tomorrow. 




I've also hidden a bunch of chocolate stars in foil  moon rocks. ;)



Expecting a small chocolate high if they find them :)

I'm hoping to learn along with the kiddies during this unit. Watch this space!

Half Term Happies

We've had a lovely, chilled, much-needed half term break.

Shrove Tuesday pancake flipping


Opticians - love this Boy

Animal Kid - love her :)


Library

Hanging out with friends at an English Heritage Historical Artifact event. This was amazing - we got to go behind the scenes into the archives. The kiddies had a go at...

...reconstructing faces...



...coin rubbing (Roman coins, Saxon coins, WWII coins - so cool!)...


...artifact hunt and quiz...

...and a lot of running around.






We also went to a fossil discovery event.




...where the sky was just as blue.


The Georgians and Canal Awesomeness

We've finished our Georgian Unit!

We've covered:

The Hanoverian Monarchs
The Jacobite Rebellion
The South Sea Trading Bubble
The American War of Independence
The French Revolution
The first penal settlement in Australia
The Napoleonic Wars
Regency style
Capability Brown
Sir Robert Walpole
and The Industrial Revolution
(see previous posts)



We ended our unit with some canal fun. 

Panda Girl painted this beautiful canal watering can - two coats of paint and varnish. It looks smashing!





Monkey Girl made a cool canal, complete with locks and narrow boat.


Duck fun!


3D narrowboats

Origami swans

And fun canal-themed worksheets.