Term 5 - Precious Plants

Our topic this term is Precious Plants.

Big Idea: Let’s be super scientists and go exploring! What can we observe in our local habitat, focusing on plants? Do they all look the same? Can we find any similarities or spot any differences? Can we name these common flowers? Can we identify and group different plants, including trees?  Do we see them all year round? How does the weather and seasons affect how things grow? Let’s look at how they change over the year! This is a great starting point to become junior gardeners and to understand how the world changes around us each year. 

As super scientists we will explore our natural surroundings to identify and name a variety of common wild and garden plants, including deciduous and evergreen trees and be able to describe the basic structure of a variety of common flowering plants, including trees. As aspirational Artists we will develop our observational drawing skills using Vincent Van Gogh as our inspiration. As determined designers we will ask are there plants that we are able to eat? We will consider how we can create a healthy meal and the skills we need to do this. 

Learning Landing

Harmony class really enjoyed making salads in DT this week as part of our Learning Landing. We tasted lots of different salad vegetables including beetroot and radishes which were new for some of the children. They were fantastic adventurous aardvarks with their tasting and some children challenged themselves to try something again that they thought they didn’t like.

We discussed healthy eating and we learnt safe chopping skills, which the children were able to follow really well.

The children took great care in following their design briefs and creating their salads, we have some amazing little chefs in the class! As you can see the children were all incredibly proud of the salads they had made and took them home to share with parents and evaluate together.

Well done Harmony Class, another great Learning Landing!

Learning Lift off

We had a fantastic learning lift off at Priory Fields Garden Centre, we planted Poppies, Calendula, Nasturium, Morning Glory, Cornflower and Candytuft! The children really enjoyed planting the seeds and it was great to share their enthusiasm for our new topic.

Learning Walk

We also went for a lovely learning walk around our school grounds where we explored the plants around our school and the children shared their impressive knowledge about cherry blossom trees, brambles, cow parsley plants, dandelions and daisies.

Here are some of the fantastic quotes from the children on our walk:

“That’s my favourite tree because it looks good for climbing!”

“Sticky weeds are my favourite because they stick to you and it’s really silly!”

“I like the daisies because they grow everywhere and make the grass look pretty.”

“In Japan, they celebrate the cherry blossom falling by having picnics among the petals.”