The Big Idea:

The Enchanted Wood:

Plants have lived on Earth for over 400 million years. Some plants in our gardens today were around at the same time as the dinosaurs. Why have plants been so successful? This term we become botanists, building on our KS1 learning about plants to discover more and deepen our understanding of plants. What lights up the world? If there was no light, there would be no life on our planet. Light helps plants to grow, it warms the planet, and it allows us to see all the wonders around us, we extend our Science learning, through learning all about light. Using nature as inspiration in Art Using nature as an inspiration colour wheel – Rebecca Vincent – Woodland inspiration. Using nature as an inspiration colour wheel children study the work of Rebecca Vincent alongside their own experiences and imagination to create their own canvas with the title ‘The Enchanted Woodland’.

Creative Curriculum

In Creative Curriculum, we have learnt about the artist Rebecca Vincent. We re-created some of her artwork based on woodlands before becoming artists and preparing to create our own artwork using her work as inspiration. So far, we have planned our masterpiece, drafted our final version and explored mixing colours to create different blends. We will then create our final piece on a canvas, ready to showcase to our parents.

Computing

This term in Computing with have been learning how to program and code with 2code. At the start of the term, we all found it really tricky but we have been open-minded octopi and adventurous aardvarks. We can now code effectively, debug and create our own events. We look forward to having free choice over our coding over the rest of the term.

Topic

In topic, we are learning all about light. This week we are exploring and learning about shadows. For our science lesson, we went outside to find different shadows and were able to draw around them.

We noticed that all the shadows were different, depending on the shape and size of the object. We also spotted the shadows all pointing in the same direction.

We found out that a shadow is formed when light is blocked and that if the sun moved then so will the shadow.

Music

This week in Music, we were able to learn all about Djembe drums. We learnt that they come from Africa and are a key part of African music. Everyone was an adventurous aardvark and challenged themselves to copy rhythms and keep to a beat.

“It makes me feel calm.”

“I like the Djembe drums as we can hit different beats.”

“I find it quite relaxing to play them.”

Topic

As part of our Topic learning we have learnt about the things plant need to grow. We have all become super scientists and have set up an experiment to find out what happens if a plant doesn’t get 1 of the things it needs to survive. We discussed what a fair test is and how we are going to ensure our experiment is fair. We look forward to seeing how well our plants grow over the next few weeks.

Learning Lift-off:

We looked at the artwork of Maria Sybilla Merian, discovering that she was a naturalist who sketched and painted plants that she studied. We then used this as inspiration to find different plants around the school grounds. Once we found some interesting plants, we became adventurous aardvarks and aspirational ants by sketching them in our topic books, ensuring we included all the detail of the plants.