Did you know you can eat rainbows?  Well, that is exactly what we did in Nursery this week!  Inspired by the stories of the Rainbow Fish that we read last week and all the wonderful colour mixing that the children have been exploring, we decided to make our very own rainbow ice lollies!

First, we had a go at painting a simple 6-colour rainbow using only the three primary colours; red, yellow and blue.  Can you remember how we made the missing colours; orange, green and purple?  Hint: mix the colours on either side to make the missing colour in between…

Next, we talked about how we can keep healthy by eating lots of different coloured fruit and vegetables. We then came up with some ideas for different fruits and vegetables that would be the same colours as our rainbow.

Luckily, I had some of the children’s suggestions in my shopping bag! Here are the ingredients we decided to use to make our rainbows:

• Raspberries for red
• Peaches for orange
• Banana for yellow
• Spinach for green
• Blueberries for blue
• Black cherries for purple

And here’s what we did:

First, we put a spoonful of each ingredient into an empty, clean, yoghurt pot, being sure to follow the correct order of colours for our rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). We then poured in a little apple juice to help hold all the ingredients together.  Next, we put a lolly stick into the middle of the rainbow mixture.

We then froze the ice lollies in the big school freezer overnight.  Finally, we sat the pots in a little warm water for a few seconds to allow the ice lolly to become unstuck, before carefully pulling the ice lollies out.

As it was a lovely, warm day, we decided to enjoy our ice lollies outside in the garden during story-time.  Don’t they look delicious!

Why not have a go at making your own ice lollies at home? Which fruits or vegetables will you use?  🌈

Have a wonderful half term everyone!

As our whole school theme this term is ‘Friendship’, it seemed quite fitting to continue our ‘Splish, Splash, Splosh’ topic this week by reading the stories of the beautiful Rainbow Fish.  In the first story, he learns how to make friends by sharing his shimmery scales and, in the second, he decides to help a friend in trouble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Ae41RvnW8

We made our own Rainbow Fish scales by decorating paper plates; using pipettes to drop blue, red and yellow food colouring onto the plates and then watching in wonder as the colours mixed together to make beautiful rainbows!  Look out for our Rainbow Fish display coming soon to our welcome area…

Taking inspiration from this rainbow fish colour mixing, we also explored how colours can change in coloured water by challenging the children to ‘go fishing’ using clothes pegs to catch their fish. They were amazed to discover that different coloured fish appeared to change colour when submerged in blue water! As one child noticed, “the (yellow) seahorse had turned green!”

Later in the week, we used this growing knowledge of colour mixing when choosing colours for a purpose.  The children have been thinking about their favourite stories and retelling them through paintings for a lovely new display which you may already have spotted on our accordion wall.

“I need purple. I know blue and red!”

“I need blue for the darkness”.

We also read one of my favourite stories about an alien called Zot who travels to Earth  from his colourless world, discovering colour and friendship along the way.  It is well worth a re-read if you happen to come across it.

Finally, we have a lovely new colour table in the classroom which the children have started to explore by creating their own pictures with objects; something we call placing and arranging…

The children are clearly becoming colour experts!  Here’s a song about mixing colours that you might like to share together at home.

You may remember, several weeks ago, building works began on our very own bug hotel (https://st-matthews-cofe-primary-school11.j2bloggy.com/Nursery/science-week-the-bug-hotel/) and, I’m delighted to say, we are thrilled with the end result!

All manner of creepy-crawlies have now been spotted in and around the hotel from centipedes to spiders, from woodlice to ladybirds…

The children have been using their magnifying glasses to take a closer look at the hotel residents and they have been using non-fiction books to identify the different insects.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed materials and helped to construct the Bug Hotel – we have no doubt it will be enjoyed by the FSU children for a long time to come!