It has been a very busy couple of weeks in Nursery and there is lots of lovely news to share with you!
As you may remember, we had just recently flown on our magic carpet to Africa and landed in the middle of the Masai Mara in Kenya.
Since there was so much to see and do, we decided to extend our stay. We have been busy visiting the animals at the watering hole…
And getting rather ‘muddy’ ourselves!
This mixture is called ‘oobleck’ and you make it by mixing cornflour and water together. We added a little bit of chocolate powder to make it look like mud! If you don’t already know, “Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid, a term for fluids that change viscosity (how easily they flow) under stress. When you run your fingers slowly through cornstarch and water, it acts like a liquid, but apply rapid force, and it solidifies, bends and even tears” (https://www.livescience.com/oobleck-mysteries-solved.html) – so it makes for a fascinating sensory experience!
We also went on safari….
And we revisited the story of Handa’s Surprise…
You may remember that some of the children made ice-lollies, using the fruit from Handa’s Surprise, and all of the children enjoyed cooling down with these on one of the very hot days a few weeks ago.
Those children who had not yet had a go at smelling, chopping and mixing Handa’s fruits – were now able to take their turn…
As the weather had cooled down considerably, we decided to make fruit smoothies this time instead of ice lollies and, of course, we made plenty so there was enough for everyone to have a taste!
Afterwards we had a vote to see which was the most popular – the Handa’s Surprise ice lollies, the Handa’s Surprise fruit smoothies or neither (the sad face)! As you can see, there was a clear winner with 16 votes for the ice lollies!
The Tuesday before last (22nd June) was Windrush Day. We took a moment or two to think about the people who came to the UK on the boat called the Windrush. We found out that these people were not made to feel welcome when they arrived because of the colour of their skin. We talked about how it important it is to welcome people who come to visit or are new to our school or country, no matter what they look like. And we watched this video about Windrush Day:
We marked the day across the school and, in Nursery, we made some beautiful kites because kite making and kite flying are very popular, traditional activities in the Caribbean.
On Friday 23rd June, we were so surprised and excited to have a special visitor in Nursery – Mrs Morris! And, of course, we gave her a great, big welcome! She read us a story, played with us and told us all about living by the seaside. Thank you for coming to visit Mrs Morris – we hope you come to visit again soon.
Back in Africa, we learnt about the Masai tribe who live in Kenya and northern Tanzania. We read a story called Masai and I, by Virginia Kroll.
You can revisit the story here. It is quite wordy, so you might want to do some paraphrasing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgKoPOq4DBk
We also watched this video about Maasai life, through the eyes of a child. We felt very sorry for the little girl as she found it difficult to sleep at night because of the smoke from the fire. We were glad to know that she was going to get a new house, without smoke.
And we have been making some of our own Maasai houses:
This week, we received a very special invitation to go and watch some of the Year 6 production! We sat in the audience and listened to the amazing singing and dancing. We were absolutely transfixed. Well done Year 6 – you definitely get a 5 star review from us!
Back in the classroom, we thought we had better start packing up and get on our way (otherwise we will run out of time to complete Granny’s journey before the end of term!).
But, just before we left, one of our wonderful parents, who comes from South Africa (which is another country on the continent of Africa), made us a super video – teaching us how to count to 10 in Afrikaans and how to say thank you and goodbye! We loved it – thank you so much!
To get us thinking about the next place we were going to visit, we read a story called Pink is for Boys by Robb Pearlman.
You can revisit it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b5BsM77lsM
This story really got us thinking about whether there really are boy colours and girl colours. Although there were a few of us who took some convincing, we pretty much concluded that all colours are for everyone!
This story also helped us to start thinking about whether there are some things that only boys can do and some things that only girls can do. In particular, we wondered if girls can be race car drivers? Or is that something only boys can do?
Image from https://www.shethepeople.tv/news/jade-edwards-first-female-racer-british-touring-car-championship-since-2007/
What about being a ballerina? Is that something only girls can do? Or can boys do this too?
We then watched a video of Sergei Polunin who is a male ballerina. We were all amazed and asked if we could watch it again!
Sergei comes from a country called Russia and, you guessed it, that’s the next country on Granny’s list!
So, we climbed back onto the magic carpet and headed north. We remembered to put our coats on as we thought it might be cold in Russia. We entered ‘Bolshoi Theatre Moscow’ into our Google Earth SatNav and flew up, up and away coming down to land here:
We could see lots of buildings, a few trees and lots of cars. We could not see any mountains or animals!
We used the little orange man to help us land safely and we could hardly believe where we landed! We were actually inside the Bolshoi Theatre which is home to the world-famous Russian ballet. Isn’t it incredible?
Have a lovely weekend everyone!