It is always interesting to find out where the children’s interests will take us next and this week was no exception!  Continuing with our ‘Out of the Egg’ topic, the children were thrilled to discover a dinosaur land, complete with glacial river and erupting volcano right in the middle of the classroom!

They then decided they wanted to find out what a real, erupting volcano would look like.  Many of them already know that we can find things like this out by using the internet.  So we turned on the computer and had a look on youtube…

The children were absolutely amazed by the video clips of volcanoes erupting and they were fascinated by the lava streams, particularly those moving through forests.

Here’s one of the clips we watched if you’d like to revisit it:

They were so inspired by the video clips that many decided to draw their own pictures of the volcanoes and, of course, we couldn’t resist showing the children the classic baking soda and vinegar science experiment! You’ll be able to see the full clip of the experiment on Seesaw during the Easter holidays – do look out for it – it’s quite lovely to see the children’s reactions!

 

In the meantime if you’d like to try it at home, it is really very easy.

You’ll need:

• a small container, such as a yoghurt pot or small glass/cup
• a couple of teaspoons of baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
• a good squirt of washing up liquid
• some red or orange food colouring
• vinegar

Put all the ingredients into the container, except the vinegar.

When you’re ready, pour the vinegar in and the ‘lava’ will begin to erupt!  (Be sure to have your container on a plate or tray of some sort in case the lava spills over).  If you’re feeling really creative you could even make your own volcano to put the container in…there are lots of clips online that show this in more detail.  Be sure to let us know how you get on!

An erupting volcano was not the only thing we made at Nursery this week!  As it was Shrove Tuesday, we took the opportunity to make (and eat) some yummy pancakes.

Here we are measuring and mixing up our three ingredients – I wonder if you can remember what those three things were?

Don’t they look delicious!  Mrs Morris did an amazing job of cooking the pancakes in record time, but there wasn’t enough batter to make enough pancakes for everyone to have one each.  So, instead, we cut the pancakes up and everyone had a few small pieces.  Isn’t it lucky that the Nursery children are so good at sharing!  They are also incredibly thoughtful and decided that the last pancake would be offered to Mr Quinn – well done Nursery!

And if that wasn’t enough excitement, it was also World Book Day this week! We were so impressed by the children’s fantastic costumes and how well they were able to talk about  their characters .  Thank you parents and carers for all your support and efforts!

 

 

One of the children came to school dressed as a dragon, inspired by the story ‘Zog’.  We decided to read the story as it links so nicely to our topic (i.e. dragons hatch out of eggs, don’t they?).

At the end of the story, the princess and the knight decide they want a career change and they both become doctors.  This twist to the tale prompted a rather interesting conversation about gender roles (e.g. Can girls be doctors? Do nurses always wear dresses? Can boys be nurses?).  We always encourage the children to question their assumptions about what boys and girls can and cannot do and wear – both now and in the future as grown-ups.

Funnily enough, I then came across this article about a graphic designer in the US who has re-imagined several Disney princesses as modern career women!  What a busy week we have had and we even managed to give a nod to International Women’s Day 😊