This month, we have been learning all about the Garden Centre. In S.E.S.E, we had the opportunity to learn about how plants grow from seed, first reading the story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and then discovering what a seed needs to grow. We went on a hunt around the school to find signs of Spring and took part in a guided drawing to think about what we would find in a grass environment. The children had lots of fun at the end of the theme planting their own vegetable seeds in the school planters. In Art, we used clay for the first time. We really enjoyed throwing the clay to remove all of the air bubbles and rolling our pieces out flat. We then used leaves and flowers to press into the clay and leave an indent. Once they were all dried out, we painted them to make them very colourful. The Juniors also created beautiful paintings of a spring meadow using watercolours, oil pastels, chalk pastels and paper to make tulips. In Literacy we read lots of beautiful and colourful books that helped us to understand how plants grow. The Juniors really enjoyed the story ‘The Hidden Rainbow’ and counting all of the bees on the pages and learning about how the seasons change how plants look.
We continued our learning about the Garden Centre through play, starting with Playdough. The children spent time thinking about the types of plants you could find in a Garden Centre and then used tools to help us. In Construction, we used wooden blocks and Mag-snaps to create shelves to hold the pots and plants in the garden centre. The Juniors had fun planning a garden in Small World, creating a woods, stepping stones over the pond, and a picnic area. We had lots of fun sorting coloured water beads using tweezers and then finding letter tiles to make words associated with the Garden Centre. In Puzzles, we hunted around the classroom to find pieces of lots of flower jigsaws and tested our teamwork skills to put them all together. The Role Play area was set up like a Garden Centre, complete with flowers, seeds, bird food, vegetables in a wheelbarrow, and lots of tools. The children took on the roles of customer, head gardener and cashier and enjoyed filling up their baskets and paying at the till.
