March finally marked the start of Spring which means in SESE we started with Geography to explore our school grounds looking and listening for signs of spring. The children really enjoyed thinking about all of the colours that start to appear at this time of year and went on a natural colour hunt, using the hoops to create different groups. Our favourites were the yellow daffodils that have begun to bloom. We also got to look at some animals that we notice in spring and learnt all about the different parts of a blue bird and a plant.
In playtime, we started with Small World where Ms. Mills had set up a Spring Garden for the children. They enjoyed using plant pots to plant some spring flowers and then watered them using blue beads and little watering cans! At this time of year, the children love playing outside so they created a playground in their garden, and used the dolls to slide and swing: Keeley even created a swimming pool for the little girl to slide into! For Playdough, the children thought about all of the signs of spring they learnt about in SESE and recreated them using the dough. They worked on mats and independently to make lambs, chicks, flowers, trees and the sun, using equipment such as rolling pins, cutters, feathers and googly eyes.
Sensory Play is one of the Junior Room’s favourite play activities. They paired this with literacy this month as they hunted for letters within the water beads and then worked hard to write words relating to spring, including duck, spring and dandelion. The children looked at their Spring display to help them spell the words correctly but also used their phonics knowledge to sound them out, reminding Ms. Mills and Lauren just how much they have learnt this year! They then enjoyed some time to free play in the beads using containers to fill and pour. In construction, the children worked together to make some gardens using Lego and wooden blocks.
In the Easter Shop, the class followed shopping lists to purchase items in a self-service shop, using money and cards to pay for everything in their basket. One pupil enjoyed making up Easter baskets that people could buy and another helped people use the check out. Finally, the children had a lovely play session trying out different puzzles. They worked together to find all of the hidden Easter eggs around the classroom which they had to put back together, matching the numbers to the correct number dots. On offer were three different jigsaw puzzles: fruit and vegetables, the life cycles of butterflies, ducks and frogs, and matching animals to their babies. The children really enjoyed using the tweezers to sort the pompoms into the correct colour groups.
For Art, the children used mixed-media to create beautiful tulip pictures inspired by the tulips growing at school. They painted the background and then sponged on white clouds, used colouring pencils to decorate a windmill and then added colour to the tulips in the foreground with oil pastels. Later in the month, the children followed along with Ms. Mills to draw different types of flowers and greenery to create a spring headdress on a lamb, before using watercolour paint to add detail into the background.
Despite having a very busy month, we still managed to get outside to prepare our window boxes for planting. The Juniors helped Ms. Mills to take the weeds out of the boxes and refill the boxes with fresh soil. They then listened very carefully to instructions to plant the new flowers. As well as this, we even fit in a game of hide and seek after reading a story about a lamb playing with his friends, which was a favourite amongst the children!
We love Spring in the Junior Room and I think you can tell by all of the amazing work we have created this month.
