Portway Infant School
We have had a lovely day visiting Japan today!
We wrote our own wishes for year 1, just like they write wishes on 'Tanabata' in Japan. We made some flags and we loved making our own 'Kokeshi' doll designs.
Some of us even had a go at writing our names using Japanese symbols. We even got to try some Japanese rice.
We loved learning about Japan.
By Gosling Class!
We have had a fantastic time in the forest this week! The rain did not scare us away and we had lots of fun making 'Bug Hotels' We were learning about what bugs need and where they like to live. We then did a bit of bug hunting to find some guests for our hotels!
Obviously after all of this we got to do our favourite forest school jobs too!
We have been learning all about the Olympics this week ready. We have found out about how it started, practised some of the sports with a teacher from Harrow Way and even had our own Olympic Torch which we carried around 'France' to Paris.
Today we have had a Far Away visit to France to learn all about the country where it is going to be held this year and designed a flag to represent our class aswell as individual flags. This afternoon the whole school went out to the field for an Opening Ceremony with our class flag and then took part in a Marathon....... just like the real Olympics!!
We have had a fabulous day visiting Longdown Activity Farm today. We had to be farmers for the whole day and were in charge of making sure all the animals were fed on time. We fed the calves, kids and the goats - they were VERY hungry! We collected the eggs and took them round to the shop so they could be sold and we checked that the fields were ok - which meant going around on a tractor ride! We even had a snuggle with some chicks and guinea pigs.
We have had an exhausting but fabulous day! Some of us even found it a little tricky to keep our eyes open on the coach ride home!
We were so lucky on Tuesday to have a special visit from the author/illustrator Petr Horacek who has become a great friend to Portway over the years.
Petr shared his love of books with us and we were lucky enough to take part in a shared art project with him.
Do you like our final piece?
We had a great time on Monday at Forest School looking for bugs. We have been learning all about the different types!! Then we went off with our pots to see what we could find. We found lots of woodlice, worms, slugs, snails and ants.
Miss Birmingham showed us a new musical instrument stand in the forest too!
We also learnt a new skill of 'Hapazome' which is a japanese art of 'leaf dye' using leaves and flowers from our forest.
We have been learning all about the artist Vincent Van Gogh. We practised our colour mixing to make greens, oranges and different yellows and copied one of his famous sunflower pictures. We tried hard to match the shapes and textures he used to create a painting in his style. We were very proud of the sunflower pictures we painted.
What a super Far Away Friday we had today, taking a trip on our Portway plane to The Netherlands. We spent our day learning some Dutch words, creating flags, and learning all about the beautiful country and its capital city: Amsterdam. We tried some local cuisine of stroopwafels and edam cheese (the stroopwafels were a particular favourite) and finished our day riding around on bicycles like the people of Amsterdam do.
We have had a very busy week this week learning all about where our food comes from. We have looked at farming and how things get from the farm to our plate! We have been planting our own seeds at school and making labels for them.
We decided we would make our own soup and looked at all the steps that we would need to do this.
First we wrote a shopping list and then some of us took a trip to Kenyons to buy the vegetables from our list! Then we all took a turn at preparing the vegetables practising our 'bridge cut'. After this we roasted our vegetables.
We decided that it would be nice to make our soup at forest school as we have been learning about how you can cook food over a fire. We put the roasted vegetables in a big pan and added some vegetable stock and hot water. Then we let it simmer over the fire while we sang some camp fire songs. Then it was tasting time! Some of us loved the soup and ate the whole lot! But even though we didn't all like it everyone tried a little bit! The grown ups were very proud of us and we had a great time!
We have also been learning all about spring and new life! We went on a spring walk and spotted some blossom, some spring flowers and even saw some bee's, ladybirds and butterflies!
We have been pracising our drawing skills by looking carefully at some spring flowers.
What a busy week! Can you see the fun we have had in our photo's!
