Class 6

Week 1

We were so excited this morning for our first forest school day. The weather was dry so we could explore the garden and play games on the field.
What a great day we all had! Here is what we got up to…

As part of our Science, we learnt how to classify objects into ‘Living, Dead and Never alive’- did you know that to be a living thing it needs to grow, eat and breathe! We loved looking for things that were living, dead and never alive, we found lots of exciting things.

Mrs Platts has also helped us to name and identify some of the different trees in the school garden. We ticked off the ones we could find including oak tree, silver birch and ash. We then demonstrated our knowledge of trees when playing the woodcutter game on the field.

In Art we used clay to make pinch pots. We collected natural materials from the garden and used these to decorate our pots. We took inspiration from the Sheffield Artist Penny Withers.

With Mrs Leaf, the children made a chocolate courgette cake as part of our DT work. We talked about healthy and unhealthy foods. We measured ingredients, mixed them and learnt how to safely use the graters. It was really yummy!

Week 2

What a cold but great day at forest school!

This week in Science we learnt about micro–habitats and what animals would live in these places. We thought about why a mini-beast would choose to live in a certain habitat and found some of these around the garden.

Mrs Platts took us to look at the flowers in the garden. We discussed the different parts and functions of plants with Mrs Platts. We know that the roots not only take water to the plant from the soil, but also help to anchor it to the ground.

Our DT focus this week was making bug hotels with Barry and Neville. We made some fabulous habitats for mini-beasts and hope to encourage more into the school garden.

This week we looked at the artist Marc Pouyet and created our own land art using natural materials.

Week 3

What another great day at Forest School! As part of our Science learning we continued to look at animals and plants that live in local micro-habitats and explain why. We found a woodlouse under a tree stump and talked about how it is dark and damp under there and a good habitat for them.

With Mrs Platts we began to learn about how flowering plants reproduce through pollination and pollinators such as bees.

In Art this week we created a mirror observational drawing of a leaf. We had to think carefully about line, shape and scale. We then used colours to add detail onto our drawings.

We collected natural materials from the garden such as twigs, leaves and stones to make a collage. Some of us created a pattern and others used the natural materials to make an animal collage. We loved looking at the different colours of the Autumn leaves which had begun to fall from the trees.

Week 4

This week we were thinking about the word adaptation in Science. We talked about what adaptation means and we began to explain how and why some minibeasts have adapted to their habitats to help them survive. Did you know what some minibeasts have an exoskeleton on the outside of their body to keep them safe?

In Science we look at lifecycles. Just like us plants live, reproduce and die. We ordered the stages of a plant’s life and explained what happens at each stage. We used some new vocabulary such as the word germination.

As part of our DT learning we revisited the skill of whittling sticks with Mrs Platts. In the afternoon Mrs Platts showed us how to tie knots and we used the sticks to make weaving frames. We then choose some natural materials from the garden to weave with.

As part of our Art learning this week, we looked at the sculptures created by Barbara Hepworth. We used clay to create our own sculptures inspired by her work.