Most of the toys we investigated in school once belonged to Mrs Bowen's grown-up children. 

Most of the toys were made from plastic and some were controlled with batteries.

                 However, some children had great fun discovering how to wind up cars and let them go! 

This week we talked about Muslims and why they are fasting and praying during the time of Ramadan.

We compared this to the other times that we have discussed fasting. Such as Jesus fasting in the desert and how fasting can help us to understand how it might feel to be hungry all the time. The children are learning that although lots of people have a religious belief, we do not have to be religious to show care and charity to others. Many Muslim people will be giving money during the time of Ramadan, but other people also gave lots of money to charity for Red Nose Day (Comic Relief). 

We combined R.E and D.T to create woven prayer mats. The patterned strips showed geometric Islamic patterns and the children added their own drawings and doodles, including some of Spiderman!

We have engaged in class discussions about big issues, like remembering people who died in World War 1 and 2, poverty and what Christians do to address this at the time of Harvest. Our class contribution to Harvest was to donate items to our school food bank.

In keeping with our school promise to ensure that diversity is taught, we have focussed on the Jewish festivals of Rosh Hashanah and Hanukah, as well as talking about non- religious festivals, like music festivals and what we might wear on our heads if we attended one.

To keep the learning fun and creative, the children have taken part in singing, creative crafts and simple drama, and we showcase photographs of this in our class floor book!

We made stars and animals to hang in and around the stable.

We made Christmas tree and star hats to wear during our singing performance and we were really lucky as Mr Mark made us a stable and a manger. Thank you Mr Mark! 

We really liked learning the Christmas Story and making peg dolls to help us retell the story. We put these in our Christmas performance alongside small clips of each of us retelling the Christmas Story. 

We had a visit from our old friend 'Moon Rabbit' who told us that he was bored of eating carrot cake. He wanted the children to tell him how to make toast as he could often smell it during Breakfast Club. 

We started off by ordering a set of instructions to make sure that we were making the toast in the correct order. We talked about why it is important to make sure that instructions are in the correct order. 

We enjoyed retelling the instructions over and over again using the pictures to help us.

We worked on our own, in partners and in small groups to tell each other the instructions. 

Here is the map we used to help us! Once we were confident we start to make changes to our map to make it our own!

For own independent write, we wrote out a set of instructions on how to make rice crispy cakes. We really liked thinking about what topping we would put on the top! Hmmm marshmellows, chocolate chips or some fruit ...

Some children even went home and made their own rice crispy cakes. They looked delicious :) 

We started off by learning our new map and and thinking of fun actions to go alongside.  We then drew our own maps using the same pictures to help us remember all of the facts about rabbits.

Can you remember all the facts? Use the map to help you!

We then spent time changing parts of the map to make it our own. Where there is a blank box we put our own ideas in and then wrote sentences to match!

We had some lovely ideas and the children loved describing what rabbits look like!

For our final independent piece of writing we wrote an animal fact file about an animal of our choice. We used the same headings to help us set out our ideas. 

We had some wonderful fact files ranging from ants to crocodiles and the children enjoyed finding out information all about their animal!

We have lots of books in our classroom about journeys. We also have pictures from our Moon Rabbit story that we like to use to help us sequence the story. 

We have transport in our small world and water areas! 

 We really enjoy drawing our own maps when exploring the environment. Here is Moon Rabbit's journey :) 

Please see above a couple of our wonderful maps which show journeys from home to school.

We have also drawn maps of Dunkirk Primary School. I wonder if you can recognise any parts of our school?

We were really excited when Moon Rabbit came to Olive Class and left us a special letter. We weren't sure how she got to Dunkirk but she was sitting on Miss Butler's desk one day! 

We read the letter and found out that Moon Rabbit had been on a special journey to Dunkirk Primary School as she knew we had been reading her book. 

We asked her lots of questions. Here are a few...

-How did you get here?

-Do you miss Brown Rabbit?

-What is your favourite thing to eat at the 'Carrot Cafe'?

-Do you like it at our school?

-Were you happy when you went home?

We looked at the story map and created actions to go alongside.

We began by retelling the story a sentence at a time as a whole class but soon moved onto retelling each other in small groups. We really enjoyed practising the sentences and when we were confident, we performed it. 

You may want to have a go at retelling the story to someone at home :) 

We then had a go at drawing our own maps (exactly the same) and then writing out the story.

Here is an example of part of a story map!

We have spent the last couple of weeks changing parts of the story and making up our own. The stories have been brilliant to read and share as a class. 

Can you remember the animals in your story and what they did?